50 pages • 1 hour read
Anita ShreveThe Pilot's Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
In another snapshot memory, Jack takes Kathryn flying for the first time, just the two of them in a small airplane. Kathryn is nervous, but becomes quickly terrified as Jack performs some aerobatic maneuvers. When he is finished, he realizes that she is crying, but when he apologizes, she replies: “That was thrilling” and means it sincerely (77).
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Upon hearing of the investigators’ suicide theory, Kathryn immediately wants to be with Mattie. She drives across town at sunrise and is confronted with the normalcy and memories that surround her in Ely. Mattie is still sleeping when she arrives, seemingly at peace, but Kathryn soon realizes that she is biting her bedsheet in frustration.
Julia is awake and making breakfast that Kathryn is not able to eat. She is shocked when Julia admonishes her, saying that she needs to be strong for Mattie. After they attempt to eat breakfast, Kathryn and Mattie take a walk behind Julia’s house. Mattie questions whether they should celebrate Christmas and brings up the topic of the funeral. Kathryn does not have the answers to any of her questions but, when asked, says Mattie should come to the funeral for closure. Mattie replies that she does not want closure. She breaks away from Kathryn, but then waits for her up ahead on the path. They sit on a rock together, and Mattie tells her that she’s had sex with a boy she used to date. Kathryn is shocked by this and what it reveals about the state of her relationship with Mattie. Mattie brings up her last interaction with Jack, worrying that she hurt his feelings, and Kathryn reassures her.
When they return to the house, Julia tells Kathryn that Robert has called. The investigators are at her house and want to interview her. Robert picks her up and she asks him for guidance about the interview. He tells her that the supposed contents of the CVR have been leaked to the media and seem to support the suicide theory.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
In the past, Kathryn, Jack, and Mattie have just finished eating dinner. Jack has gone to his office, and Kathryn finds him there and confronts him about how distant he has been. Jack refuses to admit that anything is wrong. When she won’t let it go, he asks if she wants him to leave. Jack goes back into his office and slams the door. Moments later, he opens the office door and throws his computer monitor down the stairs. Mattie comes out of her room, and though Kathryn wants to shield her, none of them can deny what has happened. Jack draws them all into a hug and for a time, after the incident, Kathryn and Jack try to reestablish their connection. After a brief time, however, their relationship goes back to the way it was, and Kathryn convinces herself that it is normal for a married couple to become distant.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary
When Robert and Kathryn return to her house, it is mobbed by journalists, and the two can barely get the car through to the gate. She is relieved after they are behind the gate, but her relief is short-lived, as there are several cars parked outside her house. Inside, the investigators from the Safety Board, as well as people from the airline, the chief pilot among them, wait to speak with her. When she asks about the recording, the investigator says that it hasn’t been released and that he does not know what is on it. Kathryn doesn’t believe him.
The investigators ask her about Jack’s mental state and anyone he may have contacted, but she remembers nothing unusual about the day he died. When a woman interrupts to tell her that Mattie is on the phone, Kathryn panics. Mattie is upset because a friend of hers told her about the suicide theory, which is now circulating on the media. While Kathryn is adamant that it is not true, Mattie is not sure, wondering how they would know. Kathryn tells Mattie that she will come to Julia’s, but Mattie asks for space and to be left alone. After they hang up, Kathryn returns to the investigators, angry at being kept in the dark. Because they will not give her any information about the investigation, she ends the interview.
Kathryn escapes the house, going down to a secluded part of the beach. She reflects on her childhood and the security and sanctuary that Julia provided for her, protecting her from her parents’ behavior. Robert comes to find her, supportive of her choice to end the interview. Kathryn sees the need for the funeral, but shies away from all the decisions to be made. Instead, she talks about a girl who had drowned just off the shore, and how suddenly disaster can strike. Robert suggests that Kathryn and Mattie travel, then suggests she go to Malin Head, on the coast of Ireland, where some of the passengers’ families are waiting for the salvage operation to be complete. She cannot think of anything worse.
When they return to the house, Kathryn makes a statement to the investigators with everything she thinks they need to know. The investigator responds by asking about Jack’s mother, and when she says that his mother is dead, she can tell that he knows something she does not. The investigator tells her that Jack’s mother is alive and living in a care facility in Minnesota.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
In the past, Kathryn, Jack, and Mattie, who is five years old, are walking on the beach. Jack is withdrawn. Kathryn asks him what is wrong, but he brushes her off. He has been traveling a lot and is short with her. She gets angry and walks away. He apologizes, telling her that it is his mother’s birthday. Kathryn, believing that his mother is dead, is sympathetic and asks about her. He tells her that she died quickly, from breast cancer. Suddenly, Jack sees Mattie, caught in the surf, knocked down by a wave. He pulls her out onto the shore, away from the undertow, and the three of them hug and huddle together.
