93 pages • 3 hours read
Joyce Carol OatesBig Mouth & Ugly Girl
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2002A 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 39-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 39 Summary
Two nights later Matt calls Ursula. He says, “You won’t believe what’s happened, Ursula. What they’ve done to us now” (210). Ursula goes to bed crying with rage and pity.
Chapter 40 Summary
When Alex was out walking Pumpkin, someone in an SUV abducted the dog. Matt’s mother calls the police, and Matt takes the receiver to explain. Alex keeps apologizing, thinking it is his fault. Matt tells him, “if it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine. But that doesn’t help Pumpkin, does it?” (213).
The patrolmen arrive and assume Pumpkin just ran off. Matt’s mother shows the police several threatening newspaper clippings sent to the house, of which the brothers only knew of the first. Matt tells the police about being harassed at school but not the extent of his fight with the jocks.
Matt stays up all night on a vigil for Pumpkin. Twice in the early hours someone phones the house, but they hang up after Matt answers. At 6:00 a.m. the phone rings again, and Matt hears Pumpkin yipping in pain before the line goes dead.
Chapter 41 Summary
Ursula goes to Matt’s house and meets his mother the morning after Pumpkin is abducted. Before she arrives, Matt’s mother asks if Ursula is his girlfriend.
The police do little to help the Donaghys. Matt, Ursula, and Alex canvas the neighborhood in Matt’s car.
Back at home, Matt’s mother is listless and dissociated due to antidepressants. His father is in San Diego; Matt’s mother only told him that Pumpkin is missing, not that he was abducted. Ursula and Matt’s mother bond over art, his mother having majored in art history in school. Matt’s mother thanks Ursula for being a witness on Matt’s behalf and shares her sadness that this all happened “because of those Brewer girls’ lies” (226). Matt asserts Pumpkin was abducted “because of the lawsuit, Mom.” (226). Matt’s mother begins to cry, and when Ursula consoles her, she confides, “I always wished I had a daughter… I’m so lonely here, sometimes, in this house” (227).
Chapter 42 Summary
Ursula asks Matt who he thinks took Pumpkin. Matt suspects it was Trevor Cassity; he tells her about Cassity and his friends’ assault. Ursula insists the two go to Cassity’s home.
Matt is hesitant as they drive up to the house, but Ursula pushes forward. They meet Trevor’s father at the door, and he calls Trevor down. Ursula lies to Trevor, telling him there was a witness to Pumpkin’s abduction who identified Trevor’s SUV. Ursula further threatens to get her father, who employs Trevor’s father, involved if Pumpkin is not returned by 6:00 p.m. Insisting they can’t prove he did anything, Trevor says he can “ask around” for Pumpkin’s whereabouts (235).
Chapter 43 Summary
Pumpkin is returned by 4:40 p.m., let out somewhere in the neighborhood and finding his way home. That night Ursula receives an email signed from Matt as Pumpkin: “THANK YOU for saving my life! I love you” (238).
Chapters 39-43 Analysis
These chapters detail Pumpkin’s abduction and Matt and Ursula’s success in retrieving the dog. Aside from the challenge of their own personal conflict, this is the first challenge that Matt and Ursula must overcome together. In it, they again show their typical character traits. Where Matt is hesitant and somewhat afraid but deeply emotionally involved in the event, Ursula acts and serves as a leader.
These events also serve as a resolution to Matt’s assault at school and the hostile letters sent to his family, which the reader now realizes were likely the work of Trevor Cassity. In standing up to Cassity (with Ursula’s help), Matt asserts himself against this bully. The text of this meeting also emphasizes Trevor’s own vulnerability and the fragility of his family life—his father’s livelihood is dependent on Ursula’s father. Like the Brewer twins, even this bully is at heart a scared and impressionable child.
Pumpkin’s kidnapping is Ursula’s first opportunity to meet Matt’s mother. Ursula bonds with Matt’s mother, comforts her, and assuages her loneliness. This is something Matt has previously failed to do—when he tried to do so, upon receiving the first threatening letter, his mother angrily stalked away. Ursula’s ability to stand up to a bully and offer comfort again shows her personal strength and unique power.
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