53 pages • 1 hour read
Kent HarufOur Souls At Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A 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 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide mentions the death of a child.
Addie Moore approaches her neighbor Louis Waters with an unusual proposition: She suggests that they spend their nights together. Her offer is not sexual or romantic in nature; both Addie and Louis have been widowed, and they agree that their nights are long and lonely, complicated by the trouble they have falling asleep. Addie gives Louis time to think it over, but she tells him to call her before he comes over so she will know to expect him.
Chapter 2 Summary
The next day, Louis prepares himself for his first overnight stay at Addie’s by getting a haircut, shave, and trimming his nails. He puts his pajamas and toothbrush in a paper bag and walks to her house via the alley so that the neighbors won’t notice him going over. However, Addie tells him to come by the front door the next time, if there is a next time, because she’s tired of paying attention to what other people think. They have a drink, and then Louis asks for a brief tour of the house. Addie has lived there for 44 years, which is two years longer than Louis and his wife Diane lived in Holt.
Chapter 3 Summary
While Addie is in the bathroom, Louis looks at the family photos in her room. He sees a photograph of Carl, her deceased husband. He tells Addie that he is now glad he didn’t know Carl better, as it might have made their arrangement awkward. Addie doesn’t understand his sentiment since she knew Diane well. In bed, they talk for a while longer before Addie falls asleep. Louis stays awake, watching her. They have not touched. At three in the morning, Louis uses the bathroom and shuts the window. He leaves at dawn via the sidewalk, not having slept. At home, he has breakfast, works in the garden, has lunch, and naps for a couple of hours.
Chapter 4 Summary
After Louis’s nap, he doesn’t feel well. He calls Addie to let her know that he won’t be coming that evening. He makes an appointment with his doctor for the next day. Due to his illness, he is unable to sleep that night, either. In the morning, he goes to the hospital for tests, and his doctor admits him to the hospital with a urinary tract infection. Addie visits him at the hospital the next day. She admits that she feared he had lied about being sick to get out of spending the night with her. Louis confesses that he’s been thinking about her most of the time since that night and that their arrangement interests him more than anything has in a long time. They talk about his daughter, Holly, who lives in Colorado Springs. Louis called her but told her not to come because he’d be out of the hospital soon. Holly is a teacher like he was.
Chapter 5 Summary
Though Louis is discharged from the hospital the next day, it takes him a week to recover. When he feels better, he calls Addie to let her know he’s coming over. This time, he walks over from the sidewalk in front of their houses. After their drinks, they prepare for bed. Addie tells him he can leave his pajamas and toothbrush at her place from now on. In bed, she asks if there’s anything he wants to talk about. He has many questions for her, such as why she chose him. She says that she always thought he was a kind man whom she’d enjoy talking to. Louis tells her that she impressed him with how she managed her life after her husband died, and that she seemed strong. He feels like she managed better after being widowed than he did.
Chapter 6 Summary
Louis has coffee with some men he knows. A man he doesn’t really like, Dorlan Becker, makes a snide comment about wishing he had Louis’s energy. Louis accuses him of being a gossip and a liar, and Becker leaves without paying for his coffee. At home, Louis works with extra vigor in his garden to try and work off his anger before showering, shaving, and going over to Addie’s.
Chapter 7 Summary
As soon as Louis arrives, Addie immediately notices that something’s wrong. Over their drinks, he tells her about Becker’s comments. Addie is unconcerned since she expected people to find out and talk, but she no longer wants to live fearing other people’s judgments. Louis is upset, though, because he doesn’t want people to spread stories about Addie or damage her reputation.
Chapter 8 Summary
In bed, Addie starts talking about her early life. She says she was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. She went to college to study elementary education, and this is where she met Carl. She got pregnant when she was 20, which her father was very angry about. Carl and Addie didn’t have much money for the first few years of their marriage. Their first child was their daughter Connie; Louis has a vague recollection that Connie died young, but Addie doesn’t want to talk about that yet. Instead, she explains that she and Carl decided to move to Colorado after vacationing there once. Carl got a job in an insurance office. Six years after Connie was born, they had a boy named Gene. Louis asks about how Addie became pregnant with Connie when she was so young, and she bristles at his odd question. He explains that he’s feeling jealous when he thinks about it, but Addie warns him that he could ruin their arrangement with such behavior. Louis apologizes.
