Part 2, Chapters 20-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary: “Matchlight”
Hazel endures freezing cold and hunger as she walks toward the witch’s palace. When a white wolf appears, Hazel decides to trust the animal because all of the traditional fairy-tale rules seem reversed in the woods. The wolf leads Hazel toward a girl in tattered clothes staring into the light of a match as though entranced. The emaciated girl explains that she cannot return home until she has sold all of the matches, and she sees visions of her deceased grandmother and delectable feasts in the flames. Realizing that the girl will die unless she receives help, Hazel gives the girl her jacket, hat, mittens, an energy bar, and the whistle, which she uses to call Ben. The deeply grateful girl gives Hazel a box of matches and a piece of a mirror that she claims “shows you the way things really are” (258).
Snow begins to fall as Hazel resumes her solitary journey. After what feels like hours, she reaches an impenetrable wall of snow and falls into despair. The cold whispers to her, mocking her and ordering her to surrender: “There was a threshold and a magical woods, and you thought they might make you a hero. There was a boy, and he was your best friend. Your father left you. You left your mother. Come” (264). Hazel obeys.
Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary: “Jack, Prince of Eternity”
The narrative moves to Jack. His old life seems like a distant dream to him, and he longs to please the witch. She seems amused with him, but he still fears that she will send him away if he disappoints her. One day, she brings him a pile of ice shards and tells him that they are puzzle pieces. The witch promises to give him his heart’s desire if he spells the right word with the pieces. He senses that the word is “Eternity” and earnestly strives to solve the puzzle.
Part 2, Chapter 22 Summary: “The Snow Queen”
The narrative returns to Hazel. She feels emotionally empty as she pushes forward through the snow and darkness. She tells herself that she feels nothing, and the buffeting snow and wind immediately cease. The witch’s palace appears, “a small square with a dome framed by four minarets” (273). The structure reminds Hazel of the fortress that Jack drew, although it is somewhat more imposing and elegant. Hazel doesn’t have any hope that she can defeat the witch, but she knocks on the palace’s door. When the witch answers, the girl is filled with dread and awe as if she’s looking at a blizzard that could destroy her. The witch was expecting Hazel and leads her to a beautiful parlor. At first, Hazel behaves meekly toward the witch, but then she remembers that she took Jack. When Hazel says that she’s here to rescue him, the witch comments, “That’s very interesting. No one’s ever done that before” (278). The witch encourages her to stay by saying that Hazel can’t survive without Jack and that Jack will change and grow apart from her even if she convinces him to leave. The white witch declares that she wants nothing, so she will allow the children to leave as long as they do so of their own choosing. Hazel realizes that her true battle will be convincing Jack to come home.
Part 2, Chapter 23 Summary: “Puzzles”
The narrative moves to Jack. He struggles to complete the puzzle made of ice shards, fearing that the witch will be disappointed and stop visiting him unless he solves it. Jack is seated on a lake covered in floating pieces of ice, and a girl makes the slow and difficult trek toward him. When she reaches him, she looks at him “like he [holds] her life in his hands” (285). Something about her seems familiar, but he doesn’t remember who she is or understand why she is shedding tears for him, because he feels utterly worthless.
Part 2, Chapter 24 Summary: “Object Memory”
The narrative returns to Hazel’s perspective. She tells Jack who they are and says that they must go home, but the frozen boy doesn’t remember her. Hazel tries to show Jack his reflection in the mirror shard that the match girl gave her, but the enchanted mirror makes the situation worse by showing an even more frigid and unreachable Jack. Next, she lights a match and tells Jack that she can see memories they’ve made together in its flame. She recounts a time when they sculpted clay figures and had make-believe battles with dragons and dinosaurs. Jack begins to feel the cold. Hazel gives him the Joe Mauer baseball and tells him the story of how he caught the ball at a Twins game and then gave it to her after her father left. As Jack holds the baseball, his memories of Hazel begin to return.
Part 2, Chapter 25 Summary: “Hazel and the Woods”
The more that Jack remembers, the more vulnerable to the cold he becomes. Hazel holds him close and shares her body heat with him. The ice floes on the lake begin to melt, and she guides the boy toward the woods. Suddenly, the white witch appears at the edge of the lake, and Jack feels drawn to her. Jack falls into the freezing water, and Hazel manages to haul him out, but he loses the baseball. Hazel hears the witch’s voice in her mind, “Do you see, now, there are things worse than the ice. Do you see what happens when it melts? Do you see what you did?” (301).
Doing her best to ignore the witch, Hazel guides Jack across the lake and into the woods. Gradually, the wintry chill gives way to sunshine and spring. The boy seems utterly exhausted as they follow the path, and she wonders what he’s thinking and feeling. Eventually, the children reach the clearing with the grandfather clock and the ravens. Hazel moves the clock’s arms to indicate 7 o’clock. When they reach the edge of the woods, Jack voices his uncertainty about going home to his mother. Hazel doesn’t know what the future will hold, but she knows that anything will be better than the woods.
Together, the children exit the woods. They emerge in the trees near the sledding hill. Tyler and his mother give them a ride home, and Hazel sees that it is 7:10 pm. Tyler is astonished that Hazel succeeded in rescuing Jack and invites her to play with the boys at recess. Jack’s mother is waiting for him when he returns home. Before going inside, he tells Hazel, “Thanks for coming to get me” (310). An exhausted Hazel goes home, and feels disappointed to realize that her mother is at night class. She drags herself to her room where her mother’s left a present beside her bed. Hazel tears up when she sees the ballet slippers inside. As Hazel drifts off to sleep, she resolves to watch out for Jack even if things don’t go back to normal. She plans to tell Adelaide and Uncle Martin all about her experiences in the woods. Even though they probably won’t believe her, she knows that her adventures make for a good story.
