49 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ApplegateThe One and Only Bob
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A 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.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapters 1-20 Summary
Part 1 covers chapters: “confession,” “and while I’m at it …,” “robert,” “numero uno,” “how we met,” “the amazing history of man’s best friend,” “in my opinion,” “i’m yours,” “no one,” “early days,” “boss,” “alone,” “cars,” “the owl,” “luck,” “more luck,” “will,” “exit 8,” “history,” and “tennis ball.”
The reader is introduced to the protagonist: Bob. Bob is a dog and admits that he is not a good dog. He often misbehaves: eating things he shouldn’t and rolling in garbage. Bob reveals that he is a mixed breed dog: a “mutt.” He was named Robert by Julia, his owner, but is usually just called Bob (unless he misbehaves).
Bob, in a flashback, describes his abandonment as a puppy, which led him to meet his best friend, Ivan the gorilla. Bob, as well as his brothers and sisters from his litter, were taken from their mother and left beside a highway on a cold night. With desperation, Bob wondered, “But I’m yours” (15), not understanding how the hands of the human he thought cared for him could grab him and throw him into the night. Bob was separated from his siblings and walked along the highway, cold, alone, and terrified. He finally found his way to a mall and snuck inside.
Bob found an array of animals in enclosures on display in the dark, deserted mall. In one enclosure containing a gorilla, Bob saw a discarded piece of banana. Starving and cold, he entered the enclosure through a hole, ate the discarded banana piece, and curled up and went to sleep on the gorilla’s stomach. The gorilla, named Ivan, was surprised but pleased to see Bob when he woke up, and the two became best friends. Bob believes, based on his experiences, that dogs are more “Gorilla’s best friend” than “Man’s best friend” (11).
Bob explains that prior to the action of the novel, Ivan managed to have himself, Ruby (a young elephant), and a range of other animals placed in more spacious zoos and sanctuaries, and at this time Bob was adopted by his human owner, Julia. Bob’s new home with Julia and her family is near the zoo where Ivan and Ruby live, so he gets to see them often. He regrets the way humans have mistreated the earth, including by taking animals like Ivan from their natural habitats, but he feels that the situation worked out as well as it could have. In particular, Bob is pleased to have his own bed, plenty of food, loving humans, and “all the belly rubs I could beg for” (30).
Part 1 Analysis
Bob’s abandonment as a puppy explains his skepticism of the “man’s best friend” adage. Bob’s mother’s howls were “frantic” as her puppies were forcefully taken from her and thrown cruelly from a moving truck. When he was on the side of the highway, he froze when hearing incoming cars, knowing that humans meant “the possibility of living, just as much as they meant the possibility of dying” (22). The trauma of Bob’s experience as an abandoned puppy is reinforced through imagery and adjectives that emphasize the terror of the highway-side: “animals with big jaws,” strange smells of the “wild and unknown,” and “birds that swooped in to kill” (21). With these literary techniques, the author invites the reader to sympathize with Bob’s terror and distress. The terror of the highway juxtaposes with the comparative safety of Ivan’s enclosure, where Bob finds food, warmth, and—most importantly—friendship.
Bob’s abandonment makes him mistrustful of humans. As he was thrown onto the side of the highway by his first human owner, Bob describes his shock and sense of betrayal through his inner monolog: “[Y]ou’re thinking, But I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours” (15). Bob is shocked that his “owner” could let him down so completely. The fickle nature of humans, and their capacity to cause hurt and pain (especially to animals), emerges as a theme. This theme further develops with Bob’s description of Ivan and Ruby’s cramped and inhumane living conditions at the mall, and Bob’s wish that his friends could have remained “deep in the jungles of Africa” (32) where they were born, instead of taken away and forced into captivity by humans. Bob uses an image of a tennis ball being thrown repeatedly against a wall as a metaphor for humanity’s thoughtless destruction of the planet. His use of a tennis ball to illustrate this (albeit serious) point is intended to be humorous, given that he is a ball-loving dog!
Bob still acknowledges that some humans are kind and compassionate: There are “good zoos and bad zoos” just like there are “good dog families and bad dog families” (31). Furthermore, Bob explains his comfortable and happy life with Julia, for which he feels incredibly grateful. Bob’s happy-go-lucky nature, in the face of significant trials and disappointment, is established in Part 1.
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