43 pages • 1 hour read
William P. YoungThe Shack
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Foreword-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Foreword Summary
The Foreword frames the narrative of Chapters 1-18 as a story written down by Willie, a friend of the main character, Mackenzie Allen Phillips (Mack). Mack has a wife and five children and is in his mid-fifties at the time of Willie’s writing. Two of their children are grown and live elsewhere, but the youngest three—Josh, Kate, and Missy—are still at home. Mack’s wife, Nan, has a faith expressed in a deeply intimate relationship with God. She refers to God as “Papa,” a term of endearment that Mack is not comfortable using in his own spiritual life. This stems, at least in part, from Mack’s trauma at the hands of his own father, who was abusive and had an alcohol addiction. When Mack was 13 years old, his father tortured him for seeking help from someone outside the family: “For almost two days, tied to the big oak at the back of the house, he was beaten with a belt and Bible verses every time his dad woke from a stupor and put down his bottle” (8). In response, Mack fled his home and never returned, spending years working overseas and attending a seminary before moving to Oregon to start his family.
Willie writes the Foreword seven years after an experience that the book refers to as “the Great Sadness”—the disappearance of Mack’s daughter Missy—and three years after another experience that proved transformational to Mack’s life—his meeting with God at the shack. Those two experiences form the narrative of the chapters that follow.
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Confluence of Paths”
It is a several years after “the Great Sadness” of Missy’s disappearance. As a late-season snowstorm strikes his area, Mack walks down his driveway to check the mailbox. There he finds a note from someone who identifies as “Papa,” inviting Mack to the shack the following weekend. This troubles him because the shack is the place where Missy was murdered, so he suspects it is either a cruel prank or the kidnapper’s attempt to lure him back.
Mack calls the post office to ascertain where the note came from, but without success. He talks to Nan on the phone because the storm is preventing her from getting home. They reflect on the difficulties their daughter Kate has been having, as Missy’s disappearance took a significant emotional toll on her. Nan’s sentiments echo many of Mack’s own feelings: “I’ve been praying and praying that Papa would help us find a way to reach her, but […] it feels like he isn’t listening” (21). Papa—the same name that appeared on the mysterious note in the mailbox—is the name Nan uses for God.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Gathering Dark”
Nan and the kids arrive home after the storm. Mack, meanwhile, reflects on the inescapable weight of “the Great Sadness,” which “[has] draped itself around Mack’s shoulders like some invisible but almost tangibly heavy quilt” (25).
The story shifts back in time to the events around Missy’s disappearance. Mack has taken the three younger children (Josh, Kate, and Missy) on a final summer camping trip. They head off into the Oregon wilderness, pausing along the way at Multnomah Falls at Missy’s request. She loves the legend of a princess of the Multnomah tribe who sacrificed herself for her people by jumping over the falls to stop a plague. Afterwards, the family continues on their journey until reaching Wallowa Lake State Park, where they set up camp. As they are going to bed, Missy interrupts their prayer time to ask questions about Jesus, whose story of self-sacrifice is similar to the Multnomah legend. Missy wonders if the stories imply that God is mean since in both cases God (or the Great Spirit) seems to require an innocent death. Mack responds, “Sweetheart, Jesus didn’t think his daddy was mean. He thought his daddy was full of love and loved him very much. His daddy didn’t make him die. Jesus chose to die because he and his daddy love you and me and everyone in the world” (31). Missy, reflecting one more time on the story of the Multnomah princess, asks, “Will God ever ask me to jump off a cliff?” (32). Mack assures her that no such thing will ever happen, and then they go to sleep.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Tipping Point”
Mack and the kids make friends with two other families at the campground, with whom they share meals, stories, and laughter. Conversation leads naturally to Nan, and Mack shares how her faith empowers her work with terminal cancer patients. The new friends ask if Nan’s habit of calling God “Papa” is a family-wide practice, but Mack says no: “The kids have picked it up some, but I’m not comfortable with it. It just seems a little too familiar for me” (38).