Part 2, Chapters 20-25 Analysis
In the novel’s final section, Ursu uses fairy tale allusions to contextualize her decision not to give the novel a conventional happy ending. In Chapter 20, “Matchlight,” Hazel encounters the protagonist of “The Little Match Girl,” a fairy tale about a young, impoverished match seller who freezes to death. Like “The Snow Queen,” this story was written by Hans Christian Andersen in the mid-19th century. The inclusion of the little match girl’s pitiful plight and the visions that offer “deluded comfort” to her “dying mind” contribute to the bleak tone that pervades these chapters (255). At the same time, Hazel’s efforts to save the match girl’s life suggest that acts of selflessness and compassion are still important in the face of tragedy.
Ultimately, Hazel chooses to embrace reality and rejects the temptation of living in a fantasy world, underscoring the novel’s thematic engagement with The Intersection of Reality and Fantasy in Shaping Personal Identity. The witch tries to convince the protagonist to stay with her by claiming that Hazel “can’t survive out there […] in the storm or in the real world” (280). However, Hazel defies the witch and urges Jack to come home with her because she now understands that whatever problems they may face after they leave the woods, “it’s worse in here” (306). Hazel’s refusal to make empty promises to Jack underscores her awareness that they will face struggles and challenges if they return to their old lives, making her commitment to returning to reality all the more indicative of her growth and maturity. While Hazel may have once gladly retreated into a magical world, her experiences over the course of the novel have given her a new awareness of and appreciation for reality.
The author develops The Impact of Divorce and Depression on Children by depicting how parents’ physical and emotional absence has a serious impact on their children’s mental well-being. In Chapter 20, the cold leverages Hazel’s parents’ divorce to make the girl feel worthless, whispering: “Your father left you” (264). These words cause her to fall into despair, leaving her dangerously vulnerable to the white witch. Similarly, Jack’s desire to please the witch advances the theme. He doesn’t want to return to the real world, because that means facing his mother’s mental illness, and he hopes that the witch will be “like a mother to him” (265), because his own mother’s depression leaves him aching for uncomplicated maternal love. The novel’s resolution leaves some questions unanswered, such as how Jack and Hazel navigate their parents’ depression and divorce after they leave the woods. However, Jack’s mother is waiting for him when he returns home, which provides a hopeful sign that she’s beginning to heal. Another positive sign is the ballet shoes that Hazel’s mother gifts Hazel upon her return from the woods, which represent “a promise” that the divorce won’t always stifle Hazel’s joy or prevent her from pursuing her interests (311). Ursu doesn’t give her characters a traditional “happily ever after.” Divorce and depression still impact the children’s lives, but Hazel’s story encourages readers to appreciate who and what they have, embracing their own inner strength to face life’s challenges.
Hazel’s newfound willingness to accept The Evolution of Childhood Friendships illustrates her growth and adds an element of hope to the novel’s open-ended resolution. The witch tries to use the inevitability of change to make Hazel abandon her mission to rescue Jack, saying, “[S]omeday he will be a man, and you will not even know him, and he will only think of you with a passing smile” (282). However, Hazel reaches the mature realization that she wants Jack to have a life even if he doesn’t want to share it with her anymore. This new understanding represents progress from the start of the novel when she sought to convince herself that her friendship with Jack would never change. In addition, Hazel’s stance on friendship shifts when she becomes willing to befriend Tyler and the other boys. Tyler’s newfound respect for the protagonist offers the reader hope for positive changes in his behavior and Hazel’s experiences at school. At the very end of the novel, Hazel intends to “call Adelaide and make plans to go over there” (312), indicating that she no longer feels guilty for having friends besides Jack. The changes Hazel experiences over the course of her coming-of-age story teach her that it’s natural for friendships to evolve, and she applies this lesson by remaining steadfast to her best friend despite the changes he’s undergone and allowing herself to forge new friendships.
The baseball that symbolizes Jack’s heart plays a vital role in the climax. Jack gives Hazel the gift of his prized ball before the story begins—positioning it as a symbol of the love between them, which allows Hazel to restores his memories when she gives him back the baseball in the white witch’s world. After the boy begins to return to himself, the baseball is “consumed by the black waters” of the witch’s lake, suggesting that Jack will never be quite the same as he was before the witch found him and underscoring the bittersweet transition from childhood to adulthood that defines a coming-of-age arc.
Ursu adds nuance to the cold’s meaning as a symbol of desensitization in Chapter 20 to develop the novel’s setting and characters. Hazel uses the woods’ frigid temperatures to distract herself from the overwhelming sorrow she feels when she thinks about the match girl’s circumstances: “This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit” (259). The narrator argues that emotional numbness plays a necessary role in helping people compartmentalize painful experiences and navigate life, but this desensitization has to be kept in check. When Hazel loses this balance, she falls into despair. The witch’s palace appears when Hazel thinks, “I feel nothing” (271), as though she had to be completely numb and empty to understand Jack and find him, underscoring the importance of empathy in Hazel’s journey toward maturity. For Hazel to rescue Jack from the witch, Jack must forfeit the cold’s protective numbness, leaving him vulnerable to pain again. Ursu’s novel argues that developing a degree of desensitization is part of maturation and can be an effective coping mechanism, but the author warns her audience that people cannot truly live if they cut themselves off entirely from their emotions.
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