52 pages • 1 hour read
The Forest of Hands and Teeth
A 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 19-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of graphic violence, illness, and death, including child death.
Chapter 19 Summary
When Travis comforts Cass, a jealous Mary wants him to feel pain, so she reveals Jed’s secret that Beth is infected. Jed furiously strikes Mary in the face, and as Harry and Travis react in horror and grief at the sight of Beth’s bite wound, Mary flees from the group, randomly turning down different forks. At one point, she even calls out to Gabrielle, who reappears and claws hungrily at the fence. Mary apologizes to her, crying.
Suddenly, she discovers more metal tags inscribed with capital letters, each one marking a new branching of the path. (She does not recognize that these symbols are Roman numerals.) Excited by her discovery, she eagerly returns to the camp, only to find that Jed has killed Beth and that he, Harry, and Travis are now burying her. Cass prevents Mary from helping them, and Mary decides not to share her discovery of the letter labels discovery so as not to disturb the somber atmosphere.
