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 19-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Louis drives Addie, Jamie, and their neighbor Ruth out to a café on the highway for lunch. When they’re done eating, he drives them to a local ballpark to watch a softball game. Louis takes Jamie into the bleachers and explains the rules of the game. Jamie tells him he has never played catch before. Waiting in the car, Ruth asks if Louis is still going over to Addie’s house even with Jamie there. When Addie replies that it’s okay because they haven’t done anything intimate yet, Ruth tells her to hurry up before she gets as old as she is. After dropping Ruth off, Louis goes to Addie’s house and finds Jamie already asleep in the middle of her bed.
Chapter 20 Summary
The next day, Louis takes Jamie to the hardware store to buy softball gloves—one for each of them, and one for Addie—some balls, and a baseball cap. Louis knows the old man who works there, as well as the store’s previous manager and prior owner. He teaches Jamie to play catch and to hit the ball, and slowly the boy improves. That night, with Jamie asleep between them on the bed, Louis suggests that they get a dog for the boy so that he isn’t just playing with two old people and his phone. Addie reluctantly agrees, but only if Louis keeps the dog at his house most of the time. So, they take Jamie to the humane shelter and find a five-year-old dog with a limp that seems friendly and well-behaved. Jamie takes to her quickly and decides to name her Bonny after a girl in his school. The dog cries and whines if left alone too long, so Addie agrees to let her stay at her house. Louis realizes that the boy might be able to sleep in his own bed if the dog can sleep with him. Jamie agrees to try that, so Louis and Addie are able to resume their nighttime talks. She checks in with Louis about whether he likes their nights. He says that he is enjoying the companionship more than he thought he would, and Addie feels the same way as well.
Chapter 21 Summary
Louis and Addie discuss the career goals they had when they were younger. Louis wanted to be a poet but did not have much success with it. He enjoyed teaching literature to high school students, but looking back on it, he realizes that it probably didn’t matter much to the students. He recalls one girl who memorized the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which impressed him. As Diane didn’t want to work, Louis painted houses over the summer to make more money. He thinks that Diane may have seen his writing poetry as a threat because he was passionate about it, whereas she didn’t seem to have any ambitions beyond raising her children. Addie says she wanted to be a teacher, but she got pregnant before she completed the degree. She muses that she chose that course of study not because it was what she really wanted to do, but because it was one of the few options available to women at the time. Louis realizes that their lives haven’t turned out how either of them expected them to, though he cites the past two months with Addie as bringing him more happiness than he feels he deserves. The wind picks up and it starts raining, so Louis checks on Jamie and the dog. The boy is asleep and the dog merely looks up at him, so he returns to Addie’s bed.
Chapter 22 Summary
Jamie and Louis check on the baby mice in Louis’s yard. They now have dark fur and open eyes. The mother mouse is not with them, so Jamie asks why she left. Louis explains that she’s more afraid of people than of leaving her babies. He tells Jamie that he doesn’t want the mice to get in his house or chew on car wires, but he’s okay with them being outside.
Chapter 23 Summary
Ruth invites Addie, Louis, and Jamie over to her house for dinner to thank them for taking her out. Though the food is set on the kitchen table, it’s too hot to eat in there, so Louis offers to move their dinner into the dining room and open some windows that Ruth believes are jammed. She concedes that men are good for some things. While Addie and Louis do the washing up after dinner, Ruth shows Jamie photos of Holt from the 1920s. She tells him that it was a pretty, tree-lined town, but then they got electricity, and the city council decided to cut down the trees while people were sleeping one night. Ruth’s mother never forgave the men on the council, which included her father. Later, she tells Louis that he’s still on probation, but that she believes Jamie will be a good man when he grows up.
Chapter 24 Summary
Louis and Addie take Jamie and the dog Bonny out to the country to let her run freely. Jamie runs after her. Addie comments to Louis that getting the dog has been good for Jamie; Bonny seems to make him more comfortable. She wonders whether these positive changes will continue when Jamie returns home.
Chapter 25 Summary
One day, Ruth goes to the bank with a friend and suddenly falls down dead. There is a small funeral, as most of Ruth’s friends are already dead. Addie tells the minister about her, as he doesn’t know her because she had stopped going to church. Ruth’s niece from South Dakota inherits the house and sells it in a month; however, she doesn’t want the urn with Ruth’s ashes, so Addie and Louis spread them behind Ruth’s old house at two in the morning. They decide not to tell Jamie that Ruth is dead.
Chapter 26 Summary
Addie tells Louis that Carl changed after their daughter Connie died. He closed himself off from both Gene and Addie. She and Carl didn’t make love for a year after Connie’s death, and even when they started again, it was not good because Carl seemed devoid of emotion. Ten years before Carl’s death, they stopped making love at all, though they still appeared affectionate toward each other in public and slept in the same bed. Even Gene shut himself off emotionally, though Addie tried to connect with him and make up for his father’s distance. She wanted to show Gene the world beyond Holt, so she took him to Denver for plays and concerts, but he wasn’t interested. Addie started going to shows in Denver by herself and treating herself to nice hotels and new clothes that she only wore while she was there. She didn’t want people in Holt to know about that part of her life. Despite the chill in their relationship, Addie and Carl cared for each other when the other was sick, partly out of a sense of duty and their history together.
Chapters 19-26 Analysis
This section of the novel is marked by intergenerational connections. Jamie and Ruth play a role in Addie’s and Louis’s relationship, and all of them become like a family unit in their support and concern for one another.
