This Was Our Pact
51 pages • 1-hour read
Ryan AndrewsThis Was Our Pact
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 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Equinox Festival”
Ben, a middle schooler, lives in a town that has an annual tradition of releasing paper lanterns into a local river to celebrate the fall equinox. Each year, he and his five friends ride their bikes along the river to watch the lanterns floating downstream. This year, they have resolved not to turn back for home at the point where they usually do—at a huge rock shaped like a weathered face. Instead, they have made a pact to follow the lanterns until they discover where the lanterns end up. Their pact has two rules: “No one turns for home” (2), and “No one looks back” (3).
On the night of the lantern festival, the boys hurry together to the river, carrying their lanterns through the night. In the graphic novel, this scene is portrayed in a two-page spread using dark blue to indicate shadowy objects—like trees and the night sky—and light blue to indicate illuminated objects like clouds, stars, and the lanterns themselves. The illustrations foreground the boys’ happy, excited faces. After the lanterns are released, two panels offer close-up views of the lanterns bobbing away down the river. As the boys begin their ride to follow the lanterns, three panels encapsulate aspects of their route: The river flowing through rolling hills and pines, and the boys riding along the river through a heavily forested section of the route, approaching the large rock that is shaped like a head. Black, dark blue, and light blue are the only colors on the page. A two-page spread focuses on the moment the boys roll past the weathered-face rock: The rock is on the right, and the boys ride past it on a downhill slope in the foreground. Their happy faces are among the brightest objects in the scene. On the following page, a three-panel tier offers scenes from the boys’ imaginations as they consider where the lanterns may be headed: off into space, into an immense cave, or the bottom of the river.
However, as the boys trail the floating lanterns, they themselves are being followed by a sixth boy, Nathaniel. Nathaniel is eager to join them, but the group taunts and excludes him. Though Ben and Nathaniel’s fathers work together and are best friends, Ben joins in the mean-spirited exclusion because he is afraid of the social consequences of showing kindness or compassion toward Nathaniel. Nathaniel first appears as an isolated figure, small in the darkness behind the other boys. He gradually progresses toward the foreground, taking up more of each subsequent panel. He finally calls out to the other boys that he has brought along some Rice Krispies treats that his mother made. In the next panel, the other boys make insulting remarks about how the treats are probably poisoned. They are depicted from the back, riding away from Nathaniel.
After a few panels that focus on the scenery surrounding the group of boys as they continue their ride, Ben calls to the others to stop. Ben announces that one of their companions, Mikey, has stopped, and when the others look back to find out why, Mikey explains that it is taco night at his house. He tries to persuade the other boys, who are also hungry, to turn back with him and come to his house for tacos, but they refuse. After Mikey leaves, the four remaining group members travel on, still taunting Nathaniel, who follows at a distance. Ben feels bad for Nathaniel, but he stays silent.
Another boy named Elliot is the next to drop out of the expedition. He simply turns around without explanation and heads home. When the remaining three boys reach Toad Canyon Bridge, the demarcation line their parents have all made them promise never to cross, two more group members drop out: Adam and Sammy are too afraid of being punished to continue. Ben sits on his bike on the bridge, looking back at Adam and Sammy, trying in vain to persuade them. A series of panels depict the boys’ words floating in the air above the bridge while a mysterious giant creature lurks in the shadows beneath. Finally, Ben decides to continue on alone. He angrily turns away from his retreating friends, and as he leans on the bridge’s railing, looking out over the water, the squeak of Nathaniel’s bike draws near.
Nathaniel joins Ben at the bridge rail and the two watch the lanterns floating under the bridge. Nathaniel asks Ben if he is upset about the pact. Ben is surprised to learn that Nathaniel knows about it. Nathaniel explains that he overheard the group planning it at school, and he expresses his intention of joining Ben for the remainder of the journey. The splash panel that ends the chapter shows the two boys as small figures standing side-by-side on the bridge, unaware that, behind them, the enormous creature has risen and watches them with eyes that look like paper lanterns.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Fisherbear”
Ben and Nathaniel continue on together, but Ben refuses Nathaniel’s offer of a Rice Krispies treat because he does not want Nathaniel to think he is happy to have his company. After several dark blue panels that depict their travels through the forested landscape, a splash page illuminated with an whitish-yellow light interrupts the narrative: The boys see an anthropomorphic bear standing under a streetlight, dressed in a jacket and scarf and carrying a large, cylindrical basket on his back. The bear greets them politely, but Ben is frightened and wants to pedal away. Nathaniel, however, stops and returns the bear’s greeting.
Nathaniel asks the bear what his basket is for. Several panels washed in vermillion follow: They depict Ben imagining that the interior of the basket is crammed full of children, and he worries that the bear will add Ben and Nathaniel to his collection. However, the panels turn blue and pale yellow again as the bear explains that the basket is for holding the fish he hopes to catch. The bear points down at the river, at what the boys think are the town’s lanterns. The bear claims that these are fish and that they are swimming toward another river. He points at a “river” of stars leading from the horizon up into the dark sky, and Ben asks if this is just like “the song” describes, but the bear is puzzled by his question. The bear tells them that the fish have chosen a bad night for their journey. Soon, a full moon will rise, making it hard to see the star path. The bear worries that the fish will not be able to “find their way home” (42). The boys peer down at the river, but the lights far below do not look like fish to them, and they cannot hear them jumping as the bear claims they do.
