45 pages • 1 hour read
Heather O'NeillLullabies for Little Criminals
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “the milky way”
Chapter 1 Summary
Baby admits that many of her most questionable decisions in life are a result of not having a mother; hanging out with Alphonse is one of those decisions. She says, “Every good pimp is a mother. When Alphonse spoke to me, his voice always had the same tempo as a lullaby” (186). He buys her gifts, and one day they get their picture taken together. Jules finds it and calls social services.
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 3 Summary
There is a brief time each night, as the guards are changing shifts, that the kids are unsupervised; this is because one guard on duty takes advantage of the time to molest one of the boys. The kids also take advantage of this time with a game where one youth is chosen randomly and forced to take off their clothes in front of everyone. Baby watches as Ralphy takes off his clothes. He keeps his eyes closed the whole time, and Baby thinks he’s beautiful despite the other kids seeming disgusted by him.
Chapter 4 Summary
Eventually, it’s Baby’s turn to take her clothes off. Initially, she thinks she’ll keep her eyes open, unlike Ralphy. She instinctively closes her eyes as she undresses, hoping and praying for someone to rescue her. She leaves the detention center after a month, but she feels different in a bad way; “[it] is a fact that things always get worse for children after a stint in juvenile detention. Being there does something to you morally” (197).
Part 6 Analysis
Baby is once again sent away; only this time Jules is the one who initiates it. When Baby was sent to the foster home or to Mary’s house, she had quickly acclimated because she had felt safe, secure, and loved. However, when she’s sent to the detention center, she doesn’t feel safe and she never feels welcome. While at the detention center, she’s forced to get naked in front of her peers, and this is the first time she’s ever been naked in front of a group of people. This violative act is akin to rape and occurs in a liminal time when the adults have abdicated their duties to protect the children in detention. Baby herself is in a liminal space on the cusp of thirteen—not a child but not yet an adult.
Every adult in Baby’s life has failed her in traumatic ways, whether it’s Jules’s absence as a father or the guards not being present to protect her while at the detention center. This helps to explain why Baby is initially so captivated by Alphonse. In Chapter 2, she says that his voice “has the same tempo as a lullaby” (186). Something as innocent and comforting as a lullaby being filtered through the character a pimp demonstrates the confusing and dangerous nature of the world that Baby inhabits. The conduits of self-care for Baby are all harmful to her.