While Addie and Louis are the subject of gossip in their small town, Ruth has never judged Addie’s decision and has even supported her when others made snide remarks. This is why Addie is surprised and a little defensive when Ruth remarks that she knows that Louis still visits her at night, even though Jamie has come to stay. Addie says, “I don’t think we’re hurting him. We don’t do anything, if that’s what you mean” (81), thinking that Ruth might be critical of their continued sleeping arrangement because she assumes they are having sex even with the child in the house. However, Ruth is untroubled by Jamie being in the house when they’re together, stating: “Children can accept and adjust to almost anything, if it’s done right” (81). In this instance, Ruth speaks as the voice of wisdom; the older woman understands through long experience that the things some people take issue with may not actually be troublesome at all, in the long run. While she still isn’t certain whether she wholeheartedly agrees with Addie about Louis being a good man—telling him at her dinner party, “You’re still on probation” (103)—she encourages Addie to get on with the physical intimacy. Ruth urges Addie to hurry, saying, “You better get to going. You don’t want to be as old as me” (81). This exchange essentially condones Addie’s relationship with Louis. While Addie states on multiple occasions that she’s not concerned with the opinions of others, having this benediction of sorts from her older friend must come as a relief. Ruth’s lines also highlight one significant downside of Late-Life Love: Since both parties are older, they likely have fewer years to spend and enjoy with one another, when compared to their younger counterparts. This is why Ruth encourages Addie to hurry up and have sex—to enjoy the relationship fully—while she still can. Ruth dies soon after this conversation, which once again is a reminder to Addie and Louis that their time together is running out, too.
While Ruth is a maternal figure to Louis and especially to Addie, Jamie brings out their parental sides. While Addie loves her grandson, Jamie is also her chance to connect emotionally with Gene. Since Connie’s death, Gene has shut himself off from her, despite Addie’s efforts to connect with him and show him that life can be beautiful and fun. For years, Addie and Gene have been dealing with The Pain of Loneliness as a result of this childhood tragedy, and Addie sees Jamie as a way for them to move beyond it. Addie worries that Gene treats Jamie coldly, repeating Carl’s cold demeanor, and Addie wants to break this cycle. She makes sure that Jamie feels safe and loved when he is with her. She tries to keep him occupied instead of dwelling on how his mother left him and his father sent him away. Louis chips in to help her with Jamie, and he enjoys caring for the boy. He doesn’t have a son, and there are parts of Jamie’s upbringing that Gene has either neglected or not gotten around to yet, so Louis is happy to step in as temporary father figure. Not only does he explain the softball game to the boy, but he even buys him softball equipment when he learns that Jamie has never played catch. He takes the time to teach him how to catch and hit a ball, as well as how to water a garden. Louis proposes that they get a dog for Jamie, sensing that the boy “needs someone or something to play with besides his phone and an old man and an old woman doddering around” (84). Part of that might be self-serving, as having Bonny in his room allows Jamie to sleep in his own bed instead of sleeping between Louis and Addie. However, it also shows that Louis is aware of the boy’s loneliness and fear of abandonment, which may remind him of how Holly must have felt when Louis left her and her mother to be with Tamara.
Though Ruth’s and Jamie’s time together is limited, she takes a liking to the boy and the promise he holds. She says of and to him when they’re at her house: “[This] boy can be different […]. I have hopes for him. She took Jamie’s face in her hands. You’re a good boy. Don’t you forget that. Don’t you let anyone make you think otherwise” (103). Perhaps she recognizes in his youth the untarnished, unjaded person that everyone can be, given the right environment.
This set of chapters also contains two deaths: Ruth’s in the present and Carl’s in the past. Ruth’s funeral is poorly attended, not because she was disliked but because most of her friends and family are dead. The few attendees at her funeral show how lonely Ruth must have been in the last days of her life since most of the people she connected with in life are gone. This reflects the situations of many older people are forced into increasing isolation as they grow older, which is something that Addie and Louis contend with, as well. They step in as Ruth’s substitute children, in a way, and thoughtfully spreading her ashes behind her house while the new owners are sleeping. By uniting to preserve Ruth’s memory and give her peace, Addie and Louis end up strengthening their bond; Ruth’s loneliness and death mirror their own near futures, but now, they feel like a team against all the challenges that are to come their way.
Addie reflects on Carl’s death and how their years together even before he died were unhappy—they were bound together only by duty, not love. She explains her reasons for staying with Carl despite her unhappiness by saying, “We had that long time of joined life, even if it wasn’t good for either one of us. That was our history” (113). Carl’s emotional distance from his family made their home lives and private moments cold and uncomfortable, though they appeared to be a typical and loving couple in public. She says their sex life was “more just physical than anything loving and emotional” (110), and then it stopped altogether 10 years before he died. Appearances mattered to Carl because he was a businessman and wanted to always impress his clients, which is why he always wore a suit to church even when it was hot, like the August day when he died. Though Addie and Carl were not emotionally or physically intimate, they shared a bed until his death to maintain appearances of normalcy, especially for Gene. Since Addie has been forced to hide her pain and loneliness for much of her life, she doesn’t want to do it anymore. Widowhood has given her the freedom to pursue the path to her own happiness because she no longer has to defer to Carl’s wishes. This brings up the theme of Rumor and Reputations, and it shows why Addie has no patience for either. She has reached a point in her life where she refuses to live by other people’s expectations or demands, especially those of the townspeople who gossip about her and Louis.
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By Kent Haruf
