96 pages • 3 hours read
Sherri L. SmithFlygirl
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009A 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 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
The next morning, all of the women are up early, eager to begin flying. After breakfast, trucks take them to the auxiliary fields where they will have their first day of training. Their instructor is a man named Happy Martin, a civilian rather than a member of the military. As he introduces himself, he warns the women:“I can make sure that you still know your place in this man’s army” (90).
Instructor Martin asks for a volunteer to fly first and everyone raises their hands. He selects Lily and tells her to get in the train, but she insists on running a flight check, checking the plane before they take off. Instructor Martin looks unhappy—he was hoping to trick Lily into skipping the flight check so that he could correct her. After the flight check, they take off. But as they make a loop, Lily falls out of the plane. She uses her parachute, but Ida and Patsy run to her to make sure she’s okay. Lily says that she must have not secured her seatbelt correctly due to the baggy uniform, and Patsy and Ida quickly warn all of the women not to make the same mistake.
Ida flies next. Instructor Martin takes off and then passes the controls over to Ida. He instructs her to turn right, left, up, and down, and then to pass the controls back to him. When he takes back the controls, Ida realizes that he is throwing them into a loop. Ida joyfully throws her hands into the air as Martin calls out “Parachute!” (97),but Ida doesn’t fall. She realizes that Instructor Martin was trying to throw her out of the plane, and that he must have intentionally tricked Lily too.
Instructor Martin tries to trick each of the women who fly, but because they’ve all warned each other, he isn’t able to throw anyone else out of the plane. Patsy is the last to fly. When Instructor Martin throws the plane into a loop, she drops out of the plane but holds on with both hands, imitating one of her wing-walker tricks. After Patsy lands, Instructor Martin, clearly flustered and embarrassed, dismisses them.
Chapter 11 Summary
Ida remembers when her father took her, her brother Thomas, and some of his friends swimming. Ida was too afraid to get in the water, but someone pushed her in. She sank right to the bottom. Her father saved her, but Ida was too afraid to ever go swimming again.
At Avenger Field, the women must take a swimming test wearing their bulky uniforms. Ida knows she’ll fail because she can’t swim. Lily, a great swimmer, offers to take the test for her. In their uniforms, no one will be able to tell the difference. After Lily passes her own test, she and Ida trade clothes so Ida is wearing the wet uniform, and Lily passes the test again for Ida. Unfortunately, two women in their group don’t pass. Ida feels bad that she only gets to stay because she cheated:“I’ve already lied about my license and my race. What else will I do before this training is done?” (104). She tells Patsy and Lily that she feels guilty and should turn herself in, but they convince her not to, reassuring her that they’re part of a team and that Ida will return the favor eventually.
That night, Ida gets an idea. She wakes Lily and asks her to teach her how to swim:“I want to be able to do it myself” (106). Lily agrees to think of a plan to give Ida swimming lessons.
Chapter 12 Summary
That Sunday afternoon, Ida and Lily go to the town swimming pool for swimming lessons. At first, Ida is afraid to let go of the side of the pool, but eventually, with Lily’s encouragement, they begin their lessons.
The women are assigned to fly to Baker’s Pond, a town about 30 miles away, and back, in order to pass basic training and move on to intermediate training. Instructor Martin suggests that they use the railroad tracks as landmarks while plotting their flights. Lily, Patsy, and Ida work together plotting their courses and drawing up weather charts, which they will need for their flights. They are having trouble locating Baker’s Pond on the map, until Ida gets the idea that maybe the town isn’t a body of water but one that has been dried up. She follows the train tracks on the map and eventually spots it, proud that she was able to solve it for her and her friends.
Ida will be taking her test with Instructor Walt Jenkins. She observes that Jolene would call him handsome. Instructor Jenkins is friendly and has a good sense of humor, and Ida is glad that her test is with him instead of Instructor Martin.
If Ida becomes a WASP, she will be assigned to bases all over the country, where they will “do everything from ferrying newly made planes from factories to the coast—where they will be shipped off to our boys overseas—to towing targets for artillery practice” (116). Ida feels confident throughout the flight. Once she makes it to Baker’s Pond, she sees the townspeople below watching the planes fly overhead. With Instructor Jenkins’ permission, she flies low and waggles the wings as a salute to the townspeople.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
Instructor Martin represents the kind of sexism that women have to face in the army, a theme that continues throughout the novel. Although Instructor Martin has been hired to train the women, he makes it clear that he believes women shouldn’t be in the army and that they have a responsibility to stay home and look after the household instead. He accuses them of having “left husbands and children at home to be here” and says he “can’t approve of that choice” (90). In addition, he constantly tries to trick the women into making mistakes, as if to prove that they don’t belong there. Instructor Martin’s sentiments echo the ones Ida heard back home from Jolene, Thomas, and her mother, people who believe a woman’s job is to take care of the home. Even though Ida has been accepted into the WASP program, she will still have to face those who believe that women don’t belong in the army.
The theme of teamwork is also introduced as Ida and her friends work together to get through training. When Lily falls out of the plane, Ida and Patsy quickly warn the other women, and together, they avoid letting anyone else fall for Instructor Martin’s tricks. When Ida feels guilty about letting Lily take the swimming test for her, Patsy tells her: “Now Jonesy, don’t let this eat at you. You think those kids overseas get along all by their lonesome in this war?
Of course not. We’re a team. We shoulder each other” (104-105). Later, Ida is able to return the favor by helping Lily and Patsy locate Baker’s Pond on the map in order to prepare for their flights. The women know that they all have weaknesses, and they will only get through training if they look out for each other. Friendship and teamwork are especially important to Ida as she trains to become a WASP.
