47 pages • 1 hour read
S.A. BodeenThe Raft
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A 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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The story begins with Robie’s trip to visit her aunt in Honolulu. She has been to her aunt’s home several times before and enjoys these sojourns as a break from the monotony of her life on Midway, a very small island at the western end of the Hawaiian archipelago.
In the first scene of the book, Robie is at a tattoo and piercings parlor, getting a nose ring. While at the parlor, she reveals to the reader that she lives on Midway, and also reveals her ambivalence about that life. While she admits that she is lucky to enjoy the extraordinary proximity to nature, she also gripes about the isolation of island life, and the small annoyances that Midway residents have to put up with, including limited grocery supplies and intermittent Wi-Fi. For Robie, the trip to Honolulu to stay with her Aunt AJ is a special treat. She indulges in Netflix and Starbucks, and long afternoons at the pool with her aunt, who is portrayed as a laidback authority figure with relatively lax expectations.
Chapter 1 depicts some highlights of Robie’s trip, portraying not only her nose piercing but also the afternoon she gets a henna tattoo. She is engaged in mild experimentation with freedom from the authority of her parents.
The chapter ends with a scene featuring a conversation between AJ and Robie that sets the adventure in motion. AJ suddenly has to fly to California for work, and she apologizes to Robie for cutting her trip short by a week. Robie pushes back, begging to stay in AJ’s apartment and citing the security of the building. AJ relents, allowing Robie to stay while she’s gone, provided that they do not tell her parents, and that AJ’s friend Bobbi can check in with Robie every day. Robie agrees to this at the time, but when Bobbi calls on the first day of AJ’s absence, apologizing for her inability to check in due to a sudden injury, Robie is thrilled. She does not tell AJ that Bobbi is not checking in with her. She wants to be freeand to enjoy herself.
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 depicts Robie’s life as an unsupervised teenager in Honolulu. She enjoys trips to Starbucks and afternoons at the pool, reveling in her freedom.
The chapter suddenly takes a turn when Robie goes out for dinner. She goes to McDonald’s, and on the way there, she reflects: “My heart pounded a little as I crossed the avenue. I’d never realized that I did everything in Honolulu with someone, either AJ or my parents. Come to thinkof it, everything I did, I did with someone. Even on Midway, when I was alone, people were never very far away” (10). She feels vulnerable, and only moments later, she is attacked by an apparently homeless man on the street, when he mistakes her for someone named Lucy, and grabs her by the hair. Robie escapes the manand runs all the way back to AJ’s apartment.
Chapter 3 Summary
After the sidewalk attack, Robie is determined to get home. She has missed the weekly commercial jet flight to Midwaybut discovers that she can still catch a ride the next day with the cargo plane that brings groceries to the island. She tries to call her parents, to tell them about her plan to return home early, but the phones on Midway are down, so she cannot reach them. She decides not to reach out to AJ, figuring she can just try to call her parents again in the morning.
She spends a long night awake, too scared to even turn off the bedside lamp. She watches the numbers on the digital clock creep towards morning. She is frightened, but finally, as the sun is rising, she falls asleep from sheer exhaustion.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters introduce the reader to the protagonist (Robie) and set the scene for her adventure. Through the character development in the first scene at the tattoo parlor, Bodeen characterizes Robie as someone brave but not fearless. Robie seeks out the experience of getting her nose pierced all on her own, but she needs to be coached through the pain of the actual piercing. Bodeen builds on this notion of brave-but-not-fearless through the following chapters. Robie is brave enough to ask her aunt to leave her in Honolulu alone, but she feels vulnerable as she goes out for food unaccompanied. She is brave enough to extract herself from the clutches of the man who attacks her, but she then spends the night wide awake, terrified to be alone, and determined to get home.
The first chapters also set in motion the main conflict of the story by making Robie scared enough to want to get off the island immediately, before she can even confirm that any adults know of her intentions to fly home to Midway.
