61 pages • 2 hours read
Lois LowryThe Silent Boy
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “June 1987”
The novel opens in 1985, as Katy “Docky” Thatcher, a retired doctor, reflects on her life. An only child until age eight, she was a pretentious and well-loved little girl. Her physician father allowed her to accompany him for much of his work. She recalls that “by thirteen I already knew that I wanted to be a doctor, too” (4). Katy recalls her neighbors, the Bishops, who lost one son to war. She recalls the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, as well as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911. She remembers the asylum that is now closed. Every time she sees it, she recalls Jacob Stoltz, “the boy who had […] changed my life forever” (6).
Chapter 1 Summary: “September 1908”
Katy is six years old and planning her birthday party. She talks about her friends Austin and Jessie. Katy thinks Austin is lucky because his father, a lawyer, loves machinery and spends a lot of time in his barn making a surprise for Austin’s birthday. Austin’s father makes him a pedal-operated go-cart, and Katy hears her mother call it amazing, so she thinks it is called a “mazing.”
Katy also thinks Austin is lucky because he has a baby sister named Laura Paisley. Austin tells Katy that his mother went into their garden and found the baby. Katy calls him a liar because it seems preposterous that a baby would appear in a garden. She apologizes to Austin, but his older brother Paul calls her “the smartest child on the street” (12).
Chapter 2 Summary: “September 1910”
Katie is eight years old and accompanying her father to the country to pick up Peggy Stoltz, who will support family’s cook, Naomi, as the “new hired girl” (14). Katy is immediately aware of the disparity in their economic positions when she sees Peggy’s “tidy but stark” home (14). Katy meets Peggy’s mother and baby sister Anna. Katy’s father, Dr. Thatcher, recalls that Anna had diphtheria and is happy to see her now adjusting and developing well. As they ride away with Peggy in their buggy, Katy sees a boy at the window. Peggy explains that he is her brother, Jacob Stoltz. He is 13 and doesn’t go to school because he’s “touched in the head” (20). Katy doesn’t want to be rude and pry any further.
Peggy’s sister Nell lives next door as the Bishops’ hired girl. Nell is 16, full of ambition, and wants to become a film star. She even plans to change her name to “Evangeline Emerson” (24). Peggy is quieter and plans to “save my money and help my parents, and someday I’ll find a nice steady fellow and get married” (25). When Katy shows Peggy her new room, she can tell that Peggy likes it as well as the Thatchers.
Chapter 3 Summary: “October 1910”
Katy is recovering from chicken pox, and her father takes her with him to the country to get fresh air. He is headed to Schuyler’s Mill to treat a worker who has cut his hand. Along the way they run into Jacob and offer him a ride. Katy discovers that her father has already given Jacob a ride before, and she is very jealous that her father has been giving his attention to another child. As they ride along in the buggy, Jacob imitates the sound of the grindstone at the mill: “he moved his hands against his own knees and made a sound—shoooda, shoooda, shoooda” (33). Katy tries to join in with him by making the same sound, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
At the mill Katy hears a man refer to Jacob as an imbecile. She doesn’t know what it means, but she can tell it is meant to be hurtful. She asks her father and he says, “I wouldn’t call Jacob that […] because imbecile means having no brains. And Jacob, he’s different, all right, but he knows how to go to what he loves, and how to stay safe near it. That takes brains, I’d say” (42). Katy and her father walk through the mill to find Jacob after her father removes the stitches from the injured man’s hand. The workers’ faces are covered in flour, and they look frightening and ghostly to Katy. She and her father find Jacob rocking back and forth next to the noisy grindstone, making his “shoooda” sound and covering his ears with his hands. They take Jacob back to his farm, and when he arrives, Katy sees that a dog and two cats come running to Jacob and follow in his footsteps.
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
We can see right away why this novel fits into the young adult genre of fiction. Once the narrator shifts from the older version of Katy (“Docky”) to her younger self, the book approaches very serious topics with a relatable and easy-to-comprehend voice. Furthermore, the narrative is entirely focused on the small world of a young girl: her immediate family, her neighbors, and anything she might hear about the world from this little circle. We witness Katy understand the world around her by comparison and observation, which is how most children come to understand life. For example, we see her realize that she lives a life of privilege by comparison when she goes to the Stoltz farm to pick up Peggy: “My seven-year-old perception saw in an instant the contrast between our house and the one Peggy would be leaving” (16). She recognizes that Peggy’s farm life offers fewer opportunities and that “it was why, at not quite fifteen years old, Peggy Stoltz was leaving school and becoming a hired girl” (16).
This experiential learning continues when Katy visits the mill and overhears someone call Jacob an imbecile: “I wasn’t certain what the word meant, but I could see that it was not meant kindly and hoped that Jacob hadn’t heard” (36). Katy uses contextual clues to piece together these experiences and make sense of dark and troubling themes like injustice and prejudice. In so doing, the novel helps young adult readers have the same learning experience by extension. This genre excels at simplifying complex issues so that a young audience can learn empathy and tolerance through their reading experience. Katy herself is a highly empathic person, as demonstrated by her interest in learning “more about people who needed things […] I had loved listening to Little Women” (15). The allusion to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) is significant because that work deals with female gender roles, something Katy grapples with almost from the beginning of the novel. She studies the different women around her and perceives how their social positions affect the outcome of their lives. Furthermore, much like Little Women, Katy’s story is about a harrowing experience with Jacob Stoltz that essentially forces her to grow up and destroys her sense of comfort and innocence.
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