78 pages • 2 hours read
Kristin HannahThe Nightingale
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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 24-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
By October 1942, the Nazis are cracking down on Paris: “Since the Allied successes in North Africa had begun, the Germans stopped people constantly, demanding papers. In the streets, the shops, the train stations, the churches. There was no safety anywhere” (353). Anouk instructs Isabelle to attend a meeting in Carriveau, telling her Gaëtan will be there as well. When Isabelle arrives at Henri’s hotel (which serves as a safe house on the Nightingale escape route), she provides Henri with money from the British government. Isabelle brushes his concerns about possible infiltration aside and asks about her sister; Henri awkwardly admits that there’s “gossip […] [a]bout her and the Nazi” (358).
Vianne has kept Ari at home all summer. Meanwhile, she and Beck try to maintain their distance from one another:
He spoke openly of his wife and children, and she talked about Antoine. All their words were designed to reinforce a wall that had already been breached. He repeatedly offered—most kindly—to mail Vianne’s care packages to Antoine (359).
One evening, he brings her a set of false papers claiming that Ari is an orphaned relative of Antoine’s. Later that night, Vianne tells Ari that his mother is gone forever and drills him on his new name, hoping he “was young enough to forget he was ever Ari” (362).
Chapter 25 Summary
When Beck arrives home that evening, Vianne is visibly nervous, and he insists on searching the house and barn. After pleading unsuccessfully with him, Vianne strikes Beck over the head with a shovel as he opens the trapdoor. Simultaneously, two shots ring out and Beck collapses, shot in the chest; he dies as Vianne whispers that she is sorry. Isabelle climbs out of the cellar, and Vianne is scolding her when Henri and Gaëtan return with a coffin. Isabelle asks them to help get rid of the bodies and urges Vianne to leave before the authorities can question her. Vianne refuses and is about to scold her sister again when she realizes that Isabelle has also been shot.
Isabelle collapses, and Vianne, already regretting her previous harshness, stitches up the wound. When Gaëtan says he plans to take Isabelle to the safe house in Brantôme, Vianne objects. Henri convinces her that it would be too risky to keep Isabelle at Le Jardin; instead, they will use the coffin they brought for the pilot to sneak Isabelle into the Free Zone.
Chapter 26 Summary: “May 6, 1995, The Oregon Coast”
The elderly woman feels “haunted” by the letter from Paris, which invites her to join “families and friends of passeurs […] to honor the extraordinary ‘Nightingale,’ also known as Juliette Gervaise” (383-84). The day before the reunion, she receives a call asking if she will attend. She responds that it “is not [her] people want to see. It’s Juliette. And she hasn’t existed for a long time” (384), but she finds herself unable to stop thinking about her life in France. Impulsively, she books a plane ticket, packs, and leaves a voicemail for her son explaining where she is going.
Chapter 27 Summary: “October 1942, France”
Vianne rides with Gaëtan to the border checkpoint. He intends to pass Isabelle off as a deceased sister but vows to kill or die for her if they are caught. Before leaving, Vianne tells him that Isabelle “has a steel exterior, but it protects a candyfloss heart” (387). Gaëtan replies that he loves Isabelle but he hopes she does not know; he also asks Vianne to provide her sister “a place to come home to when all this is over” (388).
Later, in her delirious state, Isabelle feels Gaëtan kiss her. She does not believe he is really there and stops herself from asking him to stay regardless: “She was so tired of begging people to love her” (390).
Back in Carriveau, Vianne waits for the authorities to come looking for Beck and instructs Sophie to take Ari to Mother Marie-Therese if she is arrested. When two SS officers arrive to search the house, she claims not to know where Beck is, but they bring her to the town hall for questioning, placing her in a “small, windowless room with stone walls” (393). An SS officer who smells of “sausage and cigarettes” (393) enters, taking obvious pleasure in patting Vianne down for weapons. Introducing himself as Von Richter, he questions Vianne on Beck’s whereabouts, and she claims that Beck went to look for the pilot and never returned. Von Richter accepts this explanation, then announces that he will billet with Vianne from now on.
As Vianne leaves the town hall, she sees policemen forcing the local butcher’s wife and her son onto a train. Vianne objects because the boy was born in France, but the police say they have instructions to deport him regardless.
