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 2, Chapter 16-Part 3, Chapter 21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
What stuns Katherine is not only the existence of the child, but also his two different colored eyes, a genetic anomaly that both Jack and Mattie possess. In fact, the baby looks, to Kathryn, exactly like Mattie at that age. There is no doubt he is Jack’s child. When Muire invites her in, she meets another child, an older girl of about four. When they sit down, Kathryn notices that the other woman is wearing a wedding ring. Muire tells her that she and Jack had been married, four and a half years ago, in the Catholic Church. Muire also confirms that she had known about Kathryn all along. She lights a cigarette, which Jack had always said he hated, and tells Kathryn the story of her relationship with Jack. They had met on a flight five years previously, had an affair, and fell in love, but Jack told her he would never leave Mattie.
Kathryn realizes, as Muire talks about her life with Jack, that the times when Jack had a terrible schedule, it was because he was arranging to spend time in London. Kathryn keeps questioning Muire, finally asking her “what happened on Jack’s plane” (222). Muire says she doesn't know, but seems to Kathryn to be lying. They both agree, however, that Jack would not have died by suicide. Muire also says that it was Jack who had pushed for marriage in the Catholic Church, and that he was devout. Kathryn is surprised by this, as in their life together, Jack did not practice any formal religion.
Kathryn excuses herself to go to the bathroom, where she sits and processes all that she has learned. The bathroom is just across from Muire and Jack’s bedroom; she enters it and begins examining everything—the books on the bedside table, the contents of drawers, and finally, the wardrobe. There she finds the robe from Bergdorf Goodman that one of the notes in Jack’s pocket referenced. On her way back downstairs, Kathryn talks to Dierdre, Muire’s daughter. As she is leaving, Muire tells her that she thinks she had it worse, as she had known about Kathryn all along.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary
Kathryn is crying uncontrollably, and goes into a pub. After two beers, she calls Mattie from a payphone, but Mattie is with a boy, the one who she has had sex with. Kathryn feels powerless, but recognizes that there is nothing she can do about what is happening at home right now. She sits on a bench in a nearby park. Her scarf is unraveling, and she pulls the knitting out, undoing the entire scarf.
She returns to her hotel, finally, where she tells Robert what happened, giving him the full extent of the revelations. The next morning, she is feeling slightly better, if only because she thinks that she now knows the worst. She is energetic and hungry for the first time in a long time.
She and Robert go down to the hotel restaurant, where Muire finds them. She apologizes for being cruel to Kathryn the previous day, and tells them that she knows that Jack did not die by suicide. She knows because he was involved, through her family, with the Irish Republican Army. When he met Muire, she was smuggling money from America to Ireland to fund IRA operations. When she became pregnant, however and left the airline, her brother approached Jack about taking over her route. At first, she tells them, Jack was attracted by the risk, but over time, he became passionately committed to the cause. The night before the crash, he got word that he was going to be carrying something from Heathrow to Boston instead of the other way, which had never happened. The bomb was planted by a rival faction to discredit the IRA, and was meant to go off further out over the ocean, where salvage wouldn’t be possible.
When Muire turns to leave, Robert asks her for the names of the other pilots involved in the smuggling ring. Kathryn realizes that he had known all along about the smuggling, and had suspected that Jack was involved. Feeling betrayed, she leaves the restaurant and gets into a taxi. When she arrives at the airport, instead of going home, she books a ticket for Belfast, the closest airport to Malin Head, where the salvage operation is taking place.
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary
In the past, Kathryn walks by the bedroom while Jack is packing on the morning of the crash. She catches a glimpse of a shirt in his bag that she does not recognize. He looks tired and worried, but when she brings it up, he brushes her off. His last words to her are about the dry cleaning and calling the plumber.
Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary
Kathryn drives to Malin Head and checks into a hotel. In the bar, another woman tells her that she is a reporter, and that the press is all in the bar, while the victims’ families stay in the lounge. Kathryn toys with the idea of telling the reporter her entire story, but cannot, because of Mattie, and Muire, and Jack’s children. She is reminded of Robert’s betrayal, and leaves without eating. In the car, she decides that, to protect Mattie, she will not tell anyone what she knows.
She parks at the harbor from which the salvage boats are coming and going. She gets past the guard and onto the pier, where she convinces one of the men to take her out to the site in his boat. Over the actual spot where they found the cockpit, Kathryn looks down into the water, and is finally able to let go of her past with Jack.
Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary
In the past, Kathryn and Jack are getting married, and after the ceremony, drive up to a cabin for their honeymoon. She is pregnant with Mattie, and their life together is beginning.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary
It is the end of summer, about eight months after Jack's death. Mattie has just caught her first fish, using Jack’s old tackle, at the beach behind their house. Kathryn goes to the house to get the camera, reflecting on how she has healed over the past several months. After the real story of the bomb appeared in the media, more was uncovered about the smuggling operation and Muire and her brothers were arrested. As of yet, however, the media has not discovered the secret of Jack’s other marriage, and she has not told Mattie either. Kathryn sometimes wonders what has happened to Muire’s children.