Chapter 9 Summary
Addie takes her 82-year-old neighbor Ruth Joyce to the grocery store. The cashier makes a remark about good men being close to home while casting a glance at Addie. This angers Ruth, who retorts that the cashier has a stain on her blouse. In the car, Ruth talks about how she sometimes hates their small town because of people like the cashier, who is the daughter of a notorious gossip. Addie realizes that Ruth must know about Louis spending nights at her house. Ruth confirms that she does know, since she gets up early. When Addie states that he’s a good man, Ruth says she’s uncertain about that, but that his wife seemed to have gotten over the pain Louis caused her.
Chapters 1-9 Analysis
Kent Haruf’s writing style in Our Souls at Night is spare, using relatively short sentences and few adjectives. These elements combine to give the novel a quiet tone which mimics the content of this gentle romance about two widowed people in their seventies. Moreover, the details provided about Louis and Addie are simple and quotidian: They wash dishes, clean their houses, and garden. The spare narrative style and these everyday details make the story seem conversational. Also, Haruf does not use quotation marks to set off dialogue, which enhances the effect that the novel is one long conversation. The opening line of the novel—“And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters” (3)—also gives the impression of a conversation already in progress. Since the premise of the novel itself is about characters having conversations, the quiet tone and conversational style of the writing fit the subject matter.
Addie says that her proposal that she and Louis spend their nights together stems from The Pain of Loneliness and her desire for companionship during her long nights of sleeplessness; however, in the early days of their relationship, Addie and Louis are still reserved around each other while they explore whether this arrangement fits their emotional needs. The first chapter establishes that they have been neighbors for a long time, though they do not know each other very well. Louis’s thinks, “ [Addie is] a good-looking woman, he [has] always thought so. [She] had dark hair when she was younger, but it [is] white now and cut short” (4). It is clear from this description that Addie is an older woman. It also shows that Louis has known her, or at least has seen her around the neighborhood, for a long time, since “he [has] always thought” she is good-looking and remembers what she looked like when she was younger.
In these early chapters, as Addie and Louis slowly get to know each other better, they reveal just the basic facts about their lives: Both their spouses have died; Louis was a schoolteacher and has a daughter who is also a teacher; Addie has a son and a daughter who died young. The characters reveal these facts without much emotion, and Addie is not ready to talk about her daughter Connie’s death yet since that memory carries too much pain, which she isn’t ready to share with Louis. Despite their initial reticence with each other—which is natural, giving that they are only getting to know each other—they are both glad about the arrangement. While Addie had trouble sleeping before, she falls asleep easily and soundly when Louis spends the night, which shows that she finds his presence comforting. Louis, too, cannot wait to go back to Addie’s house the second time, which shows that he enjoys their arrangement, too.
Their actions, though seemingly simple, also help characterize each figure. Louis gets a haircut and shave and trims his nails before the first night he spends with Addie, which reflects his concern with appearances or what other people think of him. Addie, who always thinks of others’ comfort and happiness, tries to make the experience pleasant for Louis by offering to let him keep his pajamas and toothbrush at her place. Thought she is accommodating, she has her limits and will not tolerate having them pushed. When Louis starts jealously asking about how she first got pregnant, Addie warns him, “[Y]ou could ruin this. You know that” (31). Louis is immediately contrite.
One of the main themes introduced in these chapters is that of Rumor and Reputations, the concept of how much the opinions and reactions of other people affect the characters’ behavior and choices. When Louis worries that their neighbors might gossip about him sleeping at Addie’s house, Addie states, “I don’t want to live like that anymore—for other people, what they think, what they believe. I don’t think it’s the way to live. It isn’t for me anyway” (26-27). However, Louis is at first concerned about what the neighbors will think of their arrangement, and when an acquaintance insinuates that he has heard that Louis and Addie are having a sexual relationship, Louis has sharp words for the man. When Louis later tells Addie about the encounter, he says, “I should’ve just ignored it and defused it. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them thinking anything bad about you” (26). However, Addie has expected that people will talk about them and is unconcerned, but Louis claims to worry about how it will affect her reputation. Later, Addie’s conversation with Ruth reveals that Louis’s reputation is not stellar. Ruth asserts that “he’s no saint. He’s caused his share of pain. I could tell you about that. His wife could’ve told you” (35). Thus, Louis’s concern for Addie’s reputation stems from his insecurity about his own reputation that he may have had tried to repair at some point.
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