81 pages • 2 hours read
Paolo BacigalupiShip Breaker
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A 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.
Chapters 20-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary
The Dauntless patrols the coastline, searching for the Ray. While Nailer believes the Pole Star has Nita, the crew hopes that isn’t true because the Pole Star has missile and torpedo systems, while the Ray is a pleasure yacht. Lieutenant Reynolds doesn’t believe that the Pole Star is anywhere near the Gulf because her trade routes would put her near Japan at this time, but Captain Candless has the crew practice drills for the worst-case scenario. Half of the Pole Star’s crew are “augments,” a swank euphemism for half-men.
Nailer has mixed feelings about returning to Bright Sands once they find Nita because he wants to stay aboard the Dauntless as crew. However, whole clans are dedicated to working on the clippers; they buy positions as deckhands and work their way up. Even Captain Candless’s family has worked on the clippers for three generations. When Candless gives Nailer a gun and orders him to drill with the crew, Nailer asks him for a job. Candless agrees, and Reynolds assigns Nailer to the gear room below deck with the half-man Knot.
The gear room makes Nailer “vaguely ill” because it smells like grease and metal (254), reminding him of being on the light crew. Because Nailer is small, Knot orders him to clean and oil the massive gears used to raise the hydrofoils and sails. The gears are on lockdown, but Knot explains that if they accidentally turn on while Nailer is working on them, they will grind him up. He attempts to show Nailer how to shut them down, but Nailer cannot read the labels. Knot refuses to let Nailer work on the gears if he is illiterate and undertakes teaching him to read.
Chapter 21 Summary
After eight days of searching, Candless finds the Ray. Nailer must stay below decks while they catch up to their prey in case Nita or his father recognizes him on the scope and photograph system.
While below, Knot teaches Nailer how to read. Nailer realizes learning this was just a question of hard work and time, and Knot has Nailer read from The Old Man and the Sea. The lessons lead to familiarity, and Nailer works up the courage to ask Knot if he would ever consider taking a different master. Knot becomes upset and will only reply, “I do not wish it” (272). Nailer feels ashamed for asking. Knot explains that it is in his nature to fight, but this fight for Nita will be a pleasure because Pyce was disloyal to the Patels; like the scavengers, the half-men value loyalty.
When Knot says that Nita’s father will do anything for Nita because she is family, Nailer thinks of his own father. Everyone thinks of family in different ways, but all think family is important. Nailer now disagrees; using family as an excuse allows people to behave badly towards others and get away with it. Family is not reliable; his father wants to kill him, and Nita’s uncle is hunting her. By contrast, Sadna and Pima would put their life on the line for him even though they aren't blood. Nailer concludes that actions matter more than blood and that he can choose as family the people who have his back.
Chapter 22 Summary
When they overtake the Ray, the Dauntless crew jumps onto the Ray’s deck and overcomes the opposing crew. Captain Marn, however, refuses to disclose Nita’s whereabouts. Nailer helps search belowdecks, but they find no trace of Nita. Captain Candless threatens to sink the Ray unless Marn talks, and Marn reveals that the Ray was a trap; on the horizon, the Pole Star is bearing down upon the Dauntless.
Marn offers amnesty to the Dauntless crew if they abandon Candless, but only three take the offer. The rest of the Dauntless crew leave the Ray, setting fire to her sails and destroying her navigation system as they go.
The only recourse for the Dauntless, in light of the Pole Star’s overwhelming firepower, is to flee. Their one advantage is that they have a shallower draft than the Pole Star; they are able to sail in shallower waters than the massive warship. Candless remarks that they will only win against Pole Star by trickery. They will run and try to lead the larger ship to make a mistake. While Candless and Reynolds look at maps to find a place to hide, Nailer notices that the map of his old beach is incorrect; the water is shallower over the Teeth than the maps show. Because the Pole Star has the same maps, Candless sees an opportunity to wreck the larger ship on the Teeth. Reynolds thinks it’s too risky, but they have no other options.
Chapter 23 Summary
Content Warning: The Chapters 23 and 24 Summaries contain violence and gore. The Analysis contains references to violence, addiction, and enslavement.
The Dauntless sets her high sails and runs from the Pole Star. The warship also hoists her high sails and gives chase. Candless plans to sail into the Teeth at high tide. With her shallow draft, Dauntless will be able to get past the submerged buildings into the bay, but the Pole Star will run aground on the hidden hazards. When Reynolds again objects to the danger of the plan, Nailer reminds her that they are dead either way; if they surrender, they’ll be strung up as pirates.
As they flee the Pole Star, a storm overtakes them. The plan to sail over the Teeth is now riskier, but even in the storm, the Pole Star will be able to track them by radar. The storm forces Candless to take down the sails, and the Pole Star grows closer. Candless warns Nailer that his gamble may kill everyone. Nailer agrees, and Candless makes the decision to trust the Fates, stating, “Sometimes it’s better to die trying” (292). In the dark of the storm, Nailer misses the gap between the island and the Teeth, forcing Candless to turn the Dauntless around. As the Pole Star bears down upon them, the Dauntless catches a wind and lunges past the warship. The crew sails through the gap under Nailer’s direction and into the protected bay.