Part 1, Chapters 6-10 Analysis
In these chapters, Shreve develops Jack’s character more thoroughly, specifically his love of risk. When he takes Kathryn flying, Jack clearly loves the peril of aerobatics; in contrast, Kathryn is terrified. With this scene, Shreve illustrates the differences between Kathryn and Jack—risks exhilarate him, but alarm her. Love of risk is one of Jack’s dominant traits, and everything Kathryn will find out about him later will make sense in this context. Shreve provides more evidence of his love of risk in Chapter 7. Kathryn reflects that although routine was part of Jack’s job, when he was not working he wanted spontaneity: “He preferred to think of the possibilities and be ready for them” (80). Shreve is building an impression of Jack as spontaneous and daring; his actions and secrets will make sense in light of these traits.
Shreve also deepens Kathryn’s childhood, as well as Julia’s important role in her life. With backstory, the reader can begin to understand Kathryn’s relationship with Jack in the context of her childhood, her parents, and the example of her parents’ marriage. Kathryn’s inability to confront Jack and her acceptance of the distance between them might seem implausible until Shreve fills in Kathryn’s personal history. It begins to make sense that, even when she finally confronts Jack, she can barely bring herself to do it. She feels like her mother with her “pleading voice, begging her husband to tell her she is beautiful” (103).
Kathryn feels as if she has become needy like her mother. Jack still avoids answering her questions, leaving the room, slamming the door, and even throwing his computer down the stairs, a shocking action that precludes any further confrontation or discussion. When he asks if she wants him to leave, Kathryn is astonished. Shreve suggests that Jack is hoping that Kathryn will end their marriage, saving him from having to make the choice, even though Kathryn doesn’t see this.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Kathryn continues to insist that she and Jack had a good marriage, a motif that runs throughout the novel. She describes their relationship as being like that of other couples in long-term relationships, “in a state of gentle decline, of being infinitesimally, but not agonizingly, less” (107). Kathryn is not fazed by their distance, and draws the conclusion that “on the whole [...] it is a good marriage” (107). Shreve raises the question of whether Kathryn is rationalizing, or whether she sees her relationship as healthy compared to her parents’ all-consuming, dramatic dynamic. Kathryn’s assertion about her marriage is undermined by another revelation about Jack’s capacity for Keeping Secrets, when Kathryn finds out that Jack’s mother, who he told her was dead, turns out to be alive.
In Chapter 7, Mattie continues to chart her own path through grief. When Kathryn says that Mattie should go to the funeral for closure, Mattie objects: “I have to keep it open as long as I can” (89). Mattie has the luxury of being taken care of in her grief, while Kathryn, as an adult, has to grapple with the investigation. However, even though she is a teenager, Mattie offers insight into the grieving process, and is honest about identifying and articulating her own needs. Through the character of Mattie, Shreve explores the evolution of the mourning process.
In Chapter 7, Shreve again explores the theme of Keeping Secrets when Mattie tells Kathryn she is sexually active. Kathryn had no idea and is forced to consider how well we really know even our closest loved ones. Later, Mattie will raise this idea again when considering the question of her father’s possible suicide in her typical head-on way, wondering: “But how do you ever know that you know a person?” (118) When Kathryn responds that they know Jack, Mattie proves her point: Kathryn thinks she knows Mattie, and yet she had not known about her having sex. As Mattie says: “Half the time you have no idea what I’m thinking” (118). In her unique way of Navigating Grief, Mattie confronts the idea that if her father detonated the bomb, then he is guilty of murder, while Kathryn once again shies away from that possibility. In this way, Mattie is a foil to Kathryn, or a character that illuminates another character through contrasting traits.
Kathryn raises the idea of class again, alluding to a thematic thread of the Fortune’s Rocks series. As she drives through Ely, Kathryn remembers her friends growing up in poverty: She “had friends who lived in trailers, or who had no central heat in the winter, or whose houses would remain dark and shuttered the entire day so that their father’s or uncles could sleep” (123). Yet, as she points out, what made her homelife unusual was her parents’ relationship—not the fact that they “fought often and drank every day,” but that they “they didn’t behave like adults'' (123). By drawing this connection, Shreve pulls back from the larger themes of the series and delves into the specific issues of this novel, illustrating how Kathryn’s parents dominate her views of marriage.
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