45 pages • 1 hour read
Kawai Strong WashburnSharks In The Time Of Saviors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 4, Chapters 32-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Revival”
Chapter 32 Summary: “Kaui, 2009, Honoka‘a”
Kaui takes her father for runs. She thinks she is good for him, but she also hates being “a nanny or nurse” (318).
Kaui accepts a job at a local farm. The farmer is just getting started and can only afford to pay her with food. She likes working with her hands again and “making things again, building toward something besides bedsheets and towels and washcloths for Dad” (323).
Chapter 33 Summary: “Dean, 2009, County Correctional Facility, Oregon”
Dean is becoming a successful businessman, providing inmates with drugs and other items they desire. “[W]hat I am, is good at being the bad guy,” he says (325).
Chapter 34 Summary: “Kaui, 2009, Honoka‘a”
Kaui is working in the field at Hoku’s farm. She is “something like asleep” when she sees visions of dancing women. She thinks, “Hula dreams” (329). She tells Hoku, “There’s something here. I can feel it. Something big” (332).
Chapter 35 Summary: “Dean, 2009, Portland”
Dean is released from prison. He calls Khadeja and convinces her to pick him up. They talk about Nainoa. Dean tells her,
And all the while him having to figure out his abilities, the gods and what they wanted or whatever. The path he was supposed to take. The more I talk about it the more I realize he was probably way lonely. Lonely in a way that never made sense for me until I was in lockup. [...] if the one thing you are, the part you always figured would be your best, if that gets taken away, the next day… The next day it’s like you’re carrying around your whole future like a dead body on your back (339).
Part 4, Chapters 32-35 Analysis
begun the process of rediscovering herself after dropping out of college and abandoning her dream to become an engineer. Of course, that dream was undeniably influenced by her rivalry with Nainoa and her resulting desire to prove herself. Though this dream has crumbled, Kaui derives pleasure and purpose from her new job on the farm. This supports the novel’s recurring nature motif and its back-to-the-land theme, as Kaui finds fulfillment in working the land of her ancestors.
In prison, Dean recasts himself as the family’s new savior, reversing roles with Nainoa by sending money from his growing drug business back home to Hawai‘i. After his release, he resolves his sibling rivalry with Nainoa by realizing that the two had a lot in common. When Dean says, “if the one thing you are, the part you always figured would be your best, if that gets taken away, the next day… The next day it’s like you’re carrying around your whole future like a dead body on your back” (339), he could be talking about his own basketball ambitions or Nainoa’s paramedic career. Both experienced loneliness and abandoned their best talents, which threw them both into a depressive tailspin, feeling devoid of purpose.
