62 pages • 2 hours read
Geraldine BrooksThe Secret Chord
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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 15-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Batsheva sneaks up to Natan’s house in disguise. He greets her icily, mentally judging her for coming “duplicitous, disguised” (206). She is pregnant again and concerned for her baby. Natan dismissively tells her that God intends the baby no harm. He is taken aback to learn that she fears both him and David. Natan doubts her sincerity, thinking it “easy enough to cry rape, when you are the one who has invited the seduction” (207). He reveals that he blames her for bathing on the roof in view of the palace and for everything that has followed.
Batsheva finds the courage in her anger to challenge Natan’s victim blaming and to insist that David truly did rape her. She sought privacy on the roof. She was too afraid to say no to a man with the power of life and death over others—a fear that Natan suddenly remembers sharing with Yoav. She accuses Natan of still being blinded by love for David, a man who took everything from her: “My child. My husband. My own body. Everything, except my life. Because he can” (209). She is only “hanging on” for the sake of her child.
Natan realizes that he has wronged her. They sit in silence until Batsheva asks again about her unborn child. Natan receives a vision again of the future king. This time he recognizes the child in the vision as the child in Batsheva’s womb. The amazed mother immediately starts wondering what action to take, given that David’s many older children have a better claim to the throne. Natan counsels against action. He sorrowfully promises that upcoming events will reach them soon enough.
Chapter 16 Summary
Natan has been avoiding David’s children up to this point. David, deprived of love in his own childhood, has gone to the opposite extreme and refuses to discipline his children or deny them anything. They are “spoiled nuisances” (214). Natan now wants to be part of the life of Batsheva’s unborn child. He goes to David to ask to be put in charge of raising the child. When David asks why, Natan is ready to lie and manipulate his reputation as a prophet. Instead, to his own surprise, Natan speaks truthfully, saying he has no son of his own and feels that emptiness in his old age. David promises to entrust the raising of Batsheva’s child to him.
Chapter 17 Summary
Five years later, Batsheva and David’s son Shlomo enters Natan’s life. After a major storm, the young boy finds an eagle’s egg that has been knocked to the ground, and he brings it to his future teacher. Together they hatch and raise the baby eagle away from the palace, protecting it from Shlomo’s brothers, who are cruel to animals. Suddenly, raising Shlomo becomes the “whole purpose” (218) of Natan’s life, and it brings him great joy. The insatiably curious child is full of intelligent questions about both nature and people. He begins to speculate about leadership too. He wonders whether society places too much value on bravery in warfare and whether a truly great ruler might inspire men just as much in peacetime and reward peaceful skill.
In contrast to Shlomo, the rest of David’s children are living a life of reckless abandon. No one, not even Yoav, dares to punish or even scold them. The older boys, particularly Amnon, the eldest, are cruel and take what they want, including sex, by force. Avshalom, the second-eldest and smartest of Shlomo’s siblings, forbids his beloved sister Tamar from being alone with Amnon. Innocent young Shlomo doesn’t understand this yet, but he soon will.
Chapters 15-17 Analysis
The pacing shifts in these chapters, as the story moves toward its climax. For the rest of the book, chapters are short and fast-paced as the narrative hurtles through years. This allows the reader to see Shlomo’s growth. David’s character arc has been resolved. The new conflict is over who will succeed him, as Brooks makes clear through Natan’s visions of Shlomo and frequent remarks hinting at the tragedies of David’s other children. Shlomo represents the love of peace. With their unrestrained lust for sex and violence, Avshalom and Amnon represent The Patriarchal Abuse of Power.
Brooks also largely abandons the narrative frame in which Natan passively observes events in his present while recording the embedded narratives of other characters. As Natan takes responsibility for his own life and for the kingdom, his point of view becomes more prominent in the narration. Reports by Shlomo and a few others still provide part of the narrative and offer different perspectives, but Natan relates his own observations more often. He even has first-person access to some distant events through visions that occur in real time.
Batsheva’s transformation into a complex, active character is a plot twist with thematic significance. Natan’s first impression of Batsheva is of a child and a willing participant in David’s lust. However, in accordance with the theme of The Hidden Complexity of Character, Brooks makes clear that Batsheva has been misjudged. She is an intelligent woman, a survivor of The Patriarchal Abuse of Power who has no patience for the excuses Natan makes for that abuse. David’s earlier assurance that no problems will come of his adultery with Batsheva since “she has most to lose in this” appears now as tragically ironic (98). In Chapter 15, Batsheva reveals not only that she has lost everything, but that she had already lost something irreplaceable when David make his remark. She had lost her “own body” (209). In revealing the extent of Batsheva’s devastation, Brooks also emphasizes that Batsheva is a rape survivor, not just a victim. She has held herself together in the midst of emotional suffering even while trapped with her assailant. Her ability to find a new path forward, in partnership with Natan, to help her son shows that rape is not the final word; she is a survivor who can forge something good with the rest of her life in spite of others’ abusive power.
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By Geraldine Brooks
