50 pages • 1 hour read
Rachael LippincottFive Feet Apart
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A 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: “Stella”
Stella decorates her room at Saint Grace’s Hospital with art drawn by her sister Abby. Stella’s friends Camila and Mya arrive at the hospital to visit her. They are about to embark on their senior trip to Cabo, a trip Stella will miss as she has been admitted to the hospital for increasingly failing lung function because of cystic fibrosis. She feels at home at the hospital due to her extensive stays since she was six years old. However, now reeling from her parents’ divorce, Stella is even more determined to get well, certain they could not handle losing her after losing their marriage.
After Camila and Mya depart to prepare for their trip, Stella continues to work through her long to-do list and record a live video for her popular YouTube channel where she shares her struggles with cystic fibrosis. During her afternoon check-in with Barb, her respiratory therapist at Saint Grace’s, Stella learns that her friend Poe, who also lives with cystic fibrosis, has also been checked into the hospital. As Stella ventures around the hospital to say hello to Poe, who she finds sleeping, she encounters a handsome young man with a smile that is “lopsided, and charming, and it has a magnetic warmth to it” (22). She overhears the young man, a fellow patient, talking to his friends, a young couple that Stella spotted entering the hospital earlier. Overhearing his plans to let his friends “do it in his room, like it’s a motel” (23), Stella judges the young man and continues on her way.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Will”
This chapter commences with Will exiting his hospital room to see Stella as she retreats down the hallway. He notices Stella carrying a large duffel bag, and how attractive she is, and decides to follow her while his friends make use of his room. Will, who also lives with cystic fibrosis, follows Stella to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or the NICU. Stella views one of the babies through the viewing machine as Will approaches her casually. He observes, “Her eyes meet mine in the reflection of the glass, surprise filling them at first, and then almost immediately changing to something resembling disgust” (27). Will and Stella engage in impassioned banter, as Stella confronts Will over his flippant disregard of hospital rules by allowing his friend Jason and his girlfriend Hope to have sex in his hospital room. Will meets Stella’s disapproval with smug sarcasm, revealing that he noticed Stella’s focused lurking earlier and joking that she must “have something against sex” (29). Flustered, Stella defends herself by sharing that she has had sex before, contrary to Will’s judgment of her.
Barb interrupts their argument and scolds Will for not wearing his mask and for traveling away from the third floor. She reminds him, “You’re not supposed to leave the third floor after that stunt you pulled last week!” (29). Will returns to his empty hospital room, where Hope and Jason have left a note. Will’s mother has transferred him to homeschooling due to his recent diagnosis of B. cepacia, “an antibiotic-resistant bacteria” that will “cut off another huge chunk of [his life span] by making [his] shitty lung function deplete even faster than it already has” (32). She has enrolled Will in a clinical trial at the hospital with the hope of extending his life as much as she can. Will resents his isolation.
Will’s 18th birthday is in two weeks. He reflects on the significance of this birthday: “Two more weeks until I’m in charge. I’ll be off this latest clinical drug trial and out of this hospital and can do something with my life, instead of letting my mom waste it” (33). Will imagines his last day alive without fear; he can imagine the day so clearly he could sketch it. Will searches for information about Stella and discovers her YouTube page. He watches Stella’s first video from six years earlier. In the video she expresses her hope for a lung transplant in high school and the opportunity for a few more years of life.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Chapter 1 begins with a description of Abby’s drawing, which has accompanied Stella during her many visits to Saint Grace’s Hospital over the years. Abby’s drawing depicts a pair of lungs filled with blooming flowers. Stella notes how the “[p]etals burst out from every edge of the twin ovals in soft pinks, deep whites, even heather blues, but somehow each one has a uniqueness, a vibrancy that feels like it’ll bloom forever” (1). The blooming flowers symbolize rebirth and an active life filled with color and excitement. Stella traces the outline of the drawing and wonders “what it would be like to have lungs this healthy. This alive” (1). As the creator of this drawing, Abby represents the active life that Stella longs for and, with Abby’s sudden death last year, Stella feels the loss of her sister’s role as an unhindered extension of herself who lived life fully and adventurously. However, not all the flowers in Abby’s drawing are actively blooming; Stella describes how “[s]ome of the flowers haven’t blossomed yet” and how she “can feel the promise of life just waiting to unfold from the tiny buds under the weight of [her] finger” (1). These budding flowers foreshadow the vibrant transformation Stella will undergo throughout the novel as she grows closer to Will.
Despite Stella’s cheery demeanor on YouTube, she struggles with doubt regarding the possibility and success of a lung transplant. Although she projects positivity, Stella expresses that “after all these years I’ve learned to not get my hopes up too much” (13). Unlike the effervescent drawing she places on her wall, Stella struggles under the pressures of her unresolved grief over Abby’s death and her parents’ dissolved marriage. Barred from attending the senior class trip she diligently planned for, and restricted by her unstable health, Stella grasps at attempts to control her future. She admits, “being here in the hospital for the next month doing treatment after treatment to stem the tide while my friends are far away is freaking me out” (18). Here, at the beginning of the novel, Stella fights against her hidden struggles with guilt, fear, and a loss of hope.
It is in this state that she first meets Will, a new patient at Saint Grace’s. Stella first feels drawn to Will’s smile, which she describes as “magnetic” (22). They both experience this sense of magnetism between them throughout the novel as they attempt to navigate the six feet of physical distance they must maintain at all times. This initial tension grows and intensifies their longing to be together. Despite her immediate attraction to Will, Stella quickly recognizes him as a rule-breaker and classifies him in opposition to her strict adherence to routine and guidelines. Their first conversation occurs by the NICU, Stella’s place of escape, where representations of life and death abound. The newborns in the NICU are full of new life while simultaneously fighting the threat of death, much like Stella and Will.
Will enters the novel two weeks before his 18th birthday, a significant turning point for him as he pines for agency over his life. He reflects on his desires: “No more hospitals. No more being stuck inside whitewashed buildings all over the world as doctors try drug after drug, treatment after treatment, none of them working. If I’m going to die, I’d like to actually live first” (33). Unlike Stella, Will desires complete freedom from routine and guidelines. His definition of living is not merely survival, as Stella interprets it, but a sense of emotional and spiritual liberation that allows him to experience live actively, not passively.
