50 pages • 1 hour read
Per Petterson, Transl. Anne BornOut Stealing Horses
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A 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 2, Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
In 1948, Franz and Trond have breakfast together, and Franz tells him a story about 1942. In 1942, Trond’s father came to this forest near the Swedish border to pass papers and letters for the Resistance, introducing himself to Franz with the code words, “We’re going out stealing horses” (127). They bought an abandoned cabin from Barkald, and Trond’s father spent his time fixing it up and appearing to act like any ordinary citizen. German soldiers patrolled the area with machine guns, and Trond’s father spent time being kind to them, speaking with them in German, and sharing cigarettes. In this way, he was able to pass messages for two years without them suspecting. Jon’s mother also carried messages, but Jon’s father refused to take part. After a while, the “traffic” into Sweden included Jews escaping the Nazis, and one day, when there was snow on the ground, Jon’s mother had to bring a man up the river to Trond’s father’s cabin. She told her husband to cover up the telltale footprints they left behind, but he ignored her.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
In the present narrative, Trond is still sitting on the bench by the lake with Lyra when Lars appears and offers to help him chop up the tree that has fallen in his yard, and the two get started on the task. Trond imagines Lars at home with Odd while his mother was rowing for her life up the river.
Trond lapses back into the story told him by Franz. In 1942, a German soldier on patrol found the footprints Jon’s father had left uncovered. Franz, on the lookout from his own house, blew up the bridge so the soldier on his motorcycle could not get across, but more soldiers rode up the river in pursuit of Jon’s mother and the man. They shot the man, but Jon’s mother narrowly escaped with Trond’s father, and they fled into Sweden.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
As Lars and Trond finish cutting the fallen birch in the present, it begins to snow. Trond invites Lars in for dinner, and Lars suddenly says that of course he was supposed to take over the farm where his family had lived. He explains that he was the only man in the family and had worked the farm for years, but then Jon came back and said the farm was rightly his, and their mother made no objection. Lars left the farm. He says he hasn’t been back since and doesn’t even know if his mother is still alive. Lars refers to a “step-father,” and Trond wonders whether his own father married Lars and Jon’s mother. His story makes Trond uneasy, but he realizes he likes Lars.
Trond imagines Jon’s voyages all over the world and Lars at home tracing Jon’s journey in an atlas based on the letters he sent. He thinks about Jon trying to lose himself and his memory of Odd’s death in Mediterranean ports but never getting off the ships he was on.
Part 2, Chapters 10-12 Analysis
The events in Trond’s memories take greater shape and context as he learns their roots in the past, developing the theme of The Pivotal Role of History in Shaping Identity. Franz’s description of Trond’s father and Jon’s mother working with the Resistance in 1942 is revelatory in several ways. First, it again presents the motif of doubles, as the novel’s title is revealed to be not just the fanciful phrase Trond and Jon used for their youthful mischief with Barkald’s horses but also the secret code their parents once used to recognize others who were doing the life-or-death work of the Resistance. By giving the phrase a dual meaning here (and again in Chapter 16), Petterson creates a contrast that emphasizes the extent to which the two boys are only playing at being men early in the novel and underscores how their own experiences as well as their parents’ history force them to come of age.
Presenting Franz’s tale in a vivid third-person narrative provides readers with a sense of what Trond is imagining as he hears the story. His repetition of the sentence “I can picture it well” suggests he has revisited the story many times in his memory (153), underscoring that it is important to him to understand how these events shaped his father’s (and by extension his own) life. Trond’s commentary about all he did not know about his father, the fact that he got used to living without him but “thought about him constantly” (140), and his acknowledgment that he did not ask questions because he didn’t know whether Franz would provide “an answer I could live with” emphasize his longing to understand (141).
The story of 1942 also develops the theme of The Pivotal Role of History in Shaping Identity and creating irrevocable change; the theme is given new dimension by the choices the characters make and their inability to foresee the consequences. Jon’s father made the “choice he would come to regret” by not covering the footprints in the snow (149), the man who was trying to escape sealed his fate through his inability to wait for nightfall, the soldiers set out in pursuit for they knew not what reason, and Franz demonstrated his loyalty to the Resistance by exploding the bridge. All of these actions provide context for understanding the atmosphere Trond observes between the adults during the summer of 1948 and create a parallel to the accidental violence of Lars using Jon’s gun to kill Odd.
The reckoning with pivotal moments is further developed by Lars’s explanation of his estrangement from his family and his own efforts to put the past behind him, as he has never even tried to find out whether his mother is still alive. Trond is uncomfortable hearing stories from Lars that might provide insight to his father’s later life, saying, “I do not know whether I really want to know about them. They take up too much room” (171). Rather, Trond persists in repeating that he has been “lucky” so often it suggests he feels just the opposite and in dedicating himself to a list of chores that will fill his days until his death, chores that mirror the descriptions of the activities his father undertook to disguise his work during the war. In this way, Trond’s search for solitude demonstrates an effort to replicate his father’s life without looking too deeply beyond what he already knows.
