51 pages • 1 hour read
Under a Painted Sky
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Chapters 23-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary
Sammy has not drowned, but instead is saved by West. While she survives, Lady Tin-Yin, her violin, does not. This is a great loss for Sammy, for not only had the violin been in her extended family for four generations, it was the only valuable family heirloom that survived the fire outside of the bracelet that her father had given away. Sammy considers the violin like a friend and mourns its loss. West brings back two important items from his trip to the fort: a notebook and a map.
Chapter 24 Summary
West begins to avoid Sammy, which is obvious to everyone. Andy tells the group another story—this time a romance about a snake, Princess Bonita, and a rabbit, Prince Zachariah. The story is understood differently by the listeners. Peety thinks that the moral is for everyone to stay “on their side of the fence” (212) while Cay thinks the star-crossed lovers should run away together, to which West retorts that “that is impossible, fool” (212). For Sammy, the story means that nothing can stop true love.
Chapter 25 Summary
An encounter with wild stallions turns ugly and results in West being injured and the stallions being killed. As Andy sews up West’s wound, West nuzzles Sammy’s neck. Everyone is upset by what took place.
Chapter 26 Summary
While Sammy obviously hovers over the injured West, the mood is lightened by some mild flirtation between Peety and Andy. Peety even picks flowers to enhance the meal that he has prepared. Unfortunately, he has put onions into it and Andy is barely able to contain her horror, running away to the river when she realizes what Peety has done. The woman Peety has mentioned several times, Esme, turns out to be his younger sister. West is not recovering well from his injury, and Sammy fears that he might die. In a desperate move to get him to eat, she shares kisses of broth with him, which causes him to turn away from her with his eyes “shrouded in pain” (232).
Chapter 27 Summary
As they get closer to a fork in the road, Andy starts preparing Sammy for the time when they will separate. Sammy knows that, if she does not catch up with her father’s friend soon, she will lose all hope of recovering her mother’s bracelet. However, her friendship with Andy has grown so strong that she offers to continue with her friend to Harp Falls instead. The pink ribbons that Andy uses to bind her breasts are exposed in the laundry. Sammy thinks of letting Peety see them but decides that she cannot betray her friend that way.
Chapter 28 Summary
Andy agrees to let Sammy continue travelling with her to meet Isaac at Harp Falls. The reason behind Andy’s revulsion for onions is revealed: It was used to silence her and her youngest brother while they were enslaved. Sammy plays a piano that has been abandoned by the emigrants along the trail. The owner of the piano hears her playing and invites the group to a French dinner party at the wagon camp.
Chapter 29 Summary
The French emigrants are described as being considerably less racist than many other Europeans or Americans. Some history about why people joined the Westward Expansion is given. For these French emigrants, they were escaping a land ravaged by Napoleon’s war. Others were seeking their fortune now that fur trapping was no longer lucrative. Cay is in his element, flirting with all the pretty French girls. He is not the only one, as West is seen in a compromising situation with one of the French girls. The innocent Sammy initially thinks that the girl was being attacked. Sammy turns 16.
Chapter 30 Summary
The group celebrates Sammy’s sweet 16 with a birthday breakfast. Peety gives her a bow and arrow as a gift. He also reveals the tragic story of his youngest sister, Esme, who was kidnapped in a market when only five years old.
Chapter 31 Summary
They arrive at Independence Rock, which is the midpoint of the Oregon Trail. Sammy and Andy discuss West’s activity with the French girl. They join a large gathering of travelers, and Sammy hears someone playing violin. It is a little girl, and Sammy cannot resist giving the child a lesson. This leads to a competition between Sammy on violin and a man on banjo. Not only does Sammy love performing, but she also hopes to be able to spot Mr. Trask in the crowd as he would surely be drawn to the music if he were present. She does hear about him and learns that he was on his way to establish a music conservatory in California. Sammy realizes that she has been unfair to her father’s memory. A man behind her quotes a Bible verse.
Chapters 23-31 Analysis
Chapter 23 resolves the cliffhanger of Chapter 22: Sammy does not drown, but rather is rescued by West. Lee makes West a conventional chivalric hero in this moment using the tropes of medieval romance. Indeed, Sammy later has a dream in which they both are outfitted as medieval knights, who are both warriors and lovers as per the rules of Fin Amor or courtly love.
Several episodes in this section relate to the theme of The Role of Music in Identity. While Sammy survives, her beloved violin, Lady Tin-Yin, does not. it severs a tie to Samantha’s past, for the violin and the bracelet were the only family heirlooms to survive the fire. The personified violin symbolizes Sammy’s connection to her heritage and her identity as a musician. Lee further suggests the importance of Sammy’s connection to music when she plays the abandoned piano; she hopes that this will help her to find Mr. Trask and reconnect her to her family heirloom, emphasizing the link between music and identity. This episode also leads to a plot complication that is not revealed until later in the novel, as the MacMartin brothers see Sammy on stage during her musical battle.
Lee reveals details about the earlier traumas of Peety and Andy in order to emphasize the connections between the group. All of the members of the group have suffered in the past, or long for some deeper connection in the present, which is part of why they are drawn together in what later comes to be described as a family.
The romantic subplots develop significantly during this rising action. Sammy is tempted to show Peety the pink ribbons which will reveal to him that Andy is female. Sammy also nurses West from the brink of death by sharing broth with him through kisses. This creates a level of physical intimacy that heightens the romantic tension (something that Lee develops when Sammy feels confused by West’s sexual intimacy with the French girl in Chapter 29). West looks away from Sammy with pain in his eyes, yet moments earlier his lips followed “for a fraction of a second” before allowing her to pull away (232). This ambivalence on the part of West is still ambiguous to Sammy and the reader. Lee creates a subtext that considers both anti-gay bias and Race and Racism in Westward Expansion since the ambiguity relates to whether West is resisting homoerotic urges or resisting because Sammy has Chinese heritage. Lee uses the story that Andy tells about the Princess Bonita and the Prince Zachariah to provide some clues. The rabbit and snake’s disparate backgrounds cause West to reject the possibility of the lovers uniting as something that only a “fool” would believe possible.
The section ends with Sammy’s epiphany that she has misunderstood her father’s motives, and a cliffhanger, as the identity of the man speaking behind her back is left unknown. Lee drives the pace of the novel with this mixture of resolutions and cliffhangers.
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