51 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer L. HolmThe Lion of Mars
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Rules”
Vera, Flossy, Trey, and Bell steal a rover and leave the settlement to go find the supposed alien ship. The older children seem excited, but Bell is anxious. The group eventually approaches the French settlement, where two people in environmental suits approach their rover, looking angry and carrying what looks like weapons. The teenagers scramble to drive away but, as they start to argue about returning to the base, Vera drives the rover over the edge of a crater. Bell’s shoulder is broken in the accident, but Vera tells them they have no way of communicating with the adults back at the base.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Bad Boring”
The children are worried, but they decide to stay where they are because the rover is broken and they do not have enough air in their environmental suits to walk back to the settlement. Vera has reset the clocks back at the base so the adults will take longer to notice the children’s absence. They wait anxiously and bicker about the best course of action. Eventually, the adults track them and come to their rescue.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Left Behind”
While driving back to the settlement, Sai tells Bell that Lissa died in a rover accident to warn him against the dangers of going out to explore without adults. Later, in the medical bay, Meems informs Bell that Bell’s clavicle is broken and he has a concussion.
When Phinneus comes to check on Bell, the young boy asks him about Lissa. Phinneus tells him that the United States, France, Finland, Russia, and China originally collaborated to build the underground railway between their respective Mars settlements. However, cooperation stopped when three settlers—a French person, a Russian, and Lissa—had a rover accident, and the French and Russian settlers left Lissa behind to die. Later, Bell has a nightmare where he imagines himself being left behind in the rover by his friends. He wakes up to tell Albie about Lissa’s fate.
After Chapter 7, a Secure Communication transcript sent by Sai to Earth states that they only have one working rover left due to the accident.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Animals”
While Bell is convalescing, he laments that everyone but Trey has visited him. One day, Phinneus brings him a book called Animals of the World, because Bell enjoys learning about them. Trey eventually visits Bell because he is on laundry duty. He is upset that the older kids got punished with extra chores while Bell got to rest because of his injury, and Bell is hurt that Trey seems to blame him.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Emergency”
Sai decides to run safety drills to make sure everyone is up-to-date on emergency procedures, which Bell and the others find rather annoying. The morning after a nightly drill, Bell is assigned to dust duty, such as cleaning the vents in the settlement. He runs into Eliana and Darby, who are fixing an air scrubber, and Eliana insists that Darby is using the wrong part. Bell meets Phinneus, who offers him his wife’s old recipe box that includes a carrot cake recipe. Phinneus confides that, after his deceased wife Rose, Bell is the best thing that has happened to him.
Bell gets to the train tunnel, where he notices two glowing eyes that he is afraid may be an alien’s. An emergency alarm starts sounding, and Bell runs up to meet Trey, Vera, Flossy, Meems, and Phinneus at the door of the generator room. They assume that Sai is running another drill before noticing that the door is locked. Meems checks the controls and learns that there is a carbon monoxide leak in the generator room.
Albie, who has just arrived, breaks the door open to retrieve the unconscious Darby, Eliana, and Sai. Meems gives them oxygen and they wake up unharmed, with Eliana pointing out to Darby that he was indeed using the wrong part to fix the air scrubber.
After Chapter 9, a Secure Communication transcript sent by Sai to Earth states that he has received their communication about the supply ship’s time of arrival.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
In these chapters, major plot points and themes are developed. The children’s rover outing is the first time that characters are depicted going beyond the settlement borders. Bell’s anxiety about breaking the rules and meeting people from the other settlements plays into the theme of The Driving Power of Fear.
Bell’s fear is irrational and leads him to make incorrect assumptions, which once again draws on the novel’s exploration of prejudice and red herrings. The children get scared when they see French people carrying “something long and metal with a curved end [...] like a weapon” (45). However, the supposed weapons are revealed to be only golf clubs in Chapter 23. At this point in the story, Bell feels threatened and powerless; he can only wait for rescue when the rover gets stranded. However, this incident is later paralleled by a scene where he gets stuck in the train tunnel. This time, however, he is able to face his fears and seek help on his own, illustrating his character growth over the course of the story.
More information about Lissa is introduced. Details about that incident are sparsely given out by different characters throughout the book, leading Bell—as well as the reader—to piece it all together. Overall, this creates suspense and characterizes Bell as something of a detective, highlighting his cleverness and observation skills on top of his empathy.
In addition to the cautionary tale of Lissa’s death, Sai’s insistence on doing drill exercises reinforces The Dangers of Isolation. The incident in the generator room further illustrates the dire consequences such an emergency could have on the settlement. This real danger contrasts significantly with Bell’s previous fears of aliens and French people, which are irrational and fantasized. It also reinforces The Importance of Community and community as a means of survival and foreshadows the US settlers’ need for help from the other countries. Finally, the lions symbol is set up when Phinneus gives Bell the Animals of Earth book, prompting Bell to compare the settlers to a pride of lions.
Related Titles
By Jennifer L. Holm
