85 pages • 2 hours read
Summer of the Monkeys
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Jay Berry Lee is a 14-year-old white American boy who lives in a rural, mountainous area of northeastern Oklahoma called the Ozarks. The story is set in the late 1800s. In first-person point of view, Jay Berry opens the narrative with backstory and description. He reveals that his life was happy and simple until the summer he was 14, and then he “got mixed up with a bunch of monkeys” that made his life much more complicated (1). He describes his parents, who were sharecroppers in Missouri saving up for their own farm before Mama’s father, Jay Berry’s Grandpa, offered them 60 acres near the banks of the Illinois River, which he got through a trade. Jay Berry and his twin sister Daisy, who was born with her right leg “all twisted up” (2), were just babies when Mama and Papa packed the wagon and made the move to the parcel of land in the Ozarks.
The Lee family lives in a log house. Papa farms and Mama keeps the house and chickens. Jay Berry does chores and enjoys small adventures with Rowdy, his bluetick hound, like catching small animals. Daisy gets around well on a crutch that Papa made for her and spends time in her playhouse. She has a curious affinity with woodland creatures; as if tame, they come to her and keep her company.
One day Papa is irate because Sally Gooden, their milk cow, has wandered off again; he asks Jay Berry to find her, as he is eager to continue planting the fields. Jay Berry confidently says he can bring Sally Gooden home, and that she probably went to the river bottoms, a rugged, swampy area near the Illinois River that is overgrown and, according to Mama, “a regular jungle” (8).
Jay Berry does find Sally Gooden in a slough (a watery area where tall, thick grass grows) in the bottoms, but decides to leave her there briefly to explore the river bottom paths a little with Rowdy. He is shocked to discover a monkey on the branch of a tree. He hears strange noises as well that he thinks are more monkeys. Jay Berry is so surprised that he leaves the bottoms without Sally Gooden, runs back to the pasture, and tells Papa what he saw. Papa doubts Jay Berry at first but then suggests that perhaps a rich person lost his pet monkey. Jay Berry offers to go back for Sally Gooden, but Papa says he will fetch the cow himself and tells Jay Berry to go to Grandpa’s store for Mama instead. Jay Berry goes quickly, eager to tell Grandpa about the monkey.
Chapter 2 Summary
Jay Berry runs barefoot the three miles to Grandpa’s store, arriving breathless and excited. When he tells Grandpa about the monkey, Grandpa believes him right away, and agrees that the noises Jay Berry heard were indeed more monkeys—about 30, in fact. Grandpa explains that he heard recently from two men who worked for a traveling circus that their circus train wrecked on the railroad. Monkeys and a chimpanzee escaped, and the circus workers could not recapture them. Grandpa speculates that the escaped monkeys traveled the eight miles from the railroad to the bottoms to find water and food. He tells Jay Berry that the reward for the monkeys is $2 apiece—except for the chimpanzee, who is worth $100. Jay Berry is so excited that he cannot think straight. He wants a .22 rifle and a pony, and this reward money means that he can get them. Grandpa fixes up six small steel traps with fabric from meal sacks around the trap jaws so that the monkeys’ paws won’t be injured when caught. He suggests apples when Jay Berry asks about bait.
Chapter 3 Summary
On the way home, Jay Berry tries to calculate the total amount of money he might earn by capturing the monkeys but is too excited to get an accurate sum. He meets up with Papa, who concurs that monkeys are indeed in the bottoms; he saw multiple monkeys while fetching Sally Gooden. He gives Jay Berry permission to devote time to catching them. Jay Berry knows his mother might be more difficult to persuade; Mama does not want him to spend time in the river bottoms for all its dangers. Jay Berry convinces her he will be safe and that he does not intend to climb tall trees; he shows her the traps Grandpa offered. Sensing defeat, Mama gives in.
Jay Berry goes next to see Daisy in her playhouse. Birds surround her and a rabbit sleeps in her lap. The animals scatter at Jay Berry’s approach. Daisy, who often teases Jay Berry, says that Papa told her about the monkeys. She is relieved that he will not hurt the monkeys, only trap them to return them to the circus. She tells Jay Berry that the Old Man of the Mountains came by earlier to see her. This strange man is the subject of many of Daisy’s stories; she reminds Jay Berry that the Old Man “takes care of the hills” and will impart bad luck if Jay Berry says he doesn’t believe in him (37). Jay Berry becomes nervous and a little afraid at Daisy’s insistence that the Old Man is real and that he does not like boys who catch little animals.
