61 pages • 2 hours read
Susan NussbaumGood Kings Bad Kings
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A 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 39-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 39 Summary: “Mia Oviedo”
Memories of Jerry’s sexual abuse still haunt Mia. Mia continues to see her therapist at ILLC, but it further triggers her trauma, and she doesn’t like it. In class, Mia thinks about how much she misses Teddy. Teddy makes jokes during class and everyone laughs, including the teacher. After class, Teddy comes up to Mia and asks if she wants a “ride” to the cafeteria, and they go together, smiling and happy that they are together again.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Yessenia Lopez”
Yessie talks to Joanne about a lawyer for Cheri—her friend who went to the mental institute—but Joanne says that she spoke with a lawyer and it doesn’t look possible. Yessenia wants to help, so Joanne gives her the contact information to the Center for Disability Justice. Later, Yessie daydreams about the “succulent” boy who is protesting in the photo Joanne gave her, and she imagines being at the protest with him. Yessie has started to read Joanne’s favorite magazine, the Plumed Serpent, and enjoys seeing photos of disabled groups protesting for equal rights. When Joanne isn’t at the office, Yessie misses her and cleans her desk, takes out the trash, and leaves a note for her.
Chapter 41 Summary: “Teddy Dobbs”
The ILLC is starting to cut workers, so they are understaffed and running behind with extra patients. Teddy’s houseparent, Beverly, has to work on multiple floors, and it’s her son’s birthday, so she is late to get Teddy ready. Teddy doesn’t mind, because he gets to sleep in, and he’s alone in the shower because the other patients have already started their day. Beverly steps out of the shower to make a call, but the water is too hot, and Teddy can’t move, so he calls for help. No one comes, so he struggles and eventually falls on the hard, wet surface. He seems surprisingly fine, then crawls away, feeling better. He’s face-down and eventually hears people running and a voice on the loudspeaker. Someone is talking to him, and he can see his blood, but he feels fine. Later, he wakes up in a hospital bed, face down, and sees Mia’s feet. He tries talking but can’t. The next time he wakes up, he attached to a machine, unable to communicate and in pain. Finally, he can hear his dad but can’t open his eyes. His dad is crying and tells Teddy “I love you,” and Teddy wants to tell him that he loves him and Mia, too. He closes his eyes and goes to sleep in a “soft black cloud” (215).
Chapter 42 Summary: “Yessenia Lopez”
Everyone is at Teddy’s funeral. Yessie is trying to console Teddy’s father, Mr. Dobbs, who is crying. Beverly—the houseparent responsible for Teddy’s death—is in the back row sitting next to Joanne, and Yessie imagines how she must feel horribly guilty. Mia is a “wreck” and crying uncontrollably, and Yessie wants to tell her to calm down, but she remembers how she felt when her tía died. The priest asks if anyone wants to speak about Teddy, and Mrs. Phoebe’s “fat ass” says words that make Yessie want to vomit. (217)
On the bus ride back to ILLC, Joanne is riding back with the students, and Yessie is shocked to learn that Joanne doesn’t believe in heaven or hell. Yessie doesn’t think she’ll go to hell, even though she stole once from her tía and had sex with one of the bus drivers, but besides that, she doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong. When she gets back, she makes a sign for Teddy and Pierre and decides to go outside and tie herself to a tree in front of ILLC to protest. She realizes it’s an isolated area with few passersby and she feels foolish.
Eventually, Ricky drives up in a bus from the funeral, and he looks shocked at Yessie’s sign, which reads “THIS PLACE ABUSE AND KILL CHILDREN” (222). A group of other “inmates” from the bus—including Mia and Bernard—join her, and Ricky goes to get Joanne. The group gains traction, and when Joanne comes outside, she is proud and begins to call others like CDJ to join. Joanne could potentially lose her job, but she is supportive and stays with the youth. When Mrs. Phoebe arrives with an ILLC board member, they are angry and try to talk the students out of their plan, but the kids don’t budge. Mrs. Phoebe says there will be consequences for their actions and goes inside.
Later, a group of disabled adults from “Access Now” joins the group and invites others. A van from “Access Now” arrives with food, more participants, and offers of help, including bathroom breaks. Yessie goes to the bathroom, feeling good about the situation, and she is even more thrilled when she gets back at the local news station is there. The station asks Yessie for an interview, and she speaks about the issues of abuse, mistreatment, and neglect that the youth patients tolerate.
Elaine, Joanne’s CDJ lawyer, also arrives and speaks about the injustice of the ILLC. Two of ILLC’s lawyers also appear to make statements, but the news reporter asks what protection the children will receive for their actions, which makes Yessie happy. Once the event ends, Joanne and Yessie are the last to go back inside, and when Joanne asks where Yessie got the idea to chain herself up like that, Yessie replies: “The one [picture] offa your wall. Of that fine-ass crippled black brother all chained up to a door. I fell in love.” (228)
Chapters 39-42 Analysis
The plot action continues to rise as issues of social justice and patient mistreatment increase. Yessenia’s admiration for protesting and social rights issues continues to build as she learns more from reading Joanne’s Plumed Serpent magazine. The magazine serves as one of the novel’s motifs for the activist movement regarding disabled rights, and Yessenia’s attempt to read it shows her character’s growth into a new mindset of independence and self-advocacy—a far change from her aggressive and immature ways at the onset of the story. The allusions to further budget cuts and understaffed tensions at ILLC set the narrative up for a climactic episode that will soon follow. In Teddy’s final chapter, he notes:
Beverly’s supposed to get me up today. Usually Beverly’s not here on Fridays but Vicky’s sick and Toya quit. Beverly said they ain’t gonna get a new person ’cause they’re cutting back and I heard her and Anthony and Vicky all talking about how mad they was ’cause they don’t got enough help and now they got more of us they gotta take care of (212).
This reference to the lack of funding to ILLC shows how not only the individual patients feel neglected, but how they are systematically underserved, creating an unreasonable amount of responsibility for the workers. This situation acts as a set up for the climax, in which Beverly—an overburdened houseparent—accidentally kills Teddy by leaving him unsupervised in the shower for a few extra minutes. Beverly is intentionally presented as a caring and thoughtful houseparent, who Teddy invites to his imagined wedding, which underscores how even those who care about the patients are liable to make critical mistakes when they are being exploited by corporate needs to save money.
Teddy’s death is the high point of conflict in this novel; his tragic death emphasizes the narrative’s most important theme: that disabled youth are being neglected and abused for corporate profit and are often injured, or even killed, due to the lack of care and funding towards their wellness and care. If Whitney-Palm hadn’t been so focused on saving money and cutting costs, perhaps they could have been more aware of ILLC’s needs for competent employees and hired more workers so Beverley didn’t have to do the jobs of three houseparents, avoiding Teddy’s death. His death comes to represent how the disabled patients don’t have a fair chance at living, and they are merely dollar signs for the healthcare system to gain profit—bodies that will eventually decompose.
Yessenia’s reaction to Teddy’s death acts as a counter to the negative realities faced by the disabled youth; her strength and independence pushes forward one of the book’s major themes of youth advocacy, social justice, and disabled rights. In the face of death, literally, Yessenia stands taller than ever, and Joanne’s example of social advocacy and autonomy inspire her to take action. For the first time in the novel, a youth patient is seen and heard by making the individual choice to protest and fight back against the system. Her symbolic chaining to the tree in front of ILLC represents her lack of physical mobility but also the power of her social mobility, as she sparks a large protest that brings many supporters together and culminates with the local news interviews. Her words are powerful and demonstrate her character’s development into a confident leader, and she speaks on behalf of all the abused youth she has known as teenage friends:
Marjorie, what I’m saying is us youth come to these places on account of we got no place else to go and the least they could do is to take care of us and make sure nobody gets beat up or gets raped or left in the shower by mistake and killed. And don’t send people off to the booby hatch just because they homesick and didn’t take their meds. We are teenage youth, and I mean, what do they expect? (227).
Yessenia’s voice is unmistakably adolescent, yet matured and perceptive. She is learning how to master her voice and her ideology and let go of her body’s limitations in order to grow as a leader. It’s a moment of victory for the disabled community, but also for Yessenia as an individual who, up to this point, has struggled with defining herself but has been able to finally harness her anger and use it for social good. In many ways, this is the crux of the story’s message: that with community, empowerment, love, and support, anyone—especially those who are most neglected and ignored by society—can rise to make a difference and stand out with their actions and beliefs.