The Pole Star follows the Dauntless over the Teeth and runs aground. Candless launches boats, and his crew boards the Pole Star. In the ensuing fight, Candless throws the captain of the Pole Star overboard but then is shot by augments. Reynolds and Nailer open fire against the half-men, but Reynolds orders Nailer to find Nita. Nailer loses his gun to the sea when a wave washes over the sinking ship and, armed only with his knife, goes below to search for Lucky Girl.
The ship is quiet belowdecks, and as Nailer looks for Nita, he curses himself. He has betrayed his father and is stuck on a sinking ship because he got caught up in the crew’s fanatical loyalty. He should have given up in Orleans II, but he now has feelings for Nita, so he forges ahead. He runs into Pole Star crew attempting to patch a hatch where water is coming through, and he runs away, hiding in a stateroom. The crewmembers run past, and Nailer continues his search, but the ship is tilting now. He yells for Nita, knowing he must get out soon, and wonders again if he will end up like Jackson Boy. Just beyond the gear room, he runs into his father, who is carrying Nita, gagged and bound on his shoulder. Richard puts Nita down, brandishes his machete, and tells Nailer he is going to gut him.
Nailer and Richard fight, but his father is blindingly fast. Nailer loses his knife and runs to the gear room, looking for another weapon or a place to hide. He climbs the gears, looking for a place to worm into. Finding nowhere that is safe, he lures his father up in an attempt to drop an iron plate on his head. Richard climbs after him, but the plating that Nailer throws down misses him. Nailer reaches the top of the gears and sees a control deck. Reading the label, he realizes that it is the foil override. He presses the two buttons that will override the gear lockdown and grabs the engage lever, swinging free from his father’s grasp. As he falls to the floor, the machinery starts up.
Chapter 24 Summary
Nailer wrenches his ankle as he hits the floor. Half of his father’s body is sucked into the gears. Richard fights for life, pleading with Nailer to help him. Nailer is filled with revulsion and retreats to find Nita. She is standing at the door to the gear room, having cut her way free with Nailer’s lost knife. Nailer pulls her away from the sight of his father.
The pounding waves outside completely capsize the ship. Because the top of the ship is now underwater, Nita and Nailer look for a hole in the hull to escape through. They head to where Nailer saw the crew patching the hatch and climb through to a cargo hold. Up above, there is a slash where the Teeth ripped the hull. Stacking cargo boxes to reach the hole, Nailer urges Nita to go through first. His ankle is injured and he will need her help to climb through. Nita clambers out of the ship and then reaches for Nailer. He jumps but is unable to pull himself out. Contemplating giving up, he hears Nita yell, “Crew up […] You think I’m going to pull your ass up like a damn swank?” (314). Her words give him strength to pull himself through with her help.
The storm is still raging, but they see the Dauntless through the waves. Nita jumps into the sea and begins swimming towards the ship. Nailer follows, but his ankle is useless and the sea “swallow[s] him in churn and roar” (315). Nita yells at him to stop fighting and let the current carry him. She swims back and supports him, smiling. He feels the rhythm of the waves, and the current carries them to the Dauntless.
Chapter 25 Summary
On Bright Sands, Sadna and Nailer watch the Dauntless being loaded up for her voyage. Sadna helps Nailer to understand his lack of remorse over killing his father. “Killing always costs” (317), she reminds him, saying that as time goes by, he will have feelings. Nailer is worried that his indifference means he is like his father, but Sadna tells him that the fact that he is worried proves he is not. To make up for the killing, he should do something good in the world.
When Sadna leaves, Pima joins Nailer. Across the water, Candless is alive and covered in bandages, directing his crew on the Dauntless. Nita’s rescue has tipped the scales of the corporate war towards her father, and she is sailing home. Nailer, Pima, and Sadna are all joining Nita on the Dauntless, and Nita has promised to work on making Bright Sands safer for the ship breakers.
Pima watches Nailer as he gazes at Nita on the Dauntless’s deck, realizing that Nailer is in love with Nita. She asks him if he really thinks that Nita will love “some lower-deck grease monkey” (322), revealing that Nailer now has his dream job on the Dauntless. He replies that he just might get lucky.
