The Rock and The River

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Chapters 12-14

Chapters 15-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

The story begins on a Saturday afternoon at the peaceful Civil Rights demonstration led by well-known activist Roland Childs. Childs’ sons, Sam and Stick, have been in attendance all day but decide to leave before their father finishes speaking. On their way out of the crowd, Sam and Stick encounter a group of white men beating protestors at the edge of the crowd. Sam freezes, but Stick intervenes and pulls one of the white men off a protestor. The white man then begins to fight Stick and hits him in the face with a broken bottle just as Sam sees the police arriving.

Sam leads Stick away from the spot where the police are headed, and when they get far enough away to rest, they realize that Stick needs to go to the hospital. When Sam and Stick arrive at the hospital, the nurse directs them to the waiting room after she realizes they had been protesting. Sam continues to explain the seriousness of Stick’s injury, and a younger nurse ignores the older nurse’s direction and takes Stick for treatment. The older nurse makes Sam stay with her and fill out paperwork. Sam leaves to go the bathroom, and his father and mother, Marjorie Childs, find him in the hallway. Father reprimands Stick for not controlling his temper at the demonstration. Despite Stick’s explanation, Mama agrees with Father and says that violence is not acceptable.

While waiting for Stick, Sam visits the hospital gift shop. He sees mittens that make him think of Maxie Brown, his crush from school. The cashier accuses Sam of stealing when he sees him reach in his pocket to count his money. After Sam shows the cashier that he has not stolen anything, the cashier calls him names and tells him to leave. Sam decides to ignore the cashier and buys the mittens for Maxie. Sam returns to his family visibly shaken, but he does not tell anyone what happened.

When Stick is released from the hospital, photographers and reporters crowd around the family, and their security team helps them to their car. Father sends Sam to his room so he can talk to Stick, and Sam plays with building blocks that he and Stick used to build a tower. When Stick returns to their room, he tells Sam that he took all the blame for leaving the demonstration early. Sam offers to tell Father that it was his idea, but Stick refuses the gesture. The boys go to bed, and Sam wakes up to Stick crying.

Chapter 2 Summary

When the boys come down for breakfast the next morning, Father shows them their picture on the front page of the newspaper. Mama tries to make conversation, but Father, Stick, and Sam remain quiet. They go to church, and the congregants bombard them with questions and comments about the protest. Sam tries to handle the “old-goat patrol” (29), but Stick is withdrawn. Later that evening, Mama receives a phone call from Coretta Scott King asking if they are OK. All the attention, and particularly that of the Kings, embarrasses the Childs family and makes them feel guilty for distracting from the movement.

Sam recalls the time Dr. King and his wife came to their house for dinner. Bucky, one of Stick’s friends, snuck in the boys’ window while Dr. King was there. Since Bucky had nowhere else to go, the boys allowed him to stay. Bucky showed Stick and Sam a copy of a Black Panther newsletter. Stick later and joked about the inappropriateness of talking about the Black Panther movement while Dr. King was in their living room. Six months passed without Stick or Bucky mentioning the Black Panther paper again.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

In the opening chapters of the novel, Sam describes his life in 1960s Chicago, with a particular emphasis on the comingling of opposing ideologies. The descriptions of violence at the peaceful Civil Rights demonstration and the Black Panther newsletter kept under the bed in the house owned by Roland Child and visited by Dr. King reveal the messiness of life for Black youths during the Civil Rights Movement. While Father demonstrates peacefully, white men interrupt with violence, and while the figurehead of peaceful demonstrations visits the Childs’ home, a group that favors forceful opposition has planted its seeds in the Child boys’ bedroom. Through these incidents, Magoon indicates that keeping violence out of the movement is futile; it is a message Magoon will revisit throughout the novel in both the plot surrounding the movement and in Sam’s character development. Magoon also foreshadows the dangers to come here, posing the Black Panther group’s influence as the proverbial loaded gun.

We see the opposing ideologies again When Sam is accused of stealing at the gift shop. Sam ponders how to react: “Father would say, pick up your money, walk out right now, don’t give this man the satisfaction of humiliating you, and take your business elsewhere. Stick would say, if you want the mittens, don’t let this racist jerk stop you from getting what you want” (15); we see in Stick and Father’s imagined reactions the opposing ideologies of the defiant Black Panthers versus the stoic peaceful protesters. Sam is caught between the conflicting influences.

Magoon also points out some of the realities Sam and his family must face in a racist world, helping the reader understand the circumstances that necessitated the Civil Rights Movement. First, Stick is initially rejected for treatment at the hospital, and second, Sam is falsely accused of stealing. Sam’s reaction to the latter incident is telling: “In the hallway, I leaned against the wall until my heart stopped racing. I tried to breathe away the tightness in my stomach, but it was stuck there, like someone’s fist” (16). By using a simile to compare the anxiety Sam feels to being hit with a fist, Magoon casts the psychological impacts caused by racism as their own type of violence.

Sam also explains the refuge he finds in the block tower he and Stick have built: “I used to build for fun, for the sheer pleasure of crafting a miniature warehouse, office, palace, stable, restaurant out of rubble […]. Lately, it was more like a way to leave the real world for someplace better” (20), Sam credits Stick with encouraging him to be patient and continue building the tower when he wanted to give up and do something else. The peace that Sam finds in adding more blocks to the tower is evident in his narration, which takes on a meditative tone: “One, at the base by the main entrance annex. Two, at eye level, completing the royal arch. Three, right at the corner by the bed, sticking off like a gargoyle. Four” (20). Magoon also intends to juxtapose this moment with later events in the book. Sam is involved in a childlike task and is escaping from the real world. By the end of the novel, he will be immersed in the dismal realities of the world and will face them without hesitation.

When Sam recounts the visit Dr. King made to his home, we meet Clarence Willis (Bucky). Placing Bucky in this scene foreshadows the central role Bucky plays in Sam’s story. In explaining that prison guards killed Bucky’s father while he was falsely imprisoned, Sam acknowledges the persistence of abuse by authorities, which sets the stage for Bucky’s trajectory.