52 pages • 1 hour read
Chris CrutcherStaying Fat For Sarah Byrnes
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1993A 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 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Back at school, Jody Mueller begins to notice Eric. Her boyfriend, the religious zealot Mark Brittian, attempts to drop out of CAT class, citing it as a blasphemous course. Jody attempts to drop out with him, but Ms. Lemry doesn’t allow her. Mark then decides to remain since his girlfriend will not be leaving with him.
In the midst of this conversation between Ms. Lemry and Mark, Eric seizes his moment and flirts with Jody, who then passes him a note asking for his phone number. Eric also has an unlikely conversation with Steve Ellerby, wherein Steve explains why his attitude towards religion is so irreverent, despite the fact that his father is a pastor. Ellerby confides in Eric that he and his parents wrestled intensely with their religious beliefs after Steve’s older brother died suddenly.Steve and his family got through their grief, and their view of faith was changed in order to accept powerlessness and the unknown.
Chapter 8 Summary
Abortion becomes a main topic in Ms. Lemry’s class. She cautions all the students to tread carefully and remain respectful, but the debates escalate quickly. Before long, Mark Brittian begins using the class as a chance to pontificate, chastising his peers for their sinful views. For one brief moment, Jody attempts to break into Mark’s monologue but he silences her with a look, one that Eric picks up on. Steve Ellerby begins arguing the other side, as do other classmates, including Eric. After class, Jody stops Eric and asks if they could find some time to speak in private. She confides to Eric that she herself had an abortion and the baby was Mark’s, but he was insistent that the entirety of the fault lie with her.
Chapter 9 Summary
When Eric goes to visit Sarah, she begins talking—just in a whisper and only to him. She hisses at him not to get her cover blown because she is hiding out. She is just trying to stay safe and avoid her father. As long as she stays silent, the hospital won’t let him take her back home. Sarah then tells Eric her terrible childhood story of being intentionally burned by her father, who used her as a way to hurt Sarah’s mother. After the incident, Sarah’s mother ran off. Sarah hoped her mother would return for her, to save her from the abusive situation, but she never did. Now, Sarah tells Eric, her father is back to drinking again. He has that same look in his eye that he did when Sarah was three and he threw her against their home’s woodstove. Sarah has no interest in leaving the hospital and makes Eric swear he will keep her secret.
Chapter 10 Summary
After swim practice, Eric is warned by his coach, Ms. Lemry, to keep his new relationship with Jody quiet. She doesn’t want bad blood in the classroom or on the team. That, however, is what Eric experiences in short order. Mark confronts Eric and after calling Eric “a block of lard,” Mark informs Eric that Jody is “a bitch…a pathological liar” (115). At home, Eric gets more grief from his mother, who asks Eric what his real motives are and wonders aloud if this is just about revenge on Mark.
Eric feels that he needs to confide in his mom about the true origins of Sarah’s scars. He is unsure how to proceed and hopes her guidance will help him figure it out. As it happens, he gets support from an unexpected source—his mom’s new boyfriend, Carter. Carter surprises Eric by defending Eric’s choice to date Jody when Eric’s mom continues to challenge it. Eric reluctantly decides that his mom’s new boyfriend may just be a keeper. Eric goes to the hospital to alert the staff to the danger that Sarah is in and is horrified to discover that Virgil Byrnes is there too. He threatens Eric, telling him to get Sarah to go home immediately and stop hiding in the hospital. Lying in bed that night, Eric is still rattled and confused as he thinks about his developing relationship with Jody.
Chapters 7-10 Analysis
The conversations about ethics in CAT class send the teens into a tailspin. For some, like Steve Ellerby, this kind of moral wrangling is nothing new, since he already intensely examined his faith when his older brother passed away suddenly. For others, though, like Jody Mueller and Mark Brittian, the questioning of right and wrong on topics like sexuality and abortion causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. For Eric, the ethical questioning relates most specifically to Sarah Byrnes, as he now suspects that she is in trouble and doesn’t know how to help if she doesn’t ask for it. His developing relationship with Jody also raises ethical questions, as others accuse him of simply seeking revenge on Mark though Eric does genuinely care for Jody. If he has good intentions, is that enough to counteract the charges that he is being mean-spirited? He isn’t sure.
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