The Benefits of Being an Octopus

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Chapters 21-24

Chapters 25-28

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary

Zoey is in the room with all the other students but still feels separate. She hasn’t cultivated the study skills that the other students exhibit, such as taking notes. Ms. Rochambeau emphasizes the importance of stating one’s position confidently, a skill that Zoey thinks is beyond her reach.

At home, Zoey finds her mother sorting laundry. The narrative reveals that the reason Zoey and her siblings don’t have clean clothes is that her mother must walk 40 minutes to the laundromat and can carry only one load. Zoey finds a few items of Aurora’s and Bryce’s clothing to add to her mother’s stack of laundry. Kara asks Zoey if she wants to add any of her own clothes. Zoey is surprised because she’s typically overlooked, and she takes the opportunity to add a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans. Zoey asks her mom if she ever feels confident. Kara replies, “The only confident I am is confident that life’s never going to get any easier than this” (50).

Chapter 10 Summary

On another rare quiet and peaceful Sunday, Lenny’s out of the house, and all the kids snuggle with Kara in her bedroom. Even Frank seems calm, watching the weather channel instead of angry news shows. The weather’s nice too: Zoey looks out the window and thinks, “[I]t’s one of those crisp, clear days that makes you think winter might not be all that bad” (52). Zoey doesn’t usually pay attention to the scenery, as she must focus on much more immediate problems. The narrative now shows the seeds of Zoey’s new positive outlook beginning to take root.

Because Zoey has the afternoon to herself, she meets Fuchsia at the rec center, and they share a lighthearted game of foosball. This day is devoid of serious conflict and gives a glimpse of the lighter side of Zoey’s life.

Chapter 11 Summary

The next day, Silas tells Zoey that his father’s truck was taken to the police station because a teacher saw a shotgun in the truck bed when his father picked him up after school. The incident is resolved quickly and has no immediate consequences.

At school, Fuchsia is moody. She tells Zoey that her mother, Crystal, is making them move in with Crystal’s new boyfriend, Michael, whom Fuchsia calls “sketchy” (57). Because Fuchsia considers Michael dangerous, she threatens to call Family Services on her mother, but she worries about the consequences, such as making her mother angry and possibly returning to foster care. When Fuchsia realizes that Zoey isn’t paying attention, she teases Zoey about having a crush on one of the boys in the hall. Instead of denying this, Zoey avoids the question.

After social studies class, Ms. Rochambeau speaks with Zoey about her lack of participation in the debate club. She asks Zoey what kind of person she wants to be when she grows up. Shocked by such a direct question, Zoey responds that she doesn’t know. No adult has ever asked her this question before, and Zoey has never given it any thought. Ms. Rochambeau tells Zoey that she wants her to be on the real debate team, which enters tournaments, rather than just meeting in class. The debate team meetings are after school. Zoey says that she has too many home responsibilities and isn’t convinced that she belongs on the team. Frustrated with Zoey’s excuses, Ms. Rochambeau gives her a hard piece of advice. She tells Zoey that life isn’t fair and that if Zoey wants to succeed in life, she must face up to the challenges. Zoey has never considered that her life could be any different than it is now, but as she sits at Ms. Rochambeau’s desk, looking out at the empty classroom, she realizes that she likes the view.

Chapter 12 Summary

At home, Zoey finds a stocked refrigerator and realizes that it’s the day that her mother’s EBT card has been refilled. At the Pizza Pit, her mom hopes that they can soon afford a washing machine. Seeing a glimpse of the confident mom that Kara used to be gives Zoey hope.

Chapters 9-12 Analysis

The themes of this section are confidence and choice—and, at first, Zoey feels like she has neither. She looks at the lives of the wealthy, popular kids and thinks that she, with her unwashed hair and dirty clothes, can never live that kind of life or comport herself with the confidence that they seem to take for granted. The most important theme of Zoey’s character arc emerges: She starts learning to see things in a new way—which Ms. Rochambeau says is the purpose of debate. Zoey’s tentative question to her mother about whether she ever feels confident is an example of her testing the positive ideas to which debate club has exposed her, but Kara’s response—that she’s only confident of life’s continuing difficulties—just reinforces the hopelessness that Zoey has learned to accept as normal.

The incident in which Zoey’s friend Silas tells her that police questioned his father about the gun in his truck links Silas with guns in the students’ minds and proves crucial to future events. In addition, Zoey experiences a critical moment when Ms. Rochambeau keeps her after class and forces her to face a question she has never considered. Along with her lack of confidence, Zoey has taken for granted that she lacks the choice to control her life. When she expresses this to Ms. Rochambeau, her teacher contradicts her in a way Zoey doesn’t expect, telling her that life isn’t fair but that she has choices when facing difficulties. Even more unexpected is that Ms. Rochambeau tells Zoey how she used to be just like her (following up on her comment in an earlier chapter): Ms. Rochambeau was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and go to college. She tells Zoey that the advice she’s giving her now is the advice that changed her life. This admission makes Zoey more curious about Ms. Rochambeau and more open to taking her advice.

These chapters introduce powerful structural concepts—namely, the purpose and strategies of debate. Ms. Rochambeau’s advice comes at the novel’s halfway point, and it’s a point of no return. Zoey can either reject the advice and remain in her comfort zone with the knowledge that nothing in her life will change, or she can enter the unknown territory of growth and self-determination. In debate terms, the advice that Ms. Rochambeau gives Zoey is the resolution, an idea put forth at the beginning of the debate, which the debaters must support or undermine with evidence. In Zoey’s case, the resolution can be summarized this way: Life isn’t fair. To become who you want to be, you must accept life’s challenges and make your own choices.

At first, Zoey rejects the advice. She looks at the other people in her life who offer either comfort (her mother) or a non-answer (Silas). Zoey prefers these responses because they reinforce the ideas she already holds. Ms. Rochambeau is proposing that Zoey reach far outside her comfort zone and wants Zoey to see her as a role model because they come from similar backgrounds. However, Zoey still sees Ms. Rochambeau as an authority figure, and her instinct remains defiant. Instead, Zoey looks to her mother, Kara, as an example, and only when Kara expresses optimism about their financial future (commenting that they might soon afford a washing machine) does Zoey begin to see the possibility for change.