41 pages • 1 hour read
Esi EdugyanHalf-Blood Blues
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6 Summary
Back in 1992 Poland, Sid and Chip get off the bus. They walk through fields toward Hiero’s house. Sid thinks about friends he lost, including Ernst, who took revenge on his father by asking to be sent to the front lines, where he soon died; Paul, who died in a concentration camp after a rival pianist recognized him in the street and turned him over to the Nazis; Fritz, who wandered and starved to death after the war; and Delilah, who returned to her native Canada, married, and died of cancer shortly thereafter.
As they near Hiero’s house, they pass sculptures formed out of farm machinery, including one that looks like Hiero. Hearing no answer to their calls, and with the house’s doors open, they step inside. Passing into the back, they find an elderly Hiero, who speaks to them in Polish before recognizing and embracing them. Hiero, who now goes by Thomas, his middle name, is blind.
Hiero tells them that he worked as a blacksmith and stayed in the house after the business closed. He denies making the sculptures, but Sid and Chip can see that he’s lying. He shows them his cellar, where there are more sculptures, including one that resembles Sid holding his bass. Sid realizes that Hiero has no idea that he betrayed him.
As they drink, Chip gently invites Hiero to reappear in public, but Hiero declines, saying that he has moved on to other things. Chip tells him how much he has missed his music. That night, Sid dreams about the horrors Hiero must have endured in the concentration camp.
The next morning, while Chip is out on a walk, Sid tells Hiero about hiding the visas. Hiero walks away without a word. Chip returns, and Sid tells him the same thing he told Hiero. Chip assures him that everyone makes mistakes, and that he should simply give Hiero time.
Chip takes Sid inside and plays one of Hiero’s (non-jazz) Polish records. Hiero reappears, and Chip excuses himself. Hiero tells Sid that he settled in Poland because he liked the look of the sky, and Sid understands that Hiero’s loss of eyesight did not come about in the concentration camp. Hiero says he sees Sid “like it was fifty years ago” (342) and tells him to replay the record.
Part 6 Analysis
Though Hiero has changed in some ways, he remains an artist. His change of medium from music to sculpting, though surprising to Chip and Hiero, supports Armstrong’s earlier claim that music, though valuable, is not the only path to a meaningful life, just as Hiero’s changed taste in music might signify a broadened perspective.
With Sid’s betrayal of Hiero laid bare, the only remaining question is how and whether any remaining tension between the two should be resolved. Crucially, Edugyan chooses not to have Hiero know or discover anything of Sid’s betrayal prior to Sid’s arrival; to do otherwise would take away Sid’s deliberate choice to confess his sin, as it were. His vivid dreams of Hiero’s concentration camp experiences assure the reader that Sid grasps the terrible consequences of his actions. His choice to voluntarily confess allows him to take responsibility for his actions, marking the first step toward true reconciliation.
This chapter also provides a conclusion for Chip, who also makes a confession: He expresses how lonely he has felt without Hiero’s music. Thus, Chip the jokester, who was once loathe even to reveal his own middle name, finally allows himself to be sincere and vulnerable. Of course, there’s no real answer to Chip’s complaint other than commiseration, which Hiero offers, saying, “it’s an old life” (335).
Though Hiero provides no overt declarations of forgiveness to Sid at the novel’s conclusion, there are hopeful traces in the suggestion that Hiero’s eyes have beheld “the ruin and rebirth of a world” (342). The first reference to Hiero as Thomas (apart from quoted dialogue) in the novel’s last line further suggests that he has, somehow, been renewed.