The boys sit down with the bear, and he asks Ben what song he was referring to earlier. Ben describes a song from his town; black and pale-yellow panels depict the song’s events as Ben tells them. A lantern maker went fishing and was pulled into the river by a giant fish. His daughter saw this happen, but she was too frightened to help her father. Later that night, she saw a point of light in the sky: Her father had turned into the world’s first star. The town’s first lantern festival was created as a way to honor the lantern maker. Before the townspeople released the lanterns into the river, they fixed fishing lines to each one. Each lantern was towed down the river by a fish, and the river was totally emptied of fish by the event. The lantern maker’s daughter jumped into the river and was never seen again. That night, the sky was filled with stars. Ever since, the town celebrates the lantern festival on the night when the river of stars in the sky aligns with the river of water near their town.
The bear tells the boys that for centuries, his people have come to the river on this night to capture the fish before they head up into their home in the sky. Ben asks whether the river isn’t really their home, but the bear says that “the stars are everyone’s home” (54). Nathaniel comments that everyone’s bodies are made of atoms from exploded stars. He knows this because his and Ben’s fathers work at the observatory. The bear asks the boys for a ride. Ben refuses, saying the bear will be too heavy, but Nathaniel agrees. The momentum of the bear’s jump onto the back of Nathaniel’s bike sends him forward much faster than Ben is going; the bear shouts to Ben that he will have to be quicker if he wants to catch up.
A dense fog rolls in. Despite the bear’s assurance that his family’s fishing spot is just ahead and that he will know it by the three large boulders that mark it, Ben is worried that they will get lost. He is especially concerned when he finds out that this is the bear’s first time trying to find the spot. Ben asks what will happen if the stories the bear’s father told him are not true and if the lanterns are just lanterns, not fish. The bear says that he has faith in his father and that since the fish his people have been eating for centuries are real, the stories must be, too. A two-page spread in black and gray ends the chapter, showing the three travelers as tiny figures in an immense forest with shafts of moonlight streaming through the trees.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
This Was Our Pact is a quest story and follows the typically episodic structure of such stories. In the story’s first chapter, Ben and his friends set out on a quest for knowledge. The pact that they make shows how seriously they take this expedition and gives the journey an appropriately heroic tone. The lanterns the boys chase symbolize knowledge, and the visual similarity between the lanterns, the stars, and the mysterious creature’s eyes hint at the nature of this knowledge. On the surface, the boys simply want to know where the lanterns go after they leave the confines of their town. On a metaphorical level, however, the boys are chasing an understanding of the world and their place in it.
The text’s visuals emphasize that their quest has a deeper meaning. For example, when the boys pass the rock that is shaped like a giant head, they quickly ride by it, determined to go “farther than ANYONE has EVER gone” (34). In previous years, this is where the boys always turned back for home each year. A two-page spread marks the moment the boys pass the stern-looking visage of the rock, which evokes a guardian figure watching them leave the safety of a world bounded by tradition and watched over by adults. The boys are headed into the unknown, into a world where they will encounter new truths and fend for themselves. After passing this rock, however, the boys begin to turn back, one by one: The excuses they offer center on tradition and adult supervision, indicating that Mikey, Elliot, Adam, and Sammy are not yet ready to leave behind the security of their familiar world. The characterization of these four boys also conveys their relative immaturity: The way that they exclude and bully Nathaniel makes it clear that they still have some growing up to do. Ben, by contrast, is more mature. He is still too frightened of the social consequences to actually stand up for Nathaniel, but he does understand that the way the group treats Nathaniel is wrong and feels ashamed about his own inaction.
At this stage in the story, Ben does not yet fully understand The Importance of Open-Mindedness, although he shows more promise in this direction than his four friends do. His determination to continue on with his quest even after his companions abandoned him shows that he seeks change, knowledge, and growth. At this stage, though, Ben becomes easily fixated on his own goals and is prone to miss the larger picture. He is furious at his friends when they deviate from the pact—he is unable to empathize with their reasons for doing so. Later, when he and Nathaniel encounter the fisherbear, he cannot even entertain the possibility that the creature might help rather than hinder their quest. In this regard, Ben lacks the flexibility Nathaniel shows, and Ben does not want to stop to talk to the bear or give the bear a ride on his bike. Though he is very rigid in his outlook at this point, as the story progresses, Ben will learn about Balancing Perseverance and Flexibility.
Ben and Nathaniel’s encounter with the fisherbear highlights the theme of Cultivating Positivity and a Sense of Wonder. The fisherbear is a mentor figure, and the boys meet him almost immediately after they cross Toad Canyon Bridge—their parents have told the boys to never cross the bridge, and they have never been past it before. The fisherbear is a wise guide who helps them navigate this unknown territory. Ben’s lack of flexibility shows when he scoffs at the fisherbear’s explanation of his own cultural traditions regarding the autumn equinox. Despite knowing the song that explains the connection between the lanterns and the fish, Ben thinks of the lanterns strictly as lanterns, and he cannot entertain the idea that they could also, somehow, be fish. In contrast, Nathaniel is so open to the strange and miraculous that he immediately accepts the fisherbear and his story. Nathaniel’s decision will set the most exciting and rewarding parts of the adventure into motion.
In addition to the fisherbear, the land the boys have crossed into holds other mysteries and wonders. There is a mysterious creature with lantern-like eyes under this bridge, and it oversees their entry into this world, though the two boys don’t see it. Its strange and unidentifiable nature foreshadows the surreal, dreamlike character of the rest of their journey. The style of the book’s art also hints at the wondrous nature of their upcoming journey. The watercolor effect of the artwork lends the pages a dream-like quality. The serene yet mysterious deep blues of the story’s nighttime world mark it as a different kind of space from the ordinary world the boys have left behind.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs