Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews March 27, 2023 March 20, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
On the bus to New York, Dicey finds herself contemplating the concept of home. She realizes that she has long since given up the hope of finding home, and instead is merely looking for a place where she and her siblings can stay and be themselves. She realized that they were not free at Eunice's, as they had to expend energy and time feeling grateful for Eunice's sacrifices.
Dicey looks down at Maybeth, who appears tense, and tells her that they may have to go back to Eunice's, and Maybeth nods. They arrive in New York City, and negotiate the bus terminal. They buy tickets for Wilmington separately so as not to be recognized as a group of four. Dicey sleeps on the bus, and when she wakes, she feels renewed, as though she is both mentally and emotionally far from the deadening atmosphere at Eunice's. The children tease each other and laugh in the back of the bus, and at this moment, Dicey experiences the thrill of traveling, reconciling herself with the sadness and abandonment that have set them out upon this adventure.
Dicey begins to worry about money, as she wants to keep enough money for them to get back to Bridgeport if necessary, she knows they cannot ride the bus much longer. In Wilmington, they find that the next bus to Crisfield does not leave until the next morning, Dicey, who is afraid Eunice will be looking for them, impulsively buys tickets to Annapolis, on the opposite side of the Chesapeake Bay. In Annapolis, the children wander around the sunny, relaxed city, enjoying being once again so close to the water. When James finds they have traveled to the wrong side of the bay, he questions Dicey, who admits that she had not planned for them to travel together even though traveling together was the right thing to do. The younger children suspect Dicey, too, might have abandoned them, but she asserts that this is not true. The children find an abandoned house and sleep on the porch, as they had on their first night traveling. They sing quietly and happily into the night.
Dicey, no longer certain how much money she has left, pulls another twenty dollars out of her reserve and uses it to buy camping supplies at an Army Navy store. The children, uncertain of their plan, wander down to the boatyard, where they find two teenaged boys, Tom and Jerry, horsing around on a sailboat. The children talk to the two boys, who explain that they have been best friends their entire lives. Dicey senses that some of the things they tell the Tillermans are lies. The boys brag about their sailing abilities and their willingness to disobey Jerry's parents and take the boat out without permission, so James and Dicey quickly fabricate a story about their having to visit a relative on the eastern shore the next day. Before long, Tom has talked a reluctant Jerry into taking the Tillermans across the bay the next morning without his parents' permission. When they leave, Dicey congratulates James for his artful manipulation of the boys, but he defers, stating the Tom had done most of the manipulating. That night, the Tillermans feast triumphantly on hamburgers, and James and Dicey consider the boys' odd behavior, wondering if friendships so often consist of dares and bravado. They ruefully realize that the Tillermans rarely have friends. James asks Dicey about their grandmother, and Dicey explains that she is probably poor, strange, and solitary. That night, Dicey counts her money. Determined to keep forty dollars for their return trip, she realizes they only have seven dollars to get them to Crisfield.
The thrill of traveling breathes life into the children and their relationships with each other once again. They talk to each other honestly, Dicey telling Maybeth that they may have to go back and admitting to the rest that she had wanted to travel alone but is glad they are together. They begin to play with and tease each other, sharing jokes and laughter, which had been extinguished and repressed at Eunice's. Most importantly, they sing together at night in Annapolis, the first time the have sung since their night in New Haven. Voigt explains that singing symbolizes one of the book's major themes, reaching out, and indeed, by the time they are singing in Annapolis, the children have refreshed and reinvigorated their connections to one another.
This renewed vigor and sense of connection crucially allows Dicey to reconcile herself with what has gone before. She understands that while Momma's abandonment of them has caused them immeasurable anxiety and physical peril, it has, at the same time, launched them on an incredible adventure in which they drift in and out of the lives of others, some who have a long-term positive impact, like Windy and Stew, and some, like Louis and Edie, who do not. Moreover, this adventure binds Dicey and her siblings together: their sheer rootlessness has forced them to put down deep roots in one another. They rely upon each other, and their being together becomes clearly and simply their lives' highest priority. Most importantly, perhaps, their itinerancy teaches Dicey an important lesson about the impermanence that characterizes all life experiences. She understands that as long as she can remain with and protect the small group of people whom she loves dearly, she can let go of anything else and face any other loss and unexpected development.
Please wait while we process your payment