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 23-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: “Stella”
Stella and Will continue skating around the frozen pond while Stella continues ignoring the numerous alerts on her phone. The alerts continue, and Stella reads a message that says, “LUNGS. THREE HOURS UNTIL THEY ARRIVE. WHERE ARE YOU???” (234). Stella struggles to absorb this information as she considers how a lung transplant would require total separation from Will—“isolation, even, to keep the B. cepacia far away from me” (234). After a brief moment of contemplation, Stella chooses time with Will over new lungs. The couple continue twirling on the frozen pond. Will confesses that he loves Stella. In response, Stella does not resist her urge to run to Will. She rushes toward him until they collide, laughing as they fall to the ice together. They hear the ice breaking beneath them and rush off to solid ground.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Will”
Will receives a text, but Stella attempts to take his phone from him. In their playful struggle, he reads the repeated messages from his mother: “LUNGS FOR STELLA. GET BACK NOW” (238). Instantly excited, Will informs Stella of the good news. She surprises him with her apathy. They argue. As Will moves to call the hospital and Stella moves to stop him, she stumbles down onto the frozen pond. Stella laughs until “the ice shatters beneath her, sucking her in, the dark water swallowing her whole” (239).
Chapter 25 Summary: “Stella”
Stella struggles to breathe in the water as she “sinks deeper and deeper, the cold pushing the air out of [her] lungs, bubbles pouring out of [her] and up to the surface” (240). She loses grasp of Patches, her stuffed panda bear, and reaches for him in the dark, cold water. Stella grabs hold of a hand reaching out to her as her body is “heaved effortlessly out of the water” (241). Expecting to see Will, Stella is shocked to see that it is Abby who saves her. Stella and Abby hear Will’s voice calling out Stella’s name; they look down to see Stella’s chest rising and falling. Will attempts to resuscitate Stella, who notes from afar, “every breath he gets, he gives to me” (242-43). As Will breathes life into Stella, Abby fades away. Stella turns desperately to her sister in search of “the unanswered question” that has plagued her since Abby’s death. Abby responds, “It didn’t hurt. I wasn’t scared” (243). Abby wishes Stella goodbye despite Stella’s pleas for her to stay. Abby reassures Stella that she will be close and implores Stella to live.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Will”
Will desperately tries to resuscitate Stella, even though he knows “deep in [his] chest that it is the last breath [he] will ever get” (244). Exhausted, Will collapses on top of Stella.
Chapters 23-26 Analysis
Stella’s newfound freedom culminates in her choosing a shorter life with Will over an extended life without him. Once her primary goal, Stella’s lung transplant now forces her to choose the life she wants to live. She exercises her free will in choosing a life with Will. However, reality reemerges when Stella faces death by drowning in the frozen pond. She loses hold of her stuffed panda bear from childhood and faces the loss of the remaining vestiges of her innocence.
As Stella struggles to survive, she encounters Abby in the afterlife. This scene mirrors Stella’s own theory of death shared with Will on their first official date. In this hidden underworld, Abby begs Stella to live for her, a reversal of how Abby once lived the bold life Stella never could. While Stella communes with Abby, Will offers up his own life as the ultimate sacrifice. Despite his impaired lungs and the potential cost to his own life, he does not hesitate to breathe new life into Stella.