Chapters 20-25 Analysis
The novel comes to a climax in the last five chapters; Nailer has an epiphany about the meaning of family and destroys his nemesis, Richard Lopez. Bacigalupi unravels the novel’s varied perspectives on family, ultimately suggesting that blood and genetics do not make a family; sometimes family is the people who have your back and upon whom you can rely. In this context, Richard is the antithesis of family; he beats Nailer and forces him to support his addictions, he abandons him after the city killer with Sadna and Pima, and in this final section, he actively seeks to slaughter him. Knot, who as a bioengineered creature has no blood family, also helps Nailer to understand that blood doesn’t have to define family. Knot’s family is the crew, Candless, and, by extension, Nita and her father. Nailer chooses Nita as well as Sadna and Pima, and this choice culminates in his killing his father in order to save both his and Nita’s lives.
Knot’s loyalty to his crew family and the Patels also reveals the darker side of loyalty. Unlike Nailer, he and the other half-men are unable to choose their family. They are tied by genetics to their patrons and are engineered to be killing machines. Candless notes that the half-men, or augments, are “not like us. They have a single master [...] They cannot live without their masters. It comes from a line of canine genetics” (262). Knot’s loyalty to Candless and Patel is the same as Nailer’s familial loyalty to Richard; there is no choice, only genetics. Further, the half-men carry their forced loyalty to fanatical lengths; when Nailer asks if Knot would want another master, Knot grows threatening, repeating, “I do not wish it” (272). Bacigalupi uses animal imagery to portray Knot as a dog; as Knot growls his answer, he “look[s] like a mastiff” (272), and his muscles are “bristle backed” (272). Nailer feels ashamed that he “prodded the creature” (272). This comparison emphasizes that Knot’s loyalty isn’t freely given; it is genetically programmed, and other than Tool, no augment can disobey their conditioning. The half-men illustrate how unquestioning loyalty can lead to self-destruction; their genetic directive to sacrifice their lives for their master conflicts with the laws of survival.
The author also points out the immorality of the swanks’ enslavement of the half-men. The people who build or own bodyguards like Knot do not even acknowledge their humanity, calling them “augments” instead of half-men. This euphemism allows them to justify engineering a race of slaves; it may be morally wrong to enslave humans, but humanity has always used animals for protection and labor. Scavengers also are treated as less than human; they don’t have access to the education that even Knot takes for granted. However, scavengers still retain the right to choose whom they work for, although they seldom have the opportunity to exercise that right; in order to survive, they must work for whoever will pay them under conditions similar to slavery.
When Knot teaches Nailer to read, Nailer discovers that it is all just “hard work and time” (271). This is the opposite of a Lucky Strike but eminently more valuable in the long run. Nailer is growing under Knot’s tutelage, just as he learned to question his life’s direction under Tool’s mentorship. He reads Knot’s book about a fisherman on the sea, an allusion to Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Hemmingway’s novel emphasizes endurance and perseverance, traits that are more important than luck if Nailer is to succeed in the swank world. Candless also serves as a mentor, relating how he had to work hard to become a ship’s captain (although Nailer sees luck as being more of a factor for Candless, as Pima works twice as hard as anyone yet still is trapped in Bright Sands). In fact, what Nailer sees as Candless’s luck is privilege; Candless’s position owes as much to his family’s history on the clipper ships than to his hard work. It is not luck that places Nailer in the gear room with Knot; it is his loyalty to Nita and his perseverance in asking Candless and Reynolds to put him to work. By the end of the novel, Nailer recognizes luck is just the end result of resilience, perseverance, and initiative. When Pima teases him about his chances with Nina at the end of the novel, he responds that he just might get lucky; however, his statement is in jest and designed to needle Pima.
Bacigalupi returns to the idea of taking risks in the face of certain death when Nailer urges Candless and Reynolds to not surrender to the Pole Star. Unlike the captain and his lieutenant, Nailer has frequently had to gamble with his life against overwhelming odds. In the oil reservoir room, the only alternative to drowning was diving into the oil, seeking a way out of the tanker. When Nailer was planning an escape from his father, he gambled both his and Nita’s lives when they jumped the train. Even Nita gambled her and her crew’s lives by sailing into the city killer, knowing her life was forfeit if she was captured. Candless agrees with Nailer’s philosophy of taking risks, stating, “Sometimes it’s better to die trying” (292). The author’s argument that one must take risks in order to survive (or even thrive) is an important part of Nailer’s character arc and echoes Pima’s insistence on both luck and smarts. Gambling successfully requires luck, but as Nailer learns, success also requires perseverance and smart decisions.
Nailer’s father achieves nearly supernatural status in his and Nailer’s climactic fight to the death. Nailer warns Candless against underestimating his father, stating “he may look just like me […] but he’s deadly. He’ll kill you like a cockroach” (255), giving Richard an almost preternatural ability to kill. When Nailer grapples with his father on the Pole Star, Bacigalupi describes Richard as being “horrifyingly fast” and “superhuman” (305). Even when half of Richard’s body is sucked into the ship’s gears, Richard refuses to die, whispering, “I’m not done yet” (310). Once Nailer is safe on the beach, he recognizes that his father was simply “downright evil” (317).
Related Titles
By Paolo Bacigalupi
