44 pages • 1 hour read
J. Ryan StradalKitchens of the Great Midwest
J. Ryan StradalFiction | 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 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Golden Bantam”
Octavia Kincade is a conceited local girl who hosts weekly dinner parties. She berates Eva Thorvald for supposedly ruining her Sunday night dinner party. Octavia, who values being the most attractive person in the room, insults Eva behind her back, calling her fat, ugly, and poor. It’s revealed that Eva now works as a sous-chef at Bar Garrotxa, a tapas restaurant, under chef Mitch Diego. The Steamboat Inn is now closed.
During a dinner party, Octavia presents a summer heirloom tomato casserole, leading to a disagreement with Eva about the tomato variety. Eva impresses everyone with a Caesar salad, catching the attention of a man called Robbe, whom Octavia admires for his wealth. Robbe kisses Eva, intensifying Octavia’s resentment. After losing her job and financial support from her father due to failing a drug test, Octavia’s animosity toward Eva deepens. She views Eva as arrogant and disruptive. At another dinner party, Octavia and Eva both prepare sweet corn succotash, but Eva’s, made with heirloom golden bantam corn, proves superior. To spare Octavia embarrassment, Eva graciously accepts credit for the inferior dish with red peppers instead.
Robbe and Eva plan to move to Bali and organize a party to raise money to cover her father’s medical expenses in her absence. However, Eva’s financial struggles prevent her from going to Bali, and Robbe steals a proportion of the donation. In the aftermath, Eva begins her own successful dinner party business and asks Octavia to be a part of it. However, since Octavia is still resentful of Eva, she declines. Several years later, Octavia encounters Eva in a supermarket, where the business has become highly successful, earning hundreds of thousands annually. Frustrated with Mitch Diego for ignoring her, Octavia confronts him at his house, revealing her role as his mistress. The police are called and she is arrested for trying to break into his house.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Venison”
Jordy Snelling is a man with an intense hatred for deer, which he likens to vermin or cockroaches. He shares the tragic story of his best friend Matt Dubcek, who was decapitated in a motorcycle accident involving a deer. Jordy, dealing with the emotional turmoil of his mother’s incurable cancer and imminent death, has an addiction to alcohol and violent tendencies. Despite his rough exterior, Jordy is drawn to Mandy, his mother’s nurse. To please his ailing mother, Jordy makes margaritas, resulting in a disastrous blender mishap that splashes everyone in the room. Surprisingly, his mother loves the margarita, saying it is the best she has ever had.
After a night of drinking and partying, Jordy wakes up with blood on his fists and a terrible headache. He forgot that he was supposed to accompany his dad to the hunting grounds that weekend to gather food for a dinner party for his mother and their friends. To dull the pain of his mother’s impending death, Jordy relies on whisky. After two days of hunting deer in the woods, Jordy accidentally shoots a doe who has a fawn. Despite trying to scare it away, the fawn remains by its dead mother’s side. Moments later, Jordy receives a call from his brother, Adam, informing him of their mother’s death, triggering a fit of rage and despair in Jordy. After returning home, they cremate Jordy’s mother, and he turns to daily oxycodone use to cope. Jordy’s father suggests sharing the venison with Eva, now Adam’s girlfriend. Eva, kind and supportive, comforts Jordy with a hug and pays him $100 for the venison. The chapter ends with Jordy contemplating how to obtain more pills to numb his emotional pain.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Octavia Kincade, a self-centered and egotistical seductress who perceives herself as superior to Eva and all other women, is introduced as an antagonist in this section. Octavia thrives on competing for male attention and culinary knowledge, always striving to be the most attractive woman in any room and demanding to be the center of attention. Her hatred for Eva provides indirect characterization for Octavia rather than direct characterization for Eva. For example, calling Eva fat, ugly, and poor does not characterize Eva as these things but highlights Octavia’s own bad nature. She harbors jealousy toward Eva, whom she sees as disrupting her world. Even when Eva, in a selfless gesture, attributes Octavia’s less tasty succotash to herself to spare Octavia’s feelings, Octavia’s dislike for Eva persists.
Despite Octavia’s efforts, Eva effortlessly outshines her, whether it’s in dating her love interest Robbe—who, despite sharing the same social class, is uninterested in Octavia—or humbling her with her extensive knowledge of heirloom tomatoes, correcting Octavia’s misconceptions. Stradal’s construction of Eva in relation to Octavia suggests that social class or wealth should not be a limiting factor for someone’s ambition, despite social mobility being a challenge in the Midwest. This episode therefore showcases an example of Resilience and Overcoming Adversity. Conversely, years later, Octavia encounters Eva in a supermarket parking lot, only to discover that Eva has become wealthy with her dinner party concept. Ironically, Octavia is invited to join but declines, a decision that haunts her as she lives on the verge of poverty. Stradal therefore also highlights the limited opportunities in this region, even for people in a higher socio-economic bracket.
Stradal further highlights the region’s challenges through Jordy Snelling’s tumultuous life with addictions to drugs and alcohol, caring for his terminally ill mother. Confronting the harsh reality of her impending death, Jordy copes through destructive behaviors, engaging in alcohol-fueled binges that often result in physical altercations and injuries. Desperate to numb his pain, he finds solace in the temporary reprieve provided by intoxication: “He took a long shot of whisky from the flask in his pocket, and his head slowly lifted, for the first time in a long-ass time, into a place where he didn’t hurt anymore” (224). He sells venison to Eva and uses the money to fuel his addiction further, particularly in purchasing more oxycodone pills. The chapter concludes, suggesting that Jordy is spiraling deeper into the clutches of his addiction. This sheds light on the rising problem of drug addiction in this region.
The novel’s motif of mothers is particularly significant in Chapter 6. Attempting to host a significant dinner party for his mother, Jordy goes hunting to procure venison. In a tragic turn, he accidentally shoots and kills a mother deer in the presence of her fawn. This incident foreshadows the devastating news that Jordy receives later: the death of his own mother. He responds violently to this trauma. This incident highlights the intensity of maternal relationships. The fawn is more literally dependent on its mother for survival, reflecting Jordy’s pain when he also must live without his mother.
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