Summary: Chapter 9
Park
Park wants to tell Eleanor how blown away he was by her poem recitation in English class. He saves his new comics to read on the bus in the morning.
Eleanor
Eleanor knows that Park knows she is reading his comics. He waits for her to start a new comic book, Watchmen, and they only get halfway through Watchmen on the way to school. In the afternoon, instead of reading ahead without her, he opens up to the place where they’ve left off. When they reach Eleanor’s stop, Park hands the comic book to her. She reads it three more times that night.
Park
Park worries whether or not Eleanor will give the book back.
Eleanor
The next morning, Eleanor hands him the comic.
Summary: Chapter 10
Eleanor
The following morning, Park puts a stack of comics on Eleanor’s seat. When she gets home, she reads them until Richie yells at her to turn the light out.
Park
Park marvels at how quickly Eleanor reads the comics he gives her. When she returns them, not only are they pristine, but they smell like roses. One day, Park doesn’t have any comics to give her, and he realizes he’ll have to talk to her. He notices the title of a Smiths song written on her textbook and asks her if she likes the Smiths, which is the first time either of them has spoken to the other. She says that she doesn’t, and the conversation stops awkwardly.
In English class, Eleanor says that it seems like Shakespeare is obviously making fun of Romeo and Juliet. Park says that the play has lasted so long because people want to remember what it’s like to be young and in love.
On the bus home, Eleanor tells Park that the Smiths song on her textbook is part of a wish list of songs she’d like to hear. That night, Park makes Eleanor a mix tape.
Summary: Chapter 11
Eleanor
When Eleanor comes home, her mom dabs vanilla behind her ears, the way she used to in happier times. Later that night, Eleanor wakes up to the sound of Richie shouting and her mom crying. All the kids are awake, but they say and do nothing. In the morning, Eleanor’s mom is visibly bruised. Mouse has peed on Eleanor during the night. Eleanor washes off very carefully, avoiding Richie, and she changes into yesterday’s clothes, which are the cleanest ones she has left.
Summary: Chapter 12
Park
Park sets the comics and mix tape on the seat next to him. When Eleanor gets on the bus, he can tell something’s wrong, because she’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, her hair is a mess, and she doesn’t have her schoolbooks with her. Eleanor tells him to take the tape back because she doesn’t have any way to listen to it, so Park hands her his Walkman. For the first time, they stay with each other off the bus and walk to their lockers together. Park makes Eleanor laugh.
Eleanor
Eleanor is mad at herself for admitting to Park that she doesn’t have a tape player. She thinks about Park, who is one of the very few Asian people she’s ever met in her life, and wonders why he has green eyes. She considers telling both Park and the school guidance counselor more secrets, like the fact that she doesn’t have a toothbrush.
After gym, Eleanor discovers that her locker has been covered with maxi pads colored with red marker. Eleanor starts to cry but hides it as she peels the pads off her locker. Two black girls, DeNice and Beebi, stay behind and help her clean up. Eleanor realizes that she likes Park because even after everything that has happened, the only thing she can think about is seeing him.
Park
Park offers to let Eleanor borrow the Walkman, but instead, she borrows only the batteries and his tape.
Eleanor
At home, Eleanor puts Park’s batteries in her own Walkman and listens to the tape until the batteries die.
Analysis: Chapters 9–12
In some ways, Eleanor & Park is a very loose contemporary update of Romeo and Juliet. Eleanor and Park are about the same ages as the main characters in Romeo and Juliet. Even though they live very close to each other geographically, their worlds could not be more separate. At first, they only communicate wordlessly. When they do begin a relationship, their families find it very difficult to accept the other person. Indeed, the abuse from Eleanor’s stepdad is what eventually drives Eleanor and Park apart.
In class, Eleanor and Park each interpret Romeo and Juliet based on their own ideas about love. Although they might not know it consciously yet, Eleanor and Park are beginning to fall for each other, but the ideas and feelings that they have about love are very different. Eleanor doesn’t believe in the kind of connection that Shakespeare portrays between the lovers. She has had no role models in her life to show her what true love might mean. Because Eleanor does not have a good sense of what it might mean to fall head over heels in love and enter into a non-abusive relationship, she does not have context to experience Shakespeare’s play without irony. From Eleanor’s perspective at this point in the book, all love curdles into unhappiness and abuse. So Shakespeare’s depiction of Romeo and Juliet’s wide-eyed, idealistic love seems naïve and unrealistic to her. On the other hand, Park is a romantic. He thinks that love is a universal emotion, and he thinks that people can and do fall in love with each other when they’re young.
The maxi pad incident at the gym is one of many events in the novel that seem designed to make Eleanor ashamed of her physicality and her emerging sexuality. Maxi pads are intended to be personal, but they’re plastered all over Eleanor’s physical space. Eleanor doesn’t have a private room at home, and now she doesn’t even have a private locker to call her own. Maxi pads are not a random choice of material for the gym locker room prank. The fact that they’re the largest size of pad is a cruel choice designed to echo Eleanor’s large physique. Eleanor’s gym suit is far too short and tight for her, which emphasizes all her curves and already makes her ashamed of her body. The maxi pads are designed to make Eleanor feel ashamed to ask for help, since they represent a bodily function that makes many people, especially teenage girls who have only recently entered puberty, somewhat embarrassed. The red marker on the pads represents both menstrual blood and Eleanor’s vivid red hair. The red is also reminiscent of Hester Prynne’s red “A” in The Scarlet Letter, a tag that is supposed to be a sign of shame.
Even though Eleanor is still an outsider, and even though many kids still taunt her, slowly but surely she is beginning to find people who are nice to her and who respect her as a person. The central connection that Eleanor is forging is, of course, with Park, but she is also making more friends. The maxi pad incident at the gym has a silver lining to it, because after the incident, DeNice and Beebi help Eleanor out and treat her with kindness. When these girls defend and help Eleanor, she realizes that they must be her friends. She also realizes, after the maxi pad incident, that she really must like Park, because the very thought of him cheers her up and makes her feel more confident.
When Eleanor borrows Park’s batteries but uses her own Walkman, the action foreshadows how interconnected their lives are beginning to become. Park is becoming an integral part of her life. Eleanor and Park are starting to develop a symbiotic relationship with each other, in that each one depends on the other. Thinking about the types of comics and music that Eleanor will like excites Park and gives his favorites new significance. Park introduces new material into Eleanor’s life, and his batteries give her both literally and metaphorically the energy that she needs.
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