66 pages • 2 hours read
Rob HarrellWink
Rob HarrellFiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A 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 33-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary: “Smears You Can’t Wipe Away”
On the Tuesday before the talent show, Ross wakes to find the vision in his right eye distorted. According to Dr. Throckton, this is the normal progression for a patient’s loss of sight. Ross struggles to absorb the reality of being blind in one eye.
Later that day, Ross and Abby are eating lunch, when Jimmy unexpectedly joins them. Ross immediately checks his classmates’ reactions. Sarah and Denise are looking in his direction, and he tenses, knowing he’s now publicly associated with Jimmy. As Abby, Ross, and Jimmy talk, Ross hears people’s phones dinging. Jimmy, looking at Ross with apparent compassion, announces he knows who makes the memes. Abby’s phone receives a message—a new meme showing a cartoon of a blind person with a walking stick about to step into an open grave. The face comes from a photograph of Ross, with a hat and dark sunglasses drawn on. Ross realizes he has only told two people about losing his vision: Abby and Sarah.
Ross confronts Sarah, with Abby and Jimmy close behind him. Sarah feigns ignorance, but Jimmy loudly explains that he heard Sarah talk about making the memes. Sarah denies she made all of them. Sarah’s appearance seems to alter, and Ross claims it “has nothing to do with [his] screwed-up eye” (257). Jimmy and Abby shame Sarah, and Sarah attacks Abby and Ross’s friendship with Jimmy. Sarah, who’s afraid of official consequences, tells Ross she’s sorry, but Isaac unexpectedly scolds Sarah and Denise. He and his new friend, Chris Stemmle, approach Ross to check if he’s alright. Ross nods, too numb to register this is the first time Isaac has spoken to him in weeks. Abby tosses a tater tot at Sarah’s head as she and Jimmy follow Ross out of the cafeteria. Ross sketches the airborne tot. Abby and Jimmy try to comfort Ross, but they don’t succeed. All of them agree to stay in the talent show and win it; it will be their revenge against Sarah.
In “Batpig vs The Crush” (263), Batpig has a crush on Batpigwoman, not knowing that she is really Batwolfwoman in disguise: “Poor Batpig has been duped! He’s blinded by her charms” (263). Batpig gradually comes to see who his crush really is. When he defeats her, she says, “My badness is exposed! There were signs if you look back!” (263).
Chapter 34 Summary: “Madsad”
Ross’s anger grows throughout the day. Isaac texts Ross to check on him, but Ross is too mad at Isaac’s months-long silence to respond. By the time Ross arrives at the radiation center, he has reached his limit. When Frank enters the lobby to collect him, he releases a long, wordless scream. Still needing to expel his painful feelings, he asks Frank to play angry music during his treatment. Ross draws Frank’s choice, a CD bearing the title “Headbanger Mix!!” He also draws what the red X looks like from his right eye, smeared and wobbly.
Ross feels a wide range of emotions, but anger is the culmination of every feeling and thought: “I want to light the world on fire and watch it burn” (267).
Chapter 35 Summary: “Playing With Angry”
Ross goes to his basement to play guitar and sing aggressively enough to release his anger. His father enters and guesses Ross’s playing is meant to be therapeutic. After he compliments Ross’s progress with the guitar, he asks if Ross is okay. Ross is sick of that question. His father tells him that he visualizes the loss of Ross’s mother as a 300-pound boulder he must carry. Ross draws his vision of the boulder, which has two small, eye-like circles on it. His father claims people have boulders of varying sizes; his own practically crushed him after his wife’s death. Then he met Linda and shared his pain with her. She helped him carry his boulder. Ross’s father wants him to share his burden; even yelling his pain will help him bear the weight, he says. Ross reminds his father that he was yelling minutes ago, and his father encourages Ross to continue expressing himself. Ross plays guitar some more after his father leaves and then watches YouTube videos of punk bands: “I fall asleep to visions of mohawks and smashed keyboards and thrash-dancing” (273).
In “Batpig vs The Anger” (274), Batpig is very mad; he suspects a supervillain but then realizes he’s legitimately angry. He flies fast to release the anger, but he ends up angry and fatigued instead. Batpig goes home and exclaims, “Fine! I’ll just sit here and violently sulk and fume and watch sitcoms and stuff” (274).
Chapter 36 Summary: “Course Correction”
Ross’s anger inspires a new plan for the talent show. At school, he rejects Sarah’s effort to talk with him. Later, he hears the principal call Sarah to his office; he’s glad she’ll face consequences for her cruelty.
Ross tells Abby and Jimmy his idea for the show without revealing the idea to readers. Abby and Jimmy agree to the change, as do Frank and Denny later that day. Lisa is reluctant, but the enthusiasm of everyone else persuades her. The two nights of band practice before the show have “a whole different energy” than those that preceded them (274).
Chapters 33-36 Analysis
Eyes symbolize Ross’s ability to perceive events and people accurately, as when he finally sees the real Sarah. Ross was figuratively blinded by Sarah’s artificial persona; he loses that blindness on the same day he begins to lose sight in his right eye. The irony is that he realizes Sarah is his bully because the latest meme portrays Ross as a stereotypical blind person; her cruel image opens his eyes metaphorically and allows him to judge her accurately. He watches her face with unobstructed judgment and witnesses how she masks her true character to manipulate people.
Jimmy is the opposite of Sarah and the other character through which the novel primarily teaches readers to Never Judge by Appearances. He serves as a witness to Sarah’s guilt; he makes certain she confesses the truth in a show of solidarity with Ross. Only minutes before, Ross worried about Sarah associating him with Jimmy, but the twist is that Jimmy, who in Ross’s eyes looks and behaves like a bully, is not the actual bully; the perfect Sarah, who appears to be the consummate love interest, is Ross’s bully.
Ross’s expressive guitar playing and his father’s remarks about sharing burdens emphasize that Authentic Self-Expression Is Liberating and that human Connection and Communication Are Essential to Survival. Ross’s biggest problem is his storm of emotions, anger being the most powerful. However, Ross is better equipped to deal with these emotions than he was at the beginning of the novel. The way in which he dramatizes his feelings through Batpig exemplifies this. Although Batpig has consistently allowed Ross to vent his feelings, the comics have also demonstrated Ross’s tendency to view situations reductively. Now, Ross has Batpig voice the possibility that his anger is the product of an evil conspiracy only to realize that it is simply a normal, if painful, part of life. This newfound emotional awareness helps Ross do what his father suggests—share his burdens with other people—through his revised plan for the band’s performance in the talent show. He doesn’t explain the plan to readers, building suspense for the story’s climax, but his attraction to punk rock hints at what he has in mind.
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