111 pages • 3 hours read
A List of Cages
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BetaChapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Chapter 1 Summary
The first chapter is narrated by Julian and opens with the high school principal, Mr. Pearce, lecturing him for missing school. When he asks why Julian didn't attend, Julian replies that he doesn't like his classes, and the principal balks at his answer. The principal gives him a tardy slip, and Julian enters his first period class, Child Development, with Miss Carlisle. Miss Carlisle has to change her attendance record because she has already marked him absent: “‘You are really pushing it today’” (8),she says. Miss Carlisle tells Julian to find a group to work on the class assignment. Kristin, a classmate, glares at Julian and excludes him from her group, telling everyone the reason she doesn’t want him in the group is because she wants a good grade on the project.
After school, Julian is walking home and reminiscing about his deceased parents. When he gets home, he opens a steel trunk his parents gave him that contains "all the things [he] loves[s]”: photos, Elian Mariner books, and his mother's green spiral notebook (11). Julian starts writing in his own notebook. His Uncle, Russell, comes home and asks Julian if he's doing his homework, and then he grabs the notebook Julian is writing in from his hands and turns it upside down and sideways, making fun of Julian's illegible handwriting. He tells Julian he has misspelled the word “sinister,” drops the notebook on the floor, and demands that Julian come to the kitchen. While eating steak in the kitchen, Russell tells Julian that the school principal called him and told him Julian hasn't been attending classes. Russell asks Julian, "'How long have you lived here?'" (13). Julian replies, "'Four years'" (13). Then Russell reminds Julian that Russell needs to trust Julian. Russell says that he doesn't expect As or even Bs from Julian because he is so academically limited, "'but sitting in a classroom isn't too difficult is it?'” (13). Julian replies no and says he's sorry. Russell then says, "'Go get it'" (13). Although it is not clear in this chapter what Julian is supposed to go get, we find out later that it is a willow switch that Russell keeps in a drawer of the dining room cabinet.
Chapter 2 Summary
The chapter is told from Julian's point of view. It begins with Julian being "zoned out" in Art class; the teacher sends him to Dr. Whitlock, the school psychologist (14). Julian leaves the class, and in the hall he sees his old reading buddy and foster brother, Adam Blake. He's happy to see Adam but indecisive about whether he should go to Dr. Whitlock's or not because she will "stare into [his] eyes and ask embarrassing questions [he] can’t answer, and [his] stomach will hurt" (14). Further, she might call Russell. He finally decides that seeing Dr. Whitlock is worse than the possibility of facing Russell, yet at the same time he chastises himself for making this stupid decision not to go to her office. He sneaks through the school hallways until he eventually climbs an iron ladder bolted to a wall, pushes aside two crooked boards, and crawls and jumps to his secret room in the attic of the high school theater, a place that "no one knows […] exists but [him]" (18). The chapter ends with Julian sitting in this secret room eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and reading an Elian Mariner book.
Chapter 3 Summary
All of this chapter is narrated by Adam Black. He walks into the school cafeteria taking layers of clothes off rapidly because Mr. Pearce cranks up the air conditioning everywhere in the school except in the cafeteria. The principal turns up the air conditioning because he read a study that found that students' academic performances improved with cooler temperatures.
Adam sits at the cafeteria table with his close group of friends. These are a twin brother and sister, Camila and Matt, Emerald (who later becomes Adam's girlfriend), Jesse, a drummer in the high school band, and Charlie Taylor. Charlie announces his mom is pregnant again and he has failed his advanced placement Chemistry test. Charlie is annoyed with the loud freshman table, so he walks over to them and tells them to "shut the fuck up" (22). The expressions on the freshmen's faces after Charlie yells at them remind Adam of "a cage full of big-eyed, terrified mice" (22). Adam digresses in his thoughts to a job at a pet store he quit in one day because he refused to sell a mouse to a customer who was going to feed it to his pet snake.
The chapter ends with all of Adam's friends grumbling about not wanting to go to a concert by an obscure band recommended by Jesse. However, Adam is excited about the concert and tells Jesse, "'I'm in'" (25).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In Chapter 1, Julian's narrative introduces us to many of his deepest fears. Julian believes that "the pathway between [his] brain and mouth is damaged" because he responds so much slower to questions than most people (6). When Russell confronts him about not going to classes, Julian thinks Russell is "going to kick [him] out" (13). When he's standing in class showing Miss Carlisle his tardy slip, he fears that other students will notice that his "jeans are too short and [his] shirt is too small and everything [he's] wearing is ugly and worn" (7).
Roe also draws a sharp contrast between Julian's former life with his biological parents and his current home life with Russell. As school lets out, Julian reminisces how his father once met him after school on foot in the rain, with ink-blotted hands, and said, " It's too nice a day not to walk” and walked home with him (9). He remembers his mother playing the guitar while his father drew. He remembers his father tucking him into bed asking him, "'how many stars are in the sky?'" (10). In the present, Julian walks ten blocks home by himself to an empty "dark, glossy, and neat" house with nobody home (10).
In Chapter 3, we are introduced to Adam's friends. We meet Adam's childhood friend, Emerald, who "looks like a 1950s starlet with her perfectly painted red lips pale skin, and the mole on her cheek" (20). We also meet Charlie Taylor, who "Terminator-march[s]" to the freshman table and terrorizes them (22). We are also introduced to Adam's cheerful and calm disposition as he tries to calm his friend Charlie down when he is upset with the freshmen.
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