63 pages • 2 hours read
Jennings Michael BurchThey Cage the Animals at Night
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
On the subway, Jennings asks his mother why she left him at the home, and she explains vaguely that she was sick and could not take care of everyone. She promises that she will not leave him again. They arrive home to find the house in disarray, and his mother chastises his older brother Larry for not taking better care of his younger brother Gene.
Larry and Jennings exchange stories from the past three months. Larry, who is eleven, stayed at a home and then with a friend of their mothers, Mrs. Keys. Larry misses being in Mrs. Key’s house and seems sad to be at home. Jennings’ adolescent older brothers George and Walter return home and fight with their mother. Jennings goes with his mother to pick up a food basket from the church for Christmas. They have no toys left, and Larry complains that they won’t have enough toys for Christmas. Jennings shares brief conversations with Walter and George, and George is clearly unhappy as well. George and Larry go on Christmas Eve to get a Christmas tree from the trees the salesman throws out. Jennings and Walter sing in the choir at Christmas Eve Mass at the church. They decorate the tree together. Their presents include a Monopoly game and a string of toy ducks for Gene.
Jennings returns to his Catholic school and cries as his teacher, Sister Ann Charles, calls his name. He is lost in class, having missed three months of school and is held back a year. Months later, Sister Ann Charles tells the children that the Korean War has started and that many children in Korea will be left without homes or families. Jennings thinks to himself that children live like that locally in Brooklyn. She says that she is leaving to Korea to help those children, and Jennings is once again devastated to lose someone else.
One day Jennings and Larry return home to find a nun in their house, and she tells them that she is taking care of their mother, who is very ill. Jennings and Larry lament that they will likely go to homes again. Jennings is sent off and is devastated to find that he is being sent to a different home called St. Teresa’s. He will not see any of his old friends anymore.
Chapter 6 Summary
A terse nun, Sister Barbara, meets him at St. Teresa’s and leads him through a dormitory to his bed, number 17. She shouts at him that he cannot sleep with Doggie and must keep it locked up. She slaps him across the face for answering with a nod. He is led into an empty playroom. Eventually the children file in, but Jennings sits alone. When a nun calls for dinner, he asks her where to stand in line. The nun, Sister Ann Catherine, is kind and asks a boy named Stevie, number 16, to take care of him.
Jennings befriends Stevie and a redhead nicknamed Rooster. Stevie has been in five homes before. His mother is dead, and his father is a drunk who beats him horribly. They play outside at a creek, and Jennings is so unfamiliar with the country that he does not know what crickets sound like. The next morning in the yard, Stevie asks Jennings if he wants to run away. His drunk father is coming to pick him up, and he will not go with him to be beaten again. He says, “I’ll see ya” (89), to Jennings and walks away into the trees.
One morning, he wakes up with Doggie in his arms. Sister Ann Catherine dances by him singing, “if I had a Doggie cute as him, I wouldn’t sleep with him under my pillow” (88). While she is kind, Jennings knows that Sister Barbara could take Doggie away from him if he is not careful. Yet every night afterward, Sister Ann Catherine takes Doggie from under his pillow, puts him in Jennings’ arms, and kisses him.
One morning a new boy, face streaked with tears, is sat next to Jennings in the dining room where Stevie used to sit. He drops his hot cocoa, and Jennings takes the blame for him. Sister Barbara strikes him, rips him out of his chair, and drags him across the wood floor, giving Jennings countless splinters. She kicks him in the side and throws him into a closet. Sister Ann Catherine and a nurse take care of his wounds, and he awakes with Doggie the next morning. She introduces him to the boy he took the blame for, named Peter. Sister Ann Catherine changes his bandages every day, and Peter and Rooster play cards with him.