Back at home, Vianne tells Sophie about the deportations and that Von Richter will be staying with them, warning her to be especially careful from now on: “We can never make a mistake or they’ll take [Ari]—and us—away. You understand?” (398). Von Richter arrives, demanding to be shown around so he can choose the room he wants.
Chapter 28 Summary
When Isabelle wakes up, she remembers little after shooting Beck except Vianne’s words: “You are not welcome here. If you return, I’ll turn you in myself” (401). Gaëtan tells her she has been asleep for four days and that the bodies have been buried and the barn cleaned. When Isabelle wishes aloud that her relationship with Vianne were less difficult, Gaëtan tells her Vianne “said something very similar” (402) while they were traveling to the border. Isabelle then says that being with Gaëtan “feels like old times” and tries once again to persuade him to admit his feelings: “If we weren’t here—hiding in a safe house—if the world weren’t ripping itself apart, if this was just an ordinary day in an ordinary world, would you want there to be an us, Gaëtan?” (404). He denies that this matters, but they fall asleep lying together.
Meanwhile, Vianne struggles with guilty and fearful nightmares. Von Richter is an oppressive presence in the house, treating her like a servant and flaunting the luxuries (e.g., coffee) his position affords him.
Back at the safe house, Isabelle approaches Gaëtan after a bath, dropping her towel so that she stands naked in front of him: “‘If times were different, I’d make you chase me,’ she said, taking a step forward. ‘I would have made you jump through hoops to get me naked. But we don’t have time, do we?’” (409). Gaëtan kisses her, warning her she’ll “be sorry [she] did this” and saying that he himself “already is” (410).
Chapters 24-28 Analysis
The tension between Vianne and Isabelle finally comes to a head, as Isabelle’s “reckless, selfish” (372) actions cause Vianne to snap. The reality is, of course, more complicated. Isabelle has no way of knowing that Vianne is hiding a Jewish child and therefore cannot understand the magnitude of the danger she placed her sister in. Nevertheless, Isabelle does put Vianne in a situation that ultimately “force[s] [her] to kill a decent man” (379). Vianne remains forever haunted by her participation in Beck’s death—not because she regrets choosing Isabelle’s life over his (in fact, she explicitly says that she does not) but because of the act itself and what it reveals about her. Though Vianne believes Beck’s death was ultimately Isabelle’s fault, the knowledge that she herself proved capable of killing him is a burden in and of itself: “It seemed that every time she thought she’d hit rock bottom in this war, something worse came along. Now she was a murderess and it was Isabelle’s fault” (379).
Of course, Isabelle’s injury changes Vianne’s attitude immediately. As she says to Gaëtan, “I don’t know why it’s so easy for me to forget how much I love her. We start fighting, and…” (388). Gaëtan suggests that this is simply what sibling relationships are like, but the truth is that all forms of love are complicated in The Nightingale. This is nowhere clearer than in Isabelle’s relationship with Gaëtan, which the latter continues to insist is a bad idea even as he finally gives in to her advances. What Isabelle sees as all the more reason to love one another—the fact that “[e]ither one of [them] could die tomorrow”—is to Gaëtan an argument for maintaining as much distance between them as possible.
The novel ultimately shows that love is worth the associated vulnerability, in part because it spurs people to become better versions of themselves. The most dramatic example occurs in a later chapter, when Isabelle’s father sacrifices his life for hers, but Hannah regularly depicts love as a motivational tool. It is out of love for her family that Vianne kills Beck, and on Isabelle’s first excursion across the Pyrenees, she persuades a collapsed man to keep moving by reminding him of his girlfriend back in Canada.
Finally, these chapters introduce readers to Von Richter—a character who looms large over the rest of The Nightingale. In many ways, Von Richter’s presence is a foil to Beck’s. Where Beck was a basically decent man who enlisted to serve his country and found himself increasingly repelled by his duties, Von Richter uses his position in the SS to satisfy his craving for cruelty and violence. As Vianne puts it, “He [is] a man who had stumbled into a little bit of power and seized it with both hands” (406). The contrast extends to each man’s relationship with Vianne: the mutual (if illicit) attraction Vianne and Beck felt for one another gives way to Von Richter’s sexual violence, making it clear that the only thing that ever protected Vianne beforehand was Beck’s personal sense of morality.
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