Summer of the Monkeys — Chapter 15

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 15 as a four-movement structure: (1) the soaked and fruitless search in the bottoms, (2) the discovery of the monkeys huddled under the washout and the rescue of the sickest, (3) Jimbo's recognition-embrace and the procession home, and (4) the scene in the yard with Mama's tea kettle and Daisy's cradling of Jimbo. Track where Papa's earlier theological claims from Chapter 14 — that help comes when you've done all you can — are dramatized into event.

Discussion Questions

1. Papa tells Jay Berry at the chapter's end, 'I think that storm had more to do with your catching them than anything else. These monkeys are tame. They've lived in cages all their lives. They've never been out in a storm like that.' Rawls has carefully constructed the preceding narrative so the storm is neither supernatural agent nor naturalistic accident but something occupying a middle register. What is the metaphysical category the novel is inviting us to recognize — and does the chapter confirm or complicate the prayer-answered theology Papa articulated in Chapter 14?
2. The chapter's emotional pivot is Jimbo's approach: 'He shuffled over to me, caught hold of my overalls, climbed up into my arms, and laid his head on my shoulder.' Why does Rawls stage this moment AFTER Jay Berry has rubbed the sick little monkey back to life — and what does the ordering tell us about how moral trust is won in this novel's ethical universe?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide