47 pages • 1-hour read
Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Gold”
Chapter 4 Summary: “Sir Tode and the Familiar Voice”
Peter reappears in a churning sea full of floating glass bottles. Suddenly, another body crashes down on him, also frantically trying to stay afloat. As they both struggle for breath, Peter suggests they work together. Gathering as many of the floating bottles as they can inside Peter’s burgle sack, they create a flotation device and cling to it.
The stranger describes their surroundings: a wide basin at the bottom of several large waterfalls. They paddle to the edge of the basin, and pull themselves out by a tangle of roots. Standing at the edge of a meadow, the stranger introduces himself as Sir Tode, a knight whom a witch turned into a combination of human, horse, and kitten. Sir Tode has been searching for a cure ever since. Told he could find a cure on the “isle that sits atop the world” (45), Sir Tode sailed across the sea until his ship wrecked in the Ice Barrens, and the currents dumped him over a waterfall onto Peter’s head. Not wanting to be left alone in this unknown place, Peter convinces Sir Tode to bring him along on his quest. As they are about to depart, they hear two voices coming over a nearby hill. Peter and Sir Tode both recognize one of the voices: that of the Haberdasher, who is also the Taverner who told Sir Tode about this mysterious isle. His real name is Mr. Pound, and he has come with Professor Cake, who owns the island and knows a lot about Peter.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Troublesome Lake of Professor Cake”
Peter awakens the next morning in a tree house, dressed in new clothes, the golden eyes removed from his sockets. He feels the radiance of the moon, which “hangs a bit lower in these parts of the world” (51). Professor Cake reveals that Mr. Pound is his apprentice, and the Haberdasher act was only testing Peter’s ability to bypass the locks and steal the “fantastic eyes,” magical orbs crafted specifically for him. The golden eyes have the power to transport the user to the last place the eyes have seen, in this case, Professor Cake’s island.
Peter and Sir Tode spend their days exploring the island. One day, they stumble across Cake’s gazing mat, a blue canvas covered in stars and planets and traced with lines and numbers. With it, Cake can observe any location in the world. He’s been watching Peter for most of his life. As Peter and Cake walk along the shore, the Professor tells the boy about distant and uncharted waterways—“the farther out you sail, the deeper and more enchanted they become” (57). All seas eventually empty into the island’s Troublesome Lake, with its countless bottles. Each bottle contains a cry for help. The Professor pulls a small bottle from his pocket: This cry for help is the reason he summoned Peter to the island.
Chapter 6 Summary: “The Vanished Kingdom”
Inside the bottle is a cryptic poem:
Kings aplenty, princes few,
The ravens scattered and seas withdrew.
Only a stranger may bring relief,
But darkness will reign, unless he’s— (61).
Cake suspects the note has come from the Vanished Kingdom, a mythical, magical land where the people built a most spectacular palace. The night of its completion, the kingdom disappeared. Cake then unrolls a map of the known world. Somewhere beyond its edges lies the Vanished Kingdom, and Peter is the hero they need to save it, since all heroes are “cunning, resourceful, and a little brash” (65)—a perfect description of Peter. Cake also bequeaths Peter the fantastic eyes, a most valuable asset in his quest.
Peter, however, is unsure—his self-confidence is shaky from years of Seamus’s verbal abuse. Cake assures him that his life’s hardships up to now have only prepared him for this task. After a long night of reflection, Peter chooses the quest, grateful to Cake for giving him the choice. After breakfast, Cake escorts Peter and Sir Tode to the Scop, the small ship that will bear them on their journey. As they prepare to leave, Cake offers some last-minute advice: Stay close to Sir Tode, never reveal the true nature of the fantastic eyes, and always trust in yourself.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The cruel routine of Peter’s life gives way to the fantastical, as the genre requires. Peter is whisked away to a magical island where he meets eccentric and mysterious characters and is appointed to carry out a heroic quest. Other genre elements come into play as well: The hero meets his trusty sidekick, gets a magical tool to help him along the way, and faces self-doubts he will invariably overcome. Peter’s quest is both literal and figurative. He must sail across uncharted waters to help a mysterious kingdom, but his journey is also a personal one. Peter, born into tragedy and beset with it his entire life, must discover his own self-worth—a crucial learning experience for all children. In genre fiction, quests are tests of maturity—can the hero survive the trial and become a worthy adult? This structure underlies a vast trove of young adult literature (for instance, A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit, and The Chronicles of Narnia) suggesting that the value of the journey and its dangers resonate strongly with young people.
Rarely are obedient and well-behaved children chosen for these tasks. Peter, caught in a self-made trap of insecurity, imagines himself as nothing more than a criminal, but Professor Cake reassures him that his “criminal” qualities are precisely what a hero needs: Those who know how to break the rules justifiably and within reason can be trusted to save others. This reliable trope calls into question the very nature of social order, contrasting legality with ethics. Rules, it seems, are made to be broken as long as the harm is minimal and favors the morally just. Robin Hood, one of literature’s most enduring rule-breakers, is an outlaw, but only because the laws are unfair. Who better to challenge authority that serves not the common good but its own than someone who has been disenfranchised by it?
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