57 pages • 1 hour read
Douglas StuartShuggie Bain
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapters 28-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “1989: The East End”
Chapter 28 Summary
The tenements seem bursting with life after the isolation of Pithead. The new third-floor flat is small, and Shuggie is disappointed that his small room would not fit Leek’s bed, too. Agnes promises him tea and apple pastries. Shuggie waits for her, watching the swarming children in the courtyard below. When Agnes returns, she is drunk. She and Shuggie argue about it; she lied to him about getting sober. Agnes goes out to introduce herself to the neighbors, who size her up: she is drunk by lunchtime.
The students at Shuggie’s new school immediately make fun of him. He now knows neither he nor Agnes will get to be brand new.
Chapter 29 Summary
A handsome boy named Keir Weir from the tenement drags Shuggie along to meet some girls. Keir tries to get Shuggie to look straighter as they set off. Shuggie lies that he has a girl back in Pithead named Madonna. Keir is naturally skeptical.
Keir manages to convince the girl he likes and her friend, Leanne, to go with them. She will not let them in the house because he got her in trouble with her parents. Keir tells the girls that Shuggie likes Leanne. Waiting for the girls to come out of the house, Shuggie wonders if this is the moment that will make him normal. Keir tells him, “Try and look less like a big poof, would ye?” (385).
Shuggie walks with Leanne. She is a tall Catholic girl who grew up with many brothers. She goes to a different school, St. Mungo’s. The area is not friendly to Protestants, and Leanne says her brothers would beat Shuggie up if they knew she was with a half-Protestant. Shuggie, relieved, tries to leave, but Leanne tells him not to play hard to get.
Leanne asks about Shuggie’s dad; Shuggie says his dad is dead. She asks if he even likes girls, and, unexpectedly, he lets slip that he does not know. Leanne says that she does not like boys. They agree to be boyfriend and girlfriend for now.
They make their way to a motorway embankment, and they sit under a bridge. While Keir makes out with his girlfriend, Shuggie combs Leanne’s hair. Leanne guesses Shuggie’s mom is a drinker; she knows because her own mom drinks. Shuggie says he is worried Agnes is going to drink herself to death. For the first time, Shuggie opens up about the anxieties Agnes brings him. They bond over stories of their common experience with alcoholic mothers. Shuggie reveals that Agnes tried to kill herself again last night by attempting to jump out of the window.
Shuggie begins to think he will never be able to save Agnes and he will never be able to be normal.
Chapter 30 Summary
Shuggie comes home from school starving because older boys have been stealing his lunch tickets. Agnes has spent all of their money on lager and bingo. They get into a fight, and Agnes accuses him of wanting to leave her. Despite Shuggie’s protestation, Agnes calls him a cab and kicks him out, telling him to go find Leek. She watches Shuggie go, smugly thinking of how everyone has “abandoned” her and knows she has lost Shuggie.
Shuggie has no money for the 12-pound fare when he gets to his destination. He offers to let the cab driver use him sexually. The driver, concerned, says he only takes money and allows Shuggie to look for Leek to pay for the fare.
Shuggie had only been to Leek’s small, rented room one time before. He missed his brother deeply. Shuggie never knew how often Leek went to watch over him. This time, Leek feeds Shuggie some instant noodles. After they eat, he asks what caused Agnes to finally kick him out. Shuggie does not know, but he still thinks he can make her get better. Shuggie looks around Leek’s neat room and realizes his brother is leaving. He envies the peace he sees in Leek’s eyes.
Leek warns Shuggie that Agnes will sober up, beg for him to come back, then eventually kick him out again. He is casual when he says the drink will put Agnes on the street. The buzzer rings. Agnes sent a cabbie to Leek’s house with a bag of tinned custard cans. Leek must spend the money he saved for a sight-seeing tour. Leek is furious; he blames Shuggie for letting slip to Agnes where he lives. The buzzer rings again, and when Leek returns, he bursts open his gas meter and gives Shuggie fare to get home. Along with the custard, Agnes sent her telephone. Leek is incredibly worried as he tells Shuggie he needs to go back to Agnes. The custard was to help him feed Shuggie. The phone is a farewell sign.