After a week Jennings is returned to the rest of the home. He walks with Doggie to the playroom, out the patio, and into the trees where Stevie went. He walks for hours and arrives at a park, and he sleeps in the bushes. The next morning, he eats old bread from behind a bakery. Eventually a policeman stops him, and he gets in the car with him. At the police station, Jennings meets an officer who gets Jennings a hamburger and talks kindly with Jennings. He inspects Jennings’ various wounds, which still hurt. Jennings eventually trusts him enough to give him his real name. The sergeant tells him that his clothes say St. Teresa’s and that he must go back there, but that no one will ever hurt him again. He will take him back himself and have a word with them.
At St. Teresa’s, the sergeant yells at Sister Barbara in the office, as Jennings waits outside. Sister Barbara does not bother Jennings anymore, and he is allowed to sleep with Doggie. One day he is outside and sees his mother come up the driveway. He runs into her arms and cries.
Chapter 7 Summary
On the way back home, Jennings’ mother tells him she has a surprise for him. When they arrive at the house, Jerome is there. He is eleven and has spent his entire life in the hospital until now. He says that he did not hate living there, because it was the only home he ever knew. He might hate it here in fact. Jennings begins to get to know Jerome, who still cannot leave the house. On his birthday they have a party for him. Jerome teaches Jennings chess, and both Jennings and Larry become close with him.
One day, Jennings’ mother and George announce to the family that George is quitting school to find a job. That way, they can move to a bigger place, and Jennings and Larry can go to a new school where they can make new friends, after having been held back twice. A few months later both George and Walter have jobs, and they are ready to move. While packing, Jerome clutches his chest, and they call an ambulance. He turns white and is carted out on a stretcher. He grabs Jennings’ hand as he is wheeled out, but he has no strength left. Jennings worries that he may never see his brother again.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Burch creates the setting of a chaotic and conflictive household, and he makes it clear how poor they are, as they cannot buy a turkey or toys for Christmas. These difficulties put a strain on the family, create an unstable atmosphere, and foreshadow greater conflicts and family troubles.
Through these family conflicts, Burch also develops the theme that home is relative. Larry and George are unhappy at home while Jennings is elated. Larry is convinced that his mother does not love him, as she always asks him to do the chores and errands. George constantly fights with Walter, which we later find out is because George secretly spends time with their drunk father. Jerome also muses that perhaps the hospital is his real home, because it is the only place he has ever known. He wonders if he might even hate it at home with his family, but he does not. Thus, Burch explores each brother’s concept of their own home, developing the idea that their individual constructs of “home” are relative, based on their own circumstances. This concept is most evocatively demonstrated in Stevie at St. Teresa’s, who prefers living at the home to being with his father, who beats him brutally. In his case, the home abandons him to an even worse life with his father, and he has no choice but to run away.
Chapter 5 further develops the theme of the abandonment of children, when Jennings’ mother does not explain to him why she abandoned him at the home. Once again, Jennings is left in the dark as to why this happened. Moreover, she promises to never leave him again, when in fact he will go to three more children’s homes and a foster family after this. Others abandon Jennings as well: In Chapter 5, his beloved teacher Sister Ann Charles leaves Jennings behind to take care of homeless children in Korea during the war. In Chapter 7, Jerome is rushed back to the hospital, just after Jennings got to know him and bonded with him. This also reflects the theme of the ephemerality of comfort and happiness, as nearly everyone who Jennings emotionally bonds with eventually is ripped away from him, even if temporarily.
Burch also highlights the abuses that are inflicted on children in foster homes. Sister Barbara frequently strikes children in the face, and she drags Jennings across a wooden floor, impaling his body with splinters, and beats him. His wounds take more than a week to heal and are bad enough after a week that the sergeant yells at Sister Barbara in her office. Burch emphasizes these incidents not only for dramatic effect, but also to educate the reader about the kinds of abuses that children in foster care are forced to endure.
Burch also notes that people are unaware or do not think about the many homeless, abandoned children in their own neighborhood. For example, Jennings is disappointed that Sister Ann Charles would go to Korea to help the children there when children are suffering without homes or families there in New York.
