77 pages • 2 hours read
Will HobbsBearstone
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 21-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
For several days, Cloyd visits the hospital, but they won’t let him see Walter yet. He has the nurse place his bearstone on Walter’s nightstand. When finally he can talk to Walter, the old man glances at the bearstone: “I sure appreciated seeing that blue bear of yours” (143). Wanting Walter to know how much he means to him, Cloyd gives the stone to Walter. The old man starts to object, but he sees in Cloyd’s eyes the soul, not of a boy, but a man. Feeling a new sense of joy, he accepts the gift gratefully.
School begins, and Cloyd moves back to the group home. He’s determined to learn how to read, and the school gives him a tutor. He continues to visit Walter every day. After some weeks, though, the man seems worse. Cloyd hears that Walter can no longer care for himself and must sell the ranch and move to a nursing home.
Cloyd talks to his school’s bus drivers and finds one who lives near Walter’s ranch and can give him a lift to the bus. When he returns to his group home, he finds that his stuff is packed, and a new kid has moved into his room. Susan tells him the tribe has heard about Cloyd’s hard work at school and wants him to continue his studies at White Mesa.
He tells Susan that Walter will die in a nursing home and should instead be on the ranch, where Cloyd can take care of him. Susan asks him to think it over. He goes for a walk and realizes he’s already decided. Walter needs him, and Cloyd wants to follow that path.
Chapter 22 Summary
In November, Cloyd mixes cement in the ranch house basement to repair the damaged wall. Walter sits in a chair at the top of the stairs and offers advice. The work is going well. Cloyd is proud of it.
Walter likes to cook, and Cloyd does the shopping. He sometimes does so during lunch break at school; the teachers let him store the groceries in the lounge. Walter helps Cloyd write a letter to his sister, telling her about everything that’s happened since Cloyd came to the ranch.
A truck from a local nursery arrives at the ranch. The driver hands over a receipt for 22 peach-tree seedlings, already paid for, addressed to Cloyd Attcity. Walter looks at Cloyd, who says, “I bought them. It was a surprise” (154). The driver is skeptical about growing peach trees in the region. Walter winks at Cloyd and declares that “we’ll sure give it a try” (154).
Chapters 21-22 Analysis
The final chapters cement Cloyd and Walter’s relationship: The boy, grown into a man by summer’s end, decides to care for the person he considers his new father. He rejects an offer that, three months earlier, he would eagerly have accepted, an invitation from the Ute council at White Mesa for him to return to school there. Cloyd is no longer that boy; though he loves his grandmother and feels grateful to his Ute community, his destiny lies elsewhere.
The story’s opening and closing chapters serve as bookends: They begin with a lost boy who finds his biological father dying in a hospital, and they end, six months later, with a young man nursing back to health a newfound father. Cloyd the boy and Cloyd the man, though the same person, are miles apart in maturity. In his search for a father, Cloyd grows into someone able fully to participate in family life and to care for and about others. In this way, he helps to create and become worthy of his new family.
The author says that “the big themes in Bearstone are found in a saying of Cloyd’s grandmother, ‘Live in a good way,’ and in a saying of Walter's, ‘The hurt you get over makes you stronger.’ That's definitely what Bearstone is all about.” (Hobbs, Will. “Bearstone and Beardance.” Will Hobbs Author, accessed Oct 1, 2022.)
In his book Twilight of the Idols, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” In the same chapter, he also declares, “He who has a Why? in life can tolerate almost any How?” Cloyd knows what he wants; he faces dangers and heartaches but keeps rising up from them and moving forward toward his goal. He does so partly through the power of a towering aspiration to achieve the spiritual greatness of his Ute forebears and partly by following his grandmother’s advice about conducting himself in a noble and generous manner.
Cloyd completes his connection to Walter by giving of himself to the wise and kindly man whom he loves and cares for. By valuing others, Cloyd becomes valuable; by loving them, he, too, becomes truly lovable. As he learns to appreciate his world, he appreciates also himself. Filled with that gentle confidence, he can do anything to which he sets his mind.
Cloyd and Walter continue their adventures in a sequel, Beardance.
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