47 pages • 1 hour read
S.A. BodeenThe Raft
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary
After a full day of drying her clothes in the sun, Robie decides it’s time to try and wake up Max. Unfortunately, he is unresponsive when she calls his name, and even when she shakes him. She figures he is just desperate for sleep and curls up on him to gain some comfort as she fights off hunger pangs until she, too, falls asleep.
Chapter 18 Summary
When Robie wakes again, she discovers a layer of water on the raft, that cannot be rain because her shirt is dry. The sun is out, and her thirst has become acute, as has her determination to wake Max. She tries again to wake him, fails again, and then checks his pulse, which is weak. At that point she convinces herself again that he is fine.
As she tries to wake him she notices his ditty bag again. Feeling through the outer layer of the bag, she tries to guess the content. One object seems to be a book. The other crinkles like plastic wrap. She resists the temptation to open the bag, and instead focuses on bailing the layer of water out of the raft.
Chapter 19 Summary
Robie realizes that there is a hole in the raft. Max will still not wake up, but does still has a faint pulse. She faces a problem: “If we, me and Max, continued as we were, the raft would flounder and we would end up in the ocean. Our combined weight…was too much. Would there be a difference with only my weight on the raft?” (68). As soon as she raises the question, she shrinks away from it. The whole time she is hoping he will wake up, most of all because she is desperate for company, for someone to tell her what to do in this situation.
Chapter 20 Summary
Robie, having determined that the only way to keep the two of them alive is to lower Max into the water, to lighten the load in the leaking raft, buying her time to bail it out, secures Max’s life vest, and puts him face up into the ocean. Although she is confident that she won’t let him get away, she apologizes and cries as she lowers him off the raft and into the water.
Once he is off the raft, she sets to work on the project of bailing out the craft. While she is doing that, she notices that Max’s ditty bag is still in the raft. Even though she tells herself again not to touch private property, she gives into the hope that it contains something that will help her survive, and opens it.
Chapters 17-20 Analysis
In this section, Robie wrestles with the difference between land-rules and raft-rules. In her old world, it would be wrong to even consider lowering Max into the water, where he could get attacked by sharks, and it would also be wrong to invade his private property, as represented by the ditty bag. At first, Robie clings to this ‘old-world’ paradigm, and keeps the bag shut, and Max in the raft, but eventually, as the raft continues to take on water, the logic of survival kicks in, and a the ‘raft rules’ takes over. Robie puts Max in the water and opens his bag.