Chapter 31 Summary
On Agnes’s birthday in March, Shuggie foolishly scrapes together some money for Agnes to go play bingo. The police return her home the next morning. They found her wandering by the river; she had lost her shoes and good coat, and she had not even made it to the bingo hall.
Instead of going to school, Shuggie takes a bus to Sighthill and goes to the top of an apartment tower. Shuggie received a Christmas card from Leek (two months late) along with a new twenty-pound note. He sits on the roof of the tower, reading the letter. Leek has found work somewhere in a distant town. He has put off art school, yet again, but he is in a relationship with a nice girl. Leek also included a drawing of Shuggie at a younger age, playing with his pretty pony toys. He realizes Leek has always known about his sexuality.
When Shuggie returns home that evening, Agnes is passed out in her chair. She had been crossing names out from her address book. Agnes gurgles and retches in her sleep. With practiced hands, Shuggie helps clear her throat of mucus. He apologizes for not being there for her the previous night. He takes off her shoes and unhooks her bra to make her more comfortable. The cold night by the river and in the police system is evident in her labored breathing. Shuggie tells Agnes that he’s thinking of leaving school; he could get a job and they could move to Edinburgh. He knows she will not get better.
Agnes coughs and retches again, the bile entering her lungs. Shuggie moves to help, but he stops. Her breathing becomes more labored, then stops. Shuggie shakes her and cries over her body for a long time. He arranges her appearance, then kisses her one last time.
Part 4, Chapter 28-31 Analysis
Shuggie’s hope for becoming normal is dashed almost as soon as they begin their new life. Agnes immediately reneges on her promise of becoming sober again, and Shuggie is greeted at his new school with homophobic insults. Though he never officially “comes out,” his new life in the East End of Glasgow helps Shuggie solidify his identity. In particular, meeting Leanne helps him begin to come to terms with his sexual identity. On their double “date” with Keir, Shuggie realizes the hollowness of his and Agnes’s promise to change. He now knows Agnes “would never be able to get sober, and he, sat in the cold with a lovely girl, knew he would never feel quite like a normal boy” (393). Still, he has finally found an ally in Leanne. Like him, Leanne doesn’t conform to social norms and has an alcoholic mother. For the first time, he’s able to relate to a peer rather than his own siblings, which is partially a catalyst for the moment when he lets his mother die. By meeting another victim of alcoholism, Shuggie can recognize the cycle that he and Agnes are stuck in, and he sees that it will only end with her death.
Agnes signals she has given up when she kicks Shuggie out and sends her telephone to Leek. throughout the novel, her telephone is her portal to the world. She uses it when she is drunk to connect to the various people who she blames for ruining her life. By getting rid of it, she is essentially closing herself off to the world and perhaps taking responsibility for the state she’s in. She is done fighting both her enemies and her addiction.
In the aftermath, Shuggie tries to take greater control over Agnes in one last-ditch effort, ensuring they have enough to eat by withholding funds from the welfare book. However, it is to no avail. the day Agnes dies, Shuggie visits Sighthill. Though he lived there when he was young, he does not remember it. Ironically, he was impressed by the tenement tower she hated living in; he imagines she must have loved it there.
Agnes’s death was avoidable, but not preventable. Shuggie could have stepped in to save her as he watched her choke on bile, but he did not, perhaps recognizing that this is what Agnes wanted. Shuggie did what he could for her while she was alive, but it was not enough because she did not have the wherewithal to help herself. Shuggie is also finally taking himself into consideration. Agnes will always be hindering his progress while she’s alive, so he lets nature take its course—this self-interest is the final phase in Shuggie’s character development.
When Agnes dies, Shuggie does one last thing for her: he arranges her body in as tasteful away as possible, just as she would have wanted. This moment emphasizes Agnes’s devotion to keeping up appearances, even when the family’s situation is dire.
