38 pages • 1 hour read
Chuck PalahniukInvisible Monsters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A 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 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Shannon McFarland is inside a home that is burning down. The day began as a celebration of a wedding, but now the bride, Evie Cottrell, is on the stairs with a shotgun in her hands, her wedding dress burned off, and her hair charred to the scalp. Brandy Alexander lies on the floor, shot in the chest by Evie. As the house burns, the guests stand outside waiting for the fire trucks. Brandy begs Shannon to tell the story of her life before she dies.
Chapter 2 Summary
In her mind, Shannon travels through her own life, remembering her parents and her brother Shane, the domestic issues in her family, and Shane’s death of complications from AIDS. Shannon recalls falling in love with a police detective, Manus Kelley, and running away to become a supermodel. Shannon’s recollections quickly move through time, settling just a few days ago when she, Brandy, and Manus toured a home for sale. Brandy makes up names for the three of them and convinces the real estate broker to allow her and Shannon to tour the home alone. They go straight upstairs to the main bathroom where they search the medicine cabinet for artificial female hormones and pain medications. Brandy needs the hormones because she is preparing for gender confirmation surgery. Brandy takes a large dose of painkillers and lays down for a rest as Shannon continues the search, silently struggling with the direction in which her life is going.
Chapter 3 Summary
Months earlier, Shannon is driving on the highway when she is shot through the driver side window. She drives herself to the hospital to receive treatment. Pictures are taken of her wounds, but Shannon is not allowed to see them. As she recovers, she receives visits from her fiancé, police detective Manus Kelley, and best friend, Evelyn “Evie” Cottrell, another model. Shannon begs Manus to show her the pictures, but he refuses because the doctors are concerned the damage to her face will cause Shannon to become depressed. Shannon is a model, and the gunshot destroyed her lower jaw.
As Shannon lies in her hospital room recovering, she watches infomercials on television, including one she did with Evie and in which Manus appeared. She recalls how she and Manus went sailing after the infomercial shoot. It was a magical afternoon. In the hospital, Manus ends their engagement, so one of the nuns at the hospital attempts to set Shannon up with several other patients with similar injuries. Shannon is concerned because without her lower jaw, she cannot talk, eat, or make a living as she did before. She begins seeing a speech therapist, but struggles to learn to speak again.
On the day her bandages are removed, Shannon visits a grocery store. A child calls Shannon a monster and this causes a commotion during which Shannon shoplifts a turkey. Later, Shannon and Brandy meet in the speech therapist’s office, but does not reveal her name or identity. Shannon tries out one of the many lies she has concocted to explain her injuries. Brandy shows her how to fashion a veil over her face. Brandy advises Shannon “when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan…then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be” (44).
Chapter 4 Summary
After the house tour, Shannon, Brandy, and Manus are stopped at the Canadian border as they attempt to cross back into the United States. Brandy makes up stories about their identities, convincing the border guard that they are part of a televangelist family. Despite the entertaining story, the guard insists on seeing their passports, but Brandy gave him fake names they cannot support with documents.
Chapter 5 Summary
Shannon remembers an afternoon she and Evie spent at Brumbach’s Department Store, where they used to perform improvised dramas in the furniture displays when they were in modeling school. Shannon recalls an afternoon when Evie and Shannon spoke about their childhoods and Shannon told Evie that her parents loved Shane more because he was scarred in a fire when they were young. Evie questions Shannon about Shane’s death and whether she knows for sure that he’s dead.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Tone and point of view are immediately established in the first pages of the book. The humorous and satirical tone mocks American society’s views about beauty. The narrator is a young woman wearing a veil for reasons the reader does not instantly discover. She appears to be hiding from something, though what that might be is unclear, though this seems to be an instrument in the overarching satire of the book.
Chaos breaks out in the first chapter with the burning house, the bride’s burned hair and dress, and the wounded woman on the floor. The chaos is reflected in the non-linear narration as the story is told in continuous flashbacks with the present established only in the first chapter and the concluding few.
Three main characters are introduced in the first chapter: the narrator—later revealed to be Shannon McFarland—Brandy Alexander, and Evie Cottrell. Their relationships are not established until later chapters, but by the fact that one character has shot another, and the narrator has lit the house on fire, there appears to be tension between the three. Brandy asks the narrator to tell her life story, but the narrator knows she must also reflect on her own story to do so. This sets up the rest of the novel, creating the first section of the bookends that anchor the story.
The themes of identity and beauty are illuminated as Shannon begins to tell her story by describing how she was shot and placed in the hospital to recover. Shannon is a model, and by losing her conventional beauty, she loses her career. The people around her anticipated this loss of identity to cause her to fall into depression, so they prevent her from seeing pictures of her wound; however, Shannon appears to be managing the accident with great strength, showing that her sense of self-worth is not dependent on her looks. However, the day Shannon gets her bandages off and a child calls her a monster, she begins to see firsthand the impact her changed appearance will have in society. Shannon takes it in stride, even discovering that because of the ensuing chaos, she could shoplift a turkey without notice. This foreshadows Shannon’s eventual acceptance of how her injuries have changed her relationship to society, as well as the reveal that this was Shannon’s desired effect when she admits that the gunshot was self-inflicted at the end of the novel.
These early chapters also begin to contextualize Shannon’s relationships with Brandy and Evie. Sometime after her injuries are healed, Shannon begins traveling with her friend, Brandy, stealing drugs from homes that are for sale. The purpose of this is to support Brandy in her desire to get gender confirmation surgery, as Shannon and Brandy share a desire to exert greater control over their identities and to leave past identities behind
The reader sees Shannon with Evie for the first time, and it is a relaxed meeting that gives some insight into the friendship they once had. One thing to note during this particular meeting is Evie’s curiosity about Shannon’s brother, Shane. This is the first real introduction of Shane, and it seems like just a casual conversation in which Evie shows interest in Shannon’s brother. However, this conversation is one of many that foreshadows a moment later in the novel in which Shannon learns Evie is a friend of Brandy’s, and that Evie knows more about Shannon’s past than she realized.
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