49 pages • 1-hour read
The Skeleton Tree
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Chapters 13-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Wooden Saint”
Waiting for their rescue in the present, Frank continues to read the book as Chris marvels at how much Frank is like their father.
In a flashback, Chris reacts to Frank’s bombshell revelation. Chris asks why Frank never told him, but Frank says he hated Chris because his father’s second family is what took him away. Frank storms off, and Chris pursues him, screaming questions. Frank claims that he knew about Chris all along and that his father never went on business trips but was spending time with him. He says Chris’s father hated him.
Chris recalls his father telling him, right before he died, that things would be different. Frank tells Chris about the morning their father died. He said he had to go home, which stung Frank because he thought his father was home. He took his coffee and left. Later, Chris found the coffee cup his father left in the garage a few minutes before a garbage truck T-boned his car and he died. Neither of them understands why their father lived two lives, why he told Frank’s family about the other one, or why he went away that morning with change on his mind: “Jack thought Dad might have killed himself,” Frank tells Chris (213). Frank storms away again and finds “a man” on the beach.
Immediately, Chris knows that his vision is true. The “man” is a wooden statue that looks like a samurai or a saint. It washed up on the beach in the storm. Chris has the idea to put the statue on the point as a lookout. From air or sea it would look real. It could save them. They spend a long time moving the wooden saint.
Frank goes fishing alone, and Chris reads the book, now lying on the bed for the first time. In the book, a raven makes medicine and spews it into a wound, healing it. Chris is in awe when he shares this with Frank, but Frank doesn’t believe in magic or in Thursday. Chris goes to look for the bird but can’t find him.
Frank goes fishing in the morning, but the storm worsens, and Chris goes after him, finding him crouched behind a stump on the beach. He has two fish, pecked to waste by gulls, which the boys leave behind as Chris helps Frank back to the cabin.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Glass Fish”
As they wait for their rescue on the appointed day, Frank suddenly announces, “Dad was a loser” (228). Chris thinks about how his father was one man with Frank and another with him. Whereas Frank is bitter and angry, Chris is understanding and forgiving and thus stronger.
In the continuing flashback, Chris helps Frank to the cabin: “Something happened out there. But what it was, Frank couldn’t say” (229). Chris reads the novel to Frank, reading even after he falls asleep, and in the morning Frank’s mood has changed. Chris finds a piece of the dinghy from Puff, buries it on the beach, and feels Uncle Jack’s presence. He says farewell to his uncle and knows he’d be proud of him. Thus, the 12-year-old Chris carries out a fourth proxy funeral.
Chris walks through the forest, looking for Thursday, but has a strange sensation that something in the woods is watching him. He runs to find Frank, who announces that it isn’t the bear because he handled it. That night, more than 20 wolves gather outside and howl.
Determined to find Thursday, Chris searches the area, but instead he finds the salmon that Frank abandoned on the beach. Frank has stuffed them full of glass to trap and kill the bear. In addition, Chris finds a child’s diary and imagines the child who wrote it. He buries the diary, sees a flash of color nearby, and finds cabin guy’s corpse partially buried. He believes the bear pulled cabin guy from the cabin and buried him to eat later. He takes Frank to the spot, and they bury cabin guy in the woods where he lies. They conclude that the grizzly broke into the cabin, ripped cabin guy from it, dragged him into the forest, and killed him. The cabin was a mess when they found it, the raven was stuck in twine, and the table and bed were overturned. Both boys understand that the grizzly considers the area his territory.
Later, at the point, Chris tells Frank that he undid the bear traps. Frank is angry and tells Chris their dad liked him better and even took him hunting every fall. At night, a raven comes, but it isn’t Thursday. Frank apologizes and says that really Uncle Jack was the one who spent time with him. That their father was just as absent with Frank as he was with Chris. He lied because he was jealous and angry and wanted to hurt Chris.
Chris sits by the point, beating on an empty drum. In just three more days, he thinks, they’ll be rescued. They spot a plane far above, and Frank tries to light the pile of debris, but Chris wrestles him, ultimately gaining the upper hand. The plane is too far away. Frank lights the wooden saint, and they watch it burn. When the plane is gone, they put out the fire, and that night Frank offers Chris the bed: “Everything had changed” (249).
Chapters 13-14 Analysis
Foreshadowing plays an important part in the novel as Chris likens Frank to his father and to Uncle Jack well before knowing that Frank is his brother. Given the many hints, Chris has prepared himself for the shocking revelation and processes the change quickly. Whereas Frank is upset by the knowledge that he had to share a father, Chris is elated by the concept of having a brother. Again, their outlooks determine their futures.
Chris knows that Uncle Jack would be proud of him, despite the look of disappointment on his uncle’s face before he died. This is a heavy burden for a child so in need of adult male approval after the loss of his father. However, Chris rationalizes his way past the last look on his uncle’s face and finds peace with his uncle’s death. He has no body to bury, so like the many other proxy funerals he’s held in solitude, he buries a piece of Uncle Jack’s boat and feels he has laid the grief to rest.
When Chris finds a child’s diary, he buries it alongside the shoe and purse: “I imagined she had begun her diary full of hope and dreams, and maybe she had ended it in the same way, not knowing she was writing for the last time” (236). Like the shoe and the purse, Chris lays a stranger to rest through a diary in a symbolic proxy funeral meant to offer peace and respect. He’s learning to deal with death as a part of life, and with each item he buried, his outlook improves slightly. He’s able to put Uncle Jack to rest only after he has symbolically buried the other items. Thus, Chris comes to terms with death as a part of life, underscoring the theme of Death as Inevitable and Natural. Death is present everywhere on the island, from the objects that symbolize massive loss to the shipwrecks and eventually cabin guy’s body. In addition, Chris sees how the salmon forge their way up the river only to die when they reach their breeding ground. Thus, he comes to make peace with death itself through understanding the salmon’s life cycle and realizing that he and everyone else are much like the salmon. He also realizes that nothing, including life itself, is guaranteed or certain, which thematically supports The Reality of Uncertainty.
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