On the final morning of their camping trip, Josh and Kate ask if they can go canoeing while Mack starts packing up. Mack agrees, reminding them to be careful. Missy remains at the campsite with her father, working on a coloring book at the picnic table. A few minutes later, Kate calls for Mack’s attention from the canoe, lifting her paddle to wave happily at him. The motion causes the canoe to lose balance and tip over, and within just a few moments’ time it becomes clear that Josh is in danger, having not reappeared above the surface with Kate. Mack plunges in and frees his son, who got tangled in the canoe webbing; he believes that the crisis has been averted.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Great Sadness”
As Mack looks back toward the campsite, he notices that Missy is no longer coloring at the table. Though Mack tries to remain calm, it quickly becomes apparent that the situation is serious. A frantic search around the campground yields no clues at first, but soon a witness emerges who saw Missy being driven away in a green truck. Local law enforcement and the FBI join the case, and as an officer walks Mack back through the campsite, Mack notices something strange: a small ladybug pin set on Missy’s coloring book. This information is relayed to the FBI office, and Mack hears the developing theory of what happened: Missy has been kidnapped by a serial killer, the Little Ladykiller, who targets young girls. This murderer has already taken four known victims, leaving a similar ladybug pin at each crime scene. While Mack has been feeling a growing sense of alarm, this news cuts deep: “[…] he was swept helplessly away in the unrelenting and merciless grip of growing despair” (53-54).
Nan arrives and husband and wife try to console each other. Eventually, however, they decide that Nan and the two remaining kids should go home while Mack stays to assist in the search for clues. The first such clue is the discovery of a green truck matching the witness’s description abandoned along the rutted backroads of a nearby wilderness reserve. The scent dogs track the trail to what appears to be the scene of a murder: “a rundown little shack near the edge of a pristine lake barely half a mile across, fed by a cascading creek a hundred yards away” (61-62). Inside the shack is Missy’s bloodstained dress, but the body is nowhere to be found.
Chapter 4 ends with a description of the emotional toll of this experience on the rest of the family, leading back to the day when Mack received the strange note from “Papa” in his mailbox.
Foreword-Chapter 4 Analysis
The Foreword and the first four chapters serve as the introduction and backstory to the main narrative of The Shack. The Foreword is notable for the ambiguity of its composition. The implication could be that “Willie” is in fact The Shack’s author, William P. Young, but the novel never directly addresses the question of Willie’s identity vis-à-vis the author. Regardless, the literary frame of the Foreword (and the very brief After Words at the end of the novel) lends a sense of credence to the narrative. Willie’s role as storyteller renders the narrative something more than just Mack’s story; it is Mack’s story as witnessed by a friend who can attest to the transformations in Mack’s life. The Foreword thus functions as an affidavit, affirming the story’s credibility.
Most of the story (Chapters 5-17) concerns Mack’s encounter with God several years after Missy’s disappearance, and the early chapters differ from those sections not only in timeline but also in literary style. Whereas most of the following sections center on dialogues, these early chapters focus on the action of two plotlines: one involving the mysterious note and the other the backstory of Missy’s abduction. Because they serve as an introduction, these chapters do not yet include several of the story’s central characters. Mack’s family members tend to serve as supporting characters; the narrative’s primary focus is on Mack’s interactions with the three members of the Trinity, none of whom have yet appeared.
Despite their differences from the rest of the text, these chapters are essential to establishing the depth of the trauma with which Mack must deal in his later conversations. The primary theme that emerges here relates to making sense of this suffering. Most of the themes that dominate the rest of the novel are not yet present, as they are introduced by the Trinitarian characters in the conversations to come. The storyline in this section focuses on the events and experience of “the Great Sadness,” which has left emotional and spiritual wounds deep in Mack’s life. The backstory lays out the problem that all the rest of the book tries to address: how there can be a good God, one who claims to care about people, when such hideous things happen to innocents like Missy. When in the throes of “the Great Sadness,” it seems impossible to Mack that what has happened to him could have any meaning—still less that he could ever trust God again.
The shack itself is the primary symbol in the early chapters. It is referenced several times, both in the mysterious note and during the search for Missy. When the search team discovers it in Chapter 4, it represents the end of the search for Missy and the desolation of Mack’s hopes. With the discovery of Missy’s blood-stained dress, what has happened to her becomes clear, and the period of “the Great Sadness” begins. The shack becomes symbolic of the whole traumatic episode of Missy’s disappearance.
