Tinkers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2 Summary

The Monday after the seizure that made Howard late coming home, he is nervous about going out again, anxious about another seizure. The only seizure that George ever witnesses occurs on Christmas Day, 1926, during dinner. Kathleen makes a ham for the family and Howard begins to slice it. Suddenly, the convulsions begin and he falls, hitting and cutting his head on a chair. The younger children are ushered out, but Kathleen needs George’s help. She has him hold a spoon in his father’s mouth, but when the pressure from Howard’s teeth breaks the spoon, George falls on top of Howard. The spoon’s pieces are in his father’s mouth and when he tries to get them out, Howard ends up biting George’s hand and George is badly hurt. Kathleen wedges a stick into Howard’s mouth, freeing George. George is distressed by these events and thinks of running away.

Later that night, Kathleen sits up in bed, lamenting the loss of her youth. She doesn’t believe that she was ready to be a mother, so she resents her children and refuses to coddle them. She wants to toughen them and make them independent, but she doesn’t know if she does so because she loves them or not. The next morning, she and George walk the two miles toward town to show George’s wounded hand to the doctor. George ends up needing a few stitches. Kathleen then sends George to sit in the passenger side of a nearby truck so she can discuss Howard with the doctor. George watches them, and he sees his mother cry.

When they return to the house, George sleeps in his parents’ room and Kathleen chops wood outside while considering whether she should commit Howard to the Eastern Maine State Hospital in Bangor, which is a hospital for people with intellectual disabilities. When George wakes from a nightmare about a dog biting his hand, he sees a pamphlet for a hospital that the doctor gave Kathleen. She catches him studying it and calls him down for dinner. They eat without Howard that night and George realizes that both his father and younger brother, who has an intellectual disability, will end up at the Eastern Maine State Hospital.

The following Saturday, George takes his father’s wagon and mule and runs away. He only makes it as far as his friend Ray Morrell’s property, where he hides in the shed. Back at the house, Kathleen tells Howard that George has run away. Howard tells her he hopes their son makes it far, but Kathleen demands that Howard should go after him. After he leaves, Kathleen places the brochure for the Eastern Maine State Hospital out in the open. When Howard finds George, he is disappointed that George didn’t make it farther. As they return home, Howard realizes that George is distancing himself in the aftermath of the bite.

Back in the house, Howard sees the brochure for the hospital and decides to leave. He sets out just as he would on any other day to sell his wares, though he is upset to be leaving his family and is hurt that Kathleen would consider committing him. He thinks that his epilepsy and poverty push her to see him as a helpless, undriven burden, though he prides himself on his tinkering. On his first night away, Howard tucks himself in under the wagon and wonders if his family will wait for him for dinner.

Chapter 2 Analysis

Chapter 2 of Tinkers is rooted in the past as George sinks further into his memories and emerges from them less frequently. The focus of this chapter is the time in George’s childhood when he and his father come to terms with Howard’s epilepsy. Interspersed between George’s memories of this time are Howard’s memories, as well. Howard is the son of a preacher and possesses a strong Awareness of Death, Mortality, and the Passage of Time. His father’s faith instills him with a unique outlook on life in the cold and harsh environment he raises his family in. Howard remembers to take “[comfort] in the fact that the ache in [his] heart and the confusion in [his] soul means that [he is] still alive,” and he is always aware that he “will be dead and buried soon enough” (82). Though much of his life is suffering and sorrow, to Howard, the pain of living is comforting because it means he is still alive. Every moment of life is meaningful to him. Howard’s seizures are moments when he isn’t in control of his body and they constantly remind him that the moment of his death, too, is out of his control and is getting ever nearer. So, Howard strives to live a good and meaningful life for as long as he is alive; this is why he decides to leave his family. He believes that by doing so, he is retaining his own freedom and freeing his family from the burden he is to them.

Howard’s thoughts on mortality play an important role in Tinkers. Throughout Chapter 2, he considers what his life means and what will come after. When he finds George after he runs away, Howard considers what it means to be born and to live. He thinks: “Everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so. No, […] [the] wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place. What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?” (129-30). Howard sees both living and dying as “cataclysms”—violent events—as he recognizes to be born means to head toward death. According to him, to be made is to eventually be unmade. Therefore, he ponders the purpose of creation and wonders if anything exists in the “beyond,” in the aftermath of life and death, that gives this cycle any meaning. This line of thinking mirrors Howard’s own unmaking of his family. He and Kathleen made a family, but he chooses to leave, thereby “unmaking” his family, as he goes off to discover if he (and they) can find meaning and purpose “beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking” (130).

However, after Howard leaves, he experiences the pain of the separation. He begins to rethink his life and the actions that led to this moment. Within this train of thought, he focuses on his tinkering and the greater meaning it has given to his life. In the midst of his lamentation to God about the deep sorrow he feels at leaving his family, he thinks: “God let us perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own work. God hear me weep because I let myself think all is well if I am fully stocked with both colors of shoe shine” (132). Howard understands that his focus on the small pleasures his work gave him led him to ignore the dissatisfaction brewing within his family. However, his work is an unmistakable source of pleasure for him, and this ability to “rejoice in his work” is something he passes down to George, which leads into the theme of Family History and Generational Legacy that runs through the novel. Despite his bitter memories of his father, George, too, shares Howard’s relish for working with his hands and fixing things.