49 pages • 1-hour read
Olive's Ocean
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Chapters 14-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Parcheesi”
Dennis goes to the store to get more banana baby food. He doesn’t return, and Martha, unlike the rest of her family, worries. While Martha and Godbee play Parcheesi—a board game where the player wins by moving their four pawns to the center—Martha admits that she hates her family. Godbee sympathizes with Martha, and Godbee admits that she hates her hands. Martha claims Godbee has nice hands, but Godbee doesn’t believe her granddaughter. However, when Godbee was younger, a boy drew her hands because he thought they were beautiful.
Dennis returns. He had to drive all around Cape Cod, but now he has enough banana baby food to feed everyone. While he was out, he had a “revelation.”
Chapter 15 Summary: “Her Father’s Decision”
Dennis plans to stop working on a novel and return to his job as a lawyer. Godbee wonders how Alice will receive the news, and Dennis thinks his wife will be accepting. Dennis will earn more money, but Lucy will need additional childcare. As for Martha, now she can be the sole writer in her family.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Kissing”
Martha likes the strangeness and excitement of waking up in a different home and bed. At the same time, Martha notes how the smell of the ocean and Godbee’s house stays the same each year.
In the morning, Lucy gives Martha a “good-morning kiss,” which involves Lucy grabbing Martha’s face and kissing Martha on the lips. If the kiss doesn’t meet Lucy’s theatrical criteria, they redo it until Lucy approves.
By the sink, Martha’s parents kiss and laugh. Martha believes if Vince were present, he’d say something about MSB (morning sex behavior). Earlier in the summer, Vince told Martha that when their parents “do it” in the morning, they can’t help but blush and giggle afterward.
Chapter 17 Summary: “A Writer”
Godbee doesn’t have a computer, a dishwasher, or a “portable telephone.” Martha is hot because the only air conditioning Godbee has is a window unit in her bedroom. Martha couldn’t tolerate such an “old-fashioned” environment at home, but at Godbee’s cottage, she doesn’t mind.
Godbee and Martha sit outside, and Martha has on one of her many orange t-shirts, which she wears to draw attention away from her orange hair. Martha declares her goal of being a writer, and she tells Godbee her favorite book is Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Godbee encourages Martha, who has an idea for a novel about a girl called Olive.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Faraway”
Godbee notices a distant look in Martha’s eyes, and she orders her granddaughter to work on her novel. Ten minutes later, Martha is lying on the beach and writing in her notebook. She writes about a girl near the ocean. She starts over and writes about a girl who runs away. Martha starts over again and writes about a girl, Olive, who’s an orphan. Olive goes to her grandmother’s house and notices her grandmother’s hands and the ocean sounds.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Jimmy Manning”
Martha falls asleep, and Vince and the noisy Manning brothers—Jimmy, Tate, Todd, Luke, and Leo, wake her. Jimmy is the oldest at 14. He has a video camera, and he’s filming Luke and Leo (the youngest brothers) play-fighting. Jimmy is making a film, The World Is Not What You Think It Is, and he invites Martha to watch what he has made so far.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The World Is Not What You Think It Is”
Jimmy sits near Martha, and she smells his sunscreen and grape bubble gum. She also notices his green eyes, and she plays with her hands. As for the movie, Jimmy repeats, “The world is not what you think it is” (79), and there are images of nature, garbage, people, and parking lots. In the film, Jimmy makes a quip about the beauty of nature. For the family section, Jimmy films his house and an argument between his parents. In the movie, Jimmy makes a sarcastic remark about the greatness of family life.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Private Moments”
Jimmy turns off the TV and VCR, and Martha compliments the movie. The scene of the Mannings fighting haunts her, and she thinks about how she’d be embarrassed if someone filmed last night’s dinner at Godbee’s house.
As Martha leaves, she runs into Tate, who’s glad to see her. Martha’s towel falls, and Tate notes that the towel is the same color as the lining of a shell. Tate and Martha part ways, and all Martha can think about is Jimmy.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Taste and Smell”
Lucy pretends to be a tornado, and Godbee—abiding by their agreement to share something about each other each day—tells Martha that she can’t taste or smell anymore. Godbee gets a phone call, and Martha thinks of her grandmother as “fading away.”
