42 pages • 1-hour read
Independence Day
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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
As Frank drives away from the McLeod house and the incident with the police, he considers that his mistake with the McLeods was that he made no effort to really get to know them. He feels he should have had them over to his house for a cookout to show them know that he was a reasonable guy and different than typical landlords. Frank then recounts the history of the birch-beer stand that he co-owns with Karl Blemish, a man who had unwisely tried to turn the stand into something bigger and better, spending too much money in the process. Frank’s vision of the birch-beer stand was a very stripped down, simple business where only birch-beer and hot dogs would be sold. He offered to bail out Karl under the agreement that his vision for the place was the way it would be. Karl agreed, and they eventually became business partners, with Frank primarily being a kind of silent partner, and Karl the one actually running the operation.
The narrative once again veers away from the flashback to the present. As a last order of business, Frank stops by the birch-beer stand and meets with Karl. The two are apparent friends, though they see the world in very different ways. They briefly discuss politics and the looming presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Karl claims that a group of men, who he claims were of Mexican origin, had been casing out the establishment in preparation for a robbery. He shows Frank the gun that he has on hand for just such an occasion. This makes Frank squeamish, and as he drives away he feels disconcerted that something bad will transpire concerning Karl while he is away. Frank drives out of Haddam, bound for the Jersey shore to meet with his girlfriend, Sally Caldwell. During the drive, he recalls Clair Devane and the circumstances of her death— specifically how people inevitably have moved on from it. Clair was a fellow realtor and Frank’s former lover. She was attacked and murdered by unknown men. The men bound and sexually assaulted her, before cutting her throat with a knife.
Like Frank, Sally Caldwell has carried a burden of past relationship mishaps. One day, her husband Wally, a man who Frank knew in school, simply left Sally without a trace. His whereabouts remain unknown, and Sally is caught between letting go and holding on. As Frank arrives at Sally’s he is overcome with fatigue and takes a nap in her spare bedroom. When he awakes, he and Sally pass the evening by discussing the state of their relationship, which has reached a pivotal moment. The two discuss the prospects of becoming a more committed couple, escalating their more casual current situation. The conversation is not smooth, and by the time Frank prepares to leave after dinner, there is clear tension between the two.
Chapter 6 Summary
Frank departs Sally’s and begins his trip to Connecticut where he will visit his ex-wife’s new house and pick up his son Paul. The first part of this chapter provides deeper insights into the perils of middle age and how Frank views his place in the world. He also reflects on his conversation with Sally from earlier that night, which he feels he handled the wrong way. Because of this, he fears has put the whole relationship in jeopardy.
As Frank nears the New York City/Tri-State area, he stops off at the Vince Lombardi service area. While there, Frank checks his answering machine and conducts some people watching. As a former sportswriter, Frank is familiar with the memorabilia that adorns the rest stop, but he realizes that none of the many people who shuffle in and out of the place have any real interest in anything there. Instead, they are preoccupied with travel and the rush to get to their destination so that they can commence what, according to Frank, will be a forgettable and uneventful holiday weekend.
Because of the increasing traffic, Frank travels an alternate route that takes him further north toward the Tappan Zee Bridge, where he will slide into the Danbury, Connecticut area and stop for the night at a hotel. Frank has trouble finding a motel, and he is extremely tired. When he finally finds a motel near Ridgefield, New York, there is a police investigation taking place. Some time prior to his arrival, a family from Ohio was robbed and murdered by two teenage boys. He learns this information from a trucker named Mr. Tanks. The two men have an awkward conversation which continues briefly even after the investigators and EMS leave the scene. Mr. Tanks mentions wanting to move. Frank sleeps a few rooms down from where the murder took place. Before leaving the next day, he places his business card on Mr. Tanks's truck.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Frank’s discussion of Clair Devane and her murder reveals one of the novel’s central questions: how to live in a cold, unforgiving world. This is an existentialist question, and his synopsis of the way the world moves on as though Clair never even existed is at the heart of Frank’s anxiety. There is no permanence in life; all things are fleeting. While Frank tries to devise strategies to cope with this anxiety, which include a public persona that presents a stoic and brave acceptance of these facts of life, the existential fear is never all that far from his thoughts. He says of the aftermath of Clair’s death, “Eventually her desk will be manned by someone else and business will go on—sad to say, but true—which is the way people want it. And in that regard, as well as respecting the most private of evidence, it can sometimes already seem as though Clair Devane had not fully existed in anyone’s life but her very own” (145). In time, Clair will only exist as a memory in someone else’s mind, and that is the best-case scenario. Most likely, as memory fades over time, she will become even less than that. In pointing this out, Frank betrays the stoic persona he carefully constructs for others. Clair’s disappearance from life is his fate as well; it will be as though he never even lived at all. Intuitively, he realizes this, though it does not sit well with him.
As a patriotic American, Frank has a romanticized vision of what the Fourth of July is supposed to represent. He mentions how the day is his favorite civic holiday, and he is conflicted by what he thinks it should represent for people and what it actually represents. In reality, the holiday burdens people with more obligations, which contradicts the sense of freedom and independence the holiday symbolizes. This contrast is highly visible when Frank pulls into the Vince Lombardi truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. The people he sees there all seem preoccupied with their own obligations and trivialities. He sees teenagers obsessively playing video games, drunk Canadiens en route to the casinos in Atlantic City, and families “walking around semi-catatonically eating, or else sitting arguing at plastic tables full of paper trash” (178). Of the scene, Frank says, “Nothing suggests the 4th of July” (178). That it is a rest stop on a major thoroughfare is significant. The physical act of pulling off the highway suggests a detour away from the stream of time. However, Frank’s experience here makes him pensive. That nothing he sees reminds him of the holiday indicates a trivial materialism that is the natural evolution away from what the holiday is supposed to represent.
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