Chapter 4 Summary
The next morning, Jay Berry is up before the rooster. He does his chores, devours his breakfast, and departs to capture the monkeys. Papa warns that the monkeys “may be too smart” for Jay Berry, but Jay Berry refuses to consider that (42). He sets the traps and carefully buries them beneath dirt and leaves, then ties an apple to hang above each trap. He sits a ways off to wait and watch. Many monkeys show up at once, making a racket of noise. One monkey soon goes for an apple, but he’s scared away, and Jay Berry doesn’t catch him. Then Jay Berry sees a much larger animal, one that almost looks the size of a human child; he realizes that this “big monkey” can warn the others of danger. The big one—who is actually a chimpanzee—uses his long arm to reach each apple while avoiding stepping on any of the traps. He takes a bite and gives the rest to the other monkeys. He even celebrates his trick, laughing and rolling in somersaults on the ground. Jay Berry feels embarrassed and irate. He tries again, resetting the traps with apple halves tied directly to the jaw, so that if a monkey tries to pull the apple the trap will go off, like a mousetrap.
What Jay Berry thinks of as the “big monkey” returns first and eyes the apples. He screams and erupts whenever a smaller monkey tries to get near the traps, and he eventually teaches them to avoid the area. He thinks for a while about the apples, then takes a stick and beats each trap in turn until the trap is sprung. Then he uses his fingers to untie the apples, which he hands out equitably to the other monkeys.
Disgusted, Jay Berry thinks about shooting the large animal to still profit from capturing the small ones; then he comes to his senses and realizes how much money that would be tossing away. He plans to set the traps in a cluster but goes to get a drink of mountain spring water first. When he returns, his gunny sack of all the traps and remaining apples are gone—stolen by the monkeys. The big one stands on a nearby branch with Jay Berry’s sandwich and an apple in either hand. Angry, Jay Berry throws a “chunk” from the ground at him, but the chimpanzee screams and throws an apple back at Jay Berry. Jay Berry tries using his beanshooter on him, but the rest of the monkeys slink down from the treetops and form a group. The big one begins to climb down as well, but Jay Berry does not wait around. He runs.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
In this lesser-known, historical novel by the author of Where the Red Fern Grows, a young boy sets out on a fascinating quest with exciting stakes. Jay Berry loves his family members, his home, and his adventures with his dog in the rural Ozarks; he even seems content with the general lack of excitement at the start of summer, in that the usual mini-adventures through the river bottoms will suffice just fine for him. This protagonist expects nothing out of the ordinary; he even already knows where to find Sally Gooden, and in fact, there she is in the river bottoms as expected.
When the monkey appears, the juxtaposition between typical and unexpected catches Jay Berry off guard; the noise of the other monkeys, still hidden, forces him to run away. Though he recovers quickly from his scare and later exhibits excitement and motivation to seek the reward, that jarring moment of shock when he spots the first monkey sets the stage for his struggles to come. The monkeys are far wilier and more trickster-like than Jay Berry ever expected, and his first inclination to run foreshadows his upcoming conflicts in facing the adept foes, especially the largest and most valuable. The chimpanzee has skill and intelligence; he not only outsmarts Jay Berry’s first attempts with Grandpa’s traps but also instructs the lesser monkeys and keeps them from falling prey to Jay Berry’s attempts to capture them.
The remote setting and time period are complementary to the plot’s conflict. The elements of isolation and solitude are necessary not only for the monkeys, logically, to seek habitation in the Ozarks, but also for Jay Berry’s plans to capture them; keeping their presence and location secret is key to Jay Berry’s success, given that if older, wiser, more skilled hunters went after the monkeys and reward dollars, Jay Berry would not have much of a chance to come out ahead. The remote, wild, and untamed area of the river bottoms provides an atmosphere of adventure and danger, and the fact that its paths and features are unmapped allows the reader to compare Jay Berry’s quest with other stories that feature escapades and endeavors with treasure maps and high stakes.
Daisy’s “twisted leg” (perhaps the birth defect known as clubfoot) keeps her close to home, but she compensates for her lack of physical mobility with imaginative stories, closeness to animals, and a strong respect for nature, the mountains, and living things. Daisy’s insistent belief in “the Old Man of the Mountains” introduces the elements of both mythic folklore and spirituality into the story. The symbolism of an Old Man as a caretaker of the land also loosely connects with the ways in which Native peoples traditionally uphold the importance of nature and the environment, which may remind the reader that the Lees’ land once belonged to Native peoples.
A note about the use of “monkey” and “chimpanzee” in this guide: Jay Berry wrongly thinks of the largest animal in the group of escapees as a “monkey.” This large “monkey” is a chimpanzee; chimpanzees belong to the ape family (not the monkey family). In trying to reflect Jay Berry’s thoughts, feelings, and voice as a first-person protagonist, however, these chapter summaries refer to the chimpanzee, Jimbo, as the “large monkey” or “big monkey” as Jay Berry does in the narrative.
Unlock all 85 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