When she gets to the house, Robert is at the door, and he asks if enough time has passed. Instead of answering, she turns to look for the camera, leaving him in the doorway. She takes photos of Mattie, and then the two of them return to the house, where Robert still waits on the porch. Mattie cleans her fish, and Kathryn chats awkwardly with Robert. He apologizes for not telling her what he knew, and she replies that she knows he tried. Kathryn asks him what happened to Muire, and he tells her that she is in prison in Belfast.
Katherine turns to look out over the garden, and sees it from a different angle. She realizes that a piece of stone that she had always thought was a bench was actually part of the chapel she had always searched for. She is pleased by the discovery. When she goes inside, she finds Jack’s old paper with the London telephone number, and calls. When a woman answers, she asks about Muire’s children.
Part 2, Chapter 16-Part 3, Chapter 21 Analysis
In Chapter 16, Kathryn is faced with incontrovertible evidence that Jack’s relationship with Muire was not just an affair. Muire is not just the other woman, but a mother with two children and a home with Jack. Throughout the visit, Kathryn begins to wonder about the depth of her own relationship with Jack when contrasted with the obvious intimacy of his relationship with Muire. She questions her identity and who is the true pilot’s wife. Through this ordeal, the novel explores The Sense of Self In Relationship to Others.
The contrast between Kathryn and Muire’s appearance is great, as is the decor of their homes. Kathryn feels staid and conservative in her funeral suit while Muire and her home, by contrast, are colorful, comfortable, and artsy. The contrast between the two women makes Jack’s betrayal even more devastating. When Muire lights a cigarette, Kathryn’s sense of betrayal grows because Jack has always said he could not stand smoking. Kathryn’s visit to Muire’s house is filled with these betrayals, from the discovery of Jack’s Catholicism to the robe he gave Muire for Christmas. Jack has been Keeping Secrets—not just about Muire or his other life, but about himself, even down to claiming that he hates smokers.
However, even during this tense, stressful meeting, Kathryn is still astute enough to pick up on Muire’s words and think: “What were the things Muire Boland couldn’t talk about?” (220) Kathryn understands that there is still more to the story, still more mysteries to be solved, and characteristically does not back away from questions. Although Jack’s marriage to Muire explains a lot of little things in the history of her own marriage, it still does not solve the bigger mystery of whether Jack had brought a bomb onto a plane and why, nor does it solve the mystery of the CVR recording.
The question of who is the true pilot’s wife will preoccupy Kathryn throughout these final chapters. When she first arrives at Muire’s home, she believes herself to be Jack’s only wife. Yet she moves quickly from thinking that to thinking of herself as “the first wife, the primary wife” (223). From there, her understanding continues to shift as Muire speaks of bidding schedules in the “language of a pilot’s wife” (220). And just a few pages later, Kathryn makes the full leap to a different understanding of Muire’s status with Jack. She asks: “In a man’s mind, who was the more important wife—the woman he sought to protect by not revealing the other? Or the one to whom he told all his secrets?” (223)
Once Muire tells her about Jack’s involvement with the IRA, Kathryn is forced to rethink her position once again. She sees the attraction of a love that is bound with a higher purpose, especially for someone like Jack. She eventually thinks that “the question wasn’t so much why Jack had taken up with Muire Boland and married her in a Catholic church, but rather why he hadn’t left Mattie and Kathryn” (264). These thoughts finally bring her, in Chapter 19, to face the essential question: “Had she herself been the pilot’s wife or had Muire Boland?” (275). Kathryn realizes the answer when she says: “Jack had been, she thought, only another woman’s husband” (275). The intimacy between Jack and Muire makes her his real wife, even if their marriage is not legal. It is only with this realization that Kathryn is finally able to let go of her role as the pilot’s wife, her love, which she calls “a terrible burden” (276), and even her anger.
In Chapter 19, Kathryn is traveling through Ireland with new understanding of Jack’s connection to the IRA. As she drives, she tries to recall what she knows about the Troubles, which is provided in basic information on the news, and which she has no real understanding of. Her perspective is characteristic of the American understanding of the Troubles at the time. Kathryn is astute enough to realize that, with Jack’s love of risk and need for a sense of purpose, his involvement in the IRA makes sense. This is doubly true because of his relationship with Muire and the way it is intertwined with the larger cause: “Just as the cause would have been part of the love affair, the love affair would have been part of the cause, so that you couldn’t, later, have one without the other” (264). On that drive, Kathryn also moves out of the shock of discovering the truth about Jack’s other life and into anger. Jack let her believe that she was somehow at fault, and when they fought he withdrew. She forgives herself for being naive, realizing that she hadn’t found out because Jack hadn’t wanted to get caught.
In Chapter 21, Shreve moves the story several months into the future, showing the final outcome. Mattie and Kathryn have both come through grief. However, Jack is still a part of their lives, as Mattie uses his fishing tackle. Kathryn thinks, as Mattie catches a fish: “Jack should be here” (283). With Robert’s return, Shreve also gives Kathryn a way to move forward, and offers the hope that she will find love again.
Kathryn discovers the remains of the chapel she has been searching for on the property, another example of how a shift in perspective can reveal things one has never noticed. In the end, when Robert tells her that Muire is in prison, Kathryn reaches out to find out what has happened to her children. With this act, Kathryn shows that she has moved on, truly let go of her tumultuous relationship with Jack, and has forgiven Muire. Shreve hints that perhaps Kathryn will become a part of the children’s lives, as they are, after all, Mattie’s half-brother and -sister.
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