Chapter 23 Summary: “Writing and Waiting”
As Martha waits for Jimmy to call, she adds to her novel. A giant wave makes Olive forget her sadness, but the sorrow comes back. The story notes the grandmother’s “frail” body and how the grandmother in the story can’t taste anything. Olive surprises her grandmother with roses, but her grandmother can’t smell anything either. Martha stops working on her novel and starts writing Jimmy’s name repeatedly.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Fog”
Martha wakes up and watches the foggy weather. She thinks about Jimmy and wonders what she’ll tell Godbee and what Godbee will tell her.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Bottle”
After Martha’s family swims and has a picnic lunch, Godbee tells Martha that she can sharply remember certain sensations and feelings since she’s removed from them. She reveals that she wrote a short story about a girl who moved inland with her family. Upset over leaving the ocean, the girl keeps a bottle of seawater. Godbee couldn’t figure out how to finish it. Switching topics, she tells Martha she ate a jar of Lucy’s banana baby food. Martha tells Godbee that she likes Jimmy.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Lucky”
After telling Godbee her secret, Martha doesn’t become a ball of flames, nor does she disappear into the earth. Godbee doesn’t make fun of Martha for liking a boy. She thinks Jimmy is “lucky” that Martha is interested in him.
Chapters 14-26 Analysis
The theme of Experiencing Change in Adolescence manifests in multiple ways throughout Chapters 14 through 26. Each morning, Martha accepts a “good-morning kiss” from Lucy, and this simple gesture represents the stability these affections provide. Though Martha is far from home, Godbee’s cottage supplies a fixed element, as Martha can count on it to be “old-fashioned” and free of modern conveniences like central air conditioning and computers. The stable elements in the story contrast with the unsteady attributes. Dennis upends the family’s configuration by announcing that he wants to return to work. Godbee represents change when she discusses the transformation of her hands and her impending death. Martha’s story of Olive undergoes constant revisions and additions, mirroring her experience. As her external and internal worlds change, so does her story about Olive. After Godbee mentions her hands, Martha writes, “[Olive] held her grandmother’s old wrinkly hands and wept” (74). Through writing, Martha documents the fluctuations of her experience. By putting the changes into the story, she organizes them.
Furthermore, Martha continues her journey toward Identity and Self-Discovery in this section. The Olive character in her story represents Martha in many ways. By depicting her experiences as a separate character in the story, Martha creates a picture of how she could be. Yet Martha remains untethered to a fixed identity, and Jimmy additionally takes her attention. Martha stops working on her Olive story, and the narrator explains, “She turned to the last page and wrote Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy until the page was completely filled” (92). Like Olive, Jimmy gives Martha a person to focus on other than herself. Similar to Olive, Jimmy fills her notebook and being. Martha is unsure how to self-identify, and through writing and introspection, she works on developing her sense of self.
Coping With Loss and Death has a stark matter-of-factness in the story. Godbee bluntly declares, “I can’t taste anymore. Or smell” (89). There’s no uplighting lesson or positive takeaway. Godbee doesn’t mix words about her precarious situation, and Martha mimics her grandmother’s frank approach toward the two interrelated issues by creating a character, Olive, beset by grief. As Olive is an orphan, she doesn’t have parents. Since Olive’s grandmother is frail, Olive risks losing her. Martha writes, “[Olive] looked up as a giant wave crashed on a giant rock and for a moment she forgot how sad she was […] But of course, the sadness returned. And it stayed and stayed” (91-92). The story suggests that grief is a part of life, and people should accept it and not conceal it with perfunctory positivity. Through her writing, Martha is learning to cope with her feelings about death and loss.
Humor and foreshadowing persist in Chapters 14 through 26. Lucy’s morning kisses represent playful affection. At the same time, the morning kisses link to the deceptive kiss between Jimmy and Martha. The title of Jimmy’s film, The World Is Not What You Think It Is, gives a clue of the deceit on the horizon. Jimmy is not who Martha thinks he is. He’s not sincerely interested in her: He seemingly just wants to win a bet. Vince injects humor into the story when Martha remembers his phrase MSB (morning sex behavior) and applies it to her parents. At this moment in the novel, sex and attraction aren’t a fraught, treacherous subject but a means of comic relief.
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