Dead End In Norvelt
Dead End In Norvelt
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011
Plot Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
In Dead End in Norvelt, the community is tumultuous. The Norvelters don’t get along entirely, and neither do the members of Jack’s family. Conflict is an inherent aspect of community, and the tension is immediate, with Jack accidentally firing his father’s Japanese rifle. This causes Miss Volker to drop her hearing aid in the toilet. The forcefulness continues when Dad orders Jack to destroy Mom’s cornfield, and then Mom seizes Jack on the baseball field and drags him back home. Jack’s relationships with Bunny and Miss Volker also rely on force, with Bunny trying to push Jack out of his comfort zone and Miss Volker compelling Jack to drive her car (when he’s never driven before) and then all but break into Mrs. Dubicki’s home to see if she’s dead. Other Norvelters impose their will on the community. For example, Mr. Spizz confesses to murdering members of the community so that he can marry Miss Volker. Mr. Huffer accelerates the demise by buying Norvelt’s empty houses and moving them to another Roosevelt community in West Virginia. Through the characters’ actions, Gantos shows that the Norvelt community is made of individuals with divergent interests, which influences the occurrences and interactions of its residents in difficult ways.
At the same time, Gantos shows that force isn’t entirely negative. The lack of gentleness in Norvelt doesn’t make it a loathsome or apathetic place. About Mr. Spizz, Jack asks his mother if he “bugs” her. Mom replies, “Yes, but in a small town you have to forgive people for their faults no matter if you want to or not” (158). Mom’s answer supplies a template for dealing with difficult community members. Norvelters don’t have to get along or like each other, but they can tolerate one another and coexist. Even the overwhelmingly antagonistic characters contribute to the well-being of Norvelt. Mr. Spizz helps put out the fires, and he earnestly tries to track down the Hells Angels on his tricycle. Though Mr. Huffer is depleting Norvelt of housing stock, he continues to care for Norvelt’s dead as the town’s funeral owner. Dad initially dismisses Norvelt as a “dirt-poor Commie town that is dying out” and expresses a desire to move to Florida (67). While Dad buys an airplane to fly away, he also builds a runway, indicating that he’ll return. Miss Volker continues the force of the community as she aggressively identifies the dying women. She tells Jack about her “network of spies who keeps an eye open on the last of the Norvelt folks” (120). In this way, just as conflicting people and personalities create discord in Norvelt, neighbors looking out for each other is an equally defining facet of the town.
Death and violence have a near omnipresent role in the novel. The novel begins with Jack watching a war movie through Dad’s Japanese binoculars. The binoculars come from Dad’s time fighting in World War II, and the movie provides a fictional representation of that same war. Now, the United States has a new enemy, Russia, so when Jack aims his gun at the movie screen, he pretends that the Japanese soldiers, the prior enemy, are communists. The multilayered dynamic spotlights the relentlessness of war, emphasizing that there’s always a new perceived threat to attack and kill. Mom tells Jack, “You know I don’t like you watching war movies. All that violence is bad for you—plus it gets you worked up” (12). The irony is that Jack doesn’t need to watch war movies to experience violence and death: It’s all around him. Dad’s experience fighting in World War II gives Jack firsthand insight into war’s violence, and working as Miss Volker’s “scribe” on her obituaries gives him an intimate connection to death. More so, Jack’s interest in history—and Miss Volker’s history lessons in the newspaper—expose Jack daily to the brutality of the world. Jack can’t handle Mr. Huffer’s funeral parlor, nor can he stand by and watch Dad kill a deer. However, he can grapple with death and destruction via historical texts. In this way, Jack does not hide from death and violence. Rather, he faces it and thinks about its implications—both in his immediate community and in the broader world.
A key part of Jack’s growth involves figuring out how to confront violence and death. The opening scene highlights that Jack feels compelled to replicate it. He fires the rifle at the screen to practice for the future when he’ll supposedly have to kill communists from Russia, something for which his father tells him he must prepare. Yet, as the novel progresses, Gantos shows that Jack isn’t a violent person. Notably, his experience with the deer establishes his dislike for violence. Unable to watch Dad kill a deer, Jack farts so that the deer will run away. In Chapter 28, Jack directly stands up to Dad. Instead of continuing to drop water balloons on the scared people, Jack, realizing that he’s repeating the gun scene from Chapter 1, orders Dad to stop and let him off the plane. Jack explains, “The reason you remind yourself of the stupid stuff you’ve done in the past is so you don’t do it again” (407). Here, “stupid stuff” is violence. Instead of perpetuating this violence, Jack stops it. He discovers that the best way to confront violence is by not actively participating in it. He understands that death is inevitable, as people die of old age, illness, or natural causes. However, he understands that no one deserves to be murdered.
The book stresses the ability to use history as guidance to learn about past wrongdoings and extrapolate moral lessons on how to act in the future. In particular, Jack and Miss Volker use history for education. Miss Volker claims, “History often sheds more light on the present than on the past” (350). Earlier, Jack tells Bunny, “History isn’t dead. It’s everywhere you look. It’s alive” (285). The statements emphasize the relevance of history. Jack and Miss Volker believe that history isn’t a separate sphere that carries no attachment to current events. Rather, history is firmly bonded to what’s occurring now: It’s a part of the present, and it’s the reason why the world is in its current state. When the Hells Angels burn down the houses in Norvelt, Jack sees history, connecting the Hells Angels to the Greeks (who burned Troy) and the Goths (who burned Rome). Miss Volker tries to use the history of the “Spanish flu” to quiet speculation that the older women are the victims of murder. She writes, “[L]et us not panic like a bunch of Chicken Littles and feel the sky falling, but instead put our energy into keeping Norvelt alive” (351). In this way, both characters use historical occurrences to guide their current situations.
Despite believing in the power of historical truth, Miss Volker admits that she manipulates historical events and engages in “wishful thinking.” Her Great Influenza comparison exemplifies “wishful thinking,” with Miss Volker not wanting to admit that the older women are victims of murder. The fact doesn’t inspire her, and neither do other facts about figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Eleanor Roosevelt. Miss Volker presents him as a populist, but Jefferson, like many of the people who helped establish the United States, was an elitist. Miss Volker also bends the truth with Eleanor, presenting her as the “godmother” of Norvelt.
The distorted history fits Miss Volker’s worldview and motivates her to keep advocating on behalf of everyday people. Her reconfigurations have a positive goal. Additionally, they have a healthy impact on Jack, who discovers, “That was what Miss Volker had been teaching us all these years” (407). The “that” refers to history’s ghastly quality. Rather than let history guide Jack into mistakes and calamities, Jack has history lead him out of bad choices. The reason why Jack stops dropping the water balloons at the novel’s end is because of history. He lets history impact his present actions; in this way, history—including its many wrongdoings—becomes Jack’s guiding moral compass.
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