51 pages • 1 hour read
Natasha PrestonThe Cellar
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014A 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 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Summer”
Wednesday, July 28 continues. Violet tries to apologize quickly to Clover, but he is unforgiving this time. He produces the knife and stabs Violet in the stomach. Summer, watching, tries to tell herself it is a dream. Violet dies shockingly fast. Clover demands the Flowers clean up the mess; then he leaves. Poppy leads Summer to the sofa. Rose tells Poppy to “get the body bag” (83), and Summer realizes this scenario has played out in the past. After bagging Violet’s body, Rose and Poppy mop the floor. Rose says Violet is Clover’s eighth victim since Rose arrived.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Clover”
The time note indicates a flashback to 2005. Colin Brown (Clover) purchases tulips, noting their perfect beauty, and takes them to the cemetery, where he places them on his mother’s grave. He sees a family with a young girl; at first, he smiles at the girl’s chatter, then thinks disgustedly that she will one day turn into “just another one of them” (89). Clover goes to a department store, ready to complete another piece of his plan. He purchases 12 women’s skirt-and-cardigan sets, four each of three different pastel colors, in size 10. Back home, he appreciates the care he has put into making the cellar a lovely home for his soon-to-arrive family. He values his accomplished goals for the day, but then he sees dead tulips in a vase; his fury and pain “engulf” him, and “[he is] lost” (93).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Summer”
The narrative returns to the present: Thursday, July 29. Clover is infuriated that one set of flowers, the poppies, are shriveled and dead. He blames Poppy for this. Summer is astounded that he expects healthy-looking flowers when they are “in a vase underground” (95). He slaps Poppy, then leaves. Poppy tells Summer she thinks Clover desires to have a perfect family that is pure and beautiful, like the qualities he sees in flowers. When Clover arrives the next morning, Summer must force herself to say good morning to him. He tells her she is beautiful and looks her up and down. Summer feels “violated” as he looks at her.
When Clover exits after breakfast, he leaves behind a newspaper. Summer sees her photo and the story of her disappearance on the front page. Later, Clover joins the women for a movie night. Summer is horrified when Clover sits next to her and strokes her hair throughout the film.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Lewis”
It is Saturday, July 31. Lewis continues to look for Summer, along with Theo, Henry, and Summer’s father. While Dawn, Summer’s mother, stays home in case Summer calls, and Lewis’s mother helps by preparing meals, the others widen the existing search to include fringe areas such as where runaways gather. No one there has seen Summer.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Clover”
The narrative flashes back to Friday, March 11, 2005. Clover convinces a young, unhoused woman, Catherine, to allow him to buy her dinner. He is certain she will be his perfect Violet. When he unlocks the van, she faints. She wakes as he carries her into the house. Clover is mildly frustrated with the woman’s many questions and protests as he explains the routine and her responsibilities. He says they will “test-drive” the routine on Monday. He checks on Violet the next day; when she says she is fine, he is thrilled.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Summer”
Summer wakes on July 31, showers, dresses, and enters the main room just in time for Clover’s entrance. This time, she says good morning in unison with Poppy and Rose. Clover announces he will buy new clothes for them; they are to place the old things in bags. This morning, for the first time, he kisses Summer on the cheek before leaving. She is disgusted; Poppy talks her into being strong. The three of them bag up all the old clothes, including Violet’s. Summer wonders for the first time what happened to the clothes she was wearing the night Clover abducted her.
Rose and Poppy offer to teach Summer to knit. They say that Clover donates the items they make to charity anonymously. Later, Clover returns and directs them to dress exactly alike in one of the new outfits; the clothes they were wearing will go into the clothes bags. He comments on how lovely they look and tells Summer that soon her weight will be “where it should be” (128).
Summer grows frustrated with trying to knit. Poppy and Rose give her another paper Clover brought; this one is a national newspaper with a large picture of Lewis and her. Suddenly, Clover keys in and forces a young woman down the steps. He is raging, calling her a “Filthy whore!” He stabs the woman in the stomach as Summer, and the others watch. He orders Rose and Poppy to clean up, which they do. Summer cries in bed.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Clover”
The narrative flashes back again to 2005: It is Friday, July 15. Clover brought Poppy to the cellar a few days before and is giving her time to adjust. Violet (Catherine) is helping her along; now, Clover tells Violet he will be bringing someone new soon. Poppy stays in the bedroom for breakfast; Clover forgives this since she is still adjusting. Violet reminds Clover they need food supplies. Later, she asks for knitting supplies so she has something productive to do. Clover agrees and offers to bring her whatever she needs to knit.
Later, Clover brings a sex worker to the house: “As I drove home I thought about Mother. Would she feel proud that I hadn’t given up? Since her death I hadn’t been as dedicated to her cause as I should have been” (137). He kills the sex worker in front of Violet and Poppy, expecting them to understand that he must do it so as not to allow the “whore” to “rip families apart” (139). He leaves the Flowers to clean up the blood while he goes to shower, reflecting that he had not needed body bags since his mother’s death but would have to acquire them now.
Two days later, he offers to buy dinner for two hitchhiking young women, Bree and Sadie. They agree and get into his car. He starts for home, thinking his “family was complete” (141).
Chapters 8-14 Analysis
Flashbacks from Clover’s viewpoint help to characterize him while providing an explanation and motive for his actions. These flashbacks reveal how he begins collecting “Flowers.” In Chapter 9, for example, in 2005, Colin finishes his preparations for his new “family” by purchasing clothing for them. This act, along with his careful choices in setting up the cellar as a “bungalow,” demonstrate this Shadow’s propensity for forethought and planning as well as his ability to exude a calm pretense in social situations and daily life (like shopping). The narrative foreshadows his inner struggles through increasingly frequent mentions of his mother, including clues in Chapter 14 that imply it was his “mother’s cause” to kill sex workers, and she would be proud to see him continue this work. Clover feels a need to please her (though she is dead), which will recur throughout the narrative’s past and present.
The narrative employs flashbacks to indicate Clover’s concerning behavior twice more: when he sees the young girl in the cemetery and when he sees dead flowers in the cellar. Both times, his pleasant mood fades fast into fury and darkness, and it becomes clear that unrealistic beliefs about beautiful things consume Clover: All girls become impure, similar to the way flowers in a vase should remain perfect and lovely (despite being cut) but never do. These flashbacks show that Clover’s violent behaviors built over time; later, the author uses additional flashbacks to juxtapose Clover’s careful control over the Flowers and his murderous acts against his slow descent toward sloppiness and poor decision-making in the present.
Indirect characterization is an important literary device in The Cellar. A notable instance occurs in Chapter 14 when the first Violet, an unhoused woman named Catharine, asks Clover for knitting needles and yarn so that she might assuage her boredom through productivity. She claims to disparage mass-produced things, says she favors homemade items, and tells Clover she can knit him a winter hat—all in alignment with Clover’s ways of thinking. Though this Violet is not deeply characterized since she only appears through Clover’s perspective, the inference here is that Catharine has determined what Clover wants to hear and consequently uses her comments to get what she wants. As such, knitting needles emerge as an important symbol in The Dynamics of Power and Control in Abusive Situations.
Another literary device that contributes to complexity and interest is mood. Through Summer’s perspective, the author depicts the prevailing mood in the cellar as one of dread and fear. However, the present Rose and Poppy work hard to paint a façade of stability, politeness, and pleasantries, demonstrating Resilience in the Face of Dire Circumstances, whether Clover is in the space or not. Nothing Poppy or Rose says, however, can alleviate Summer’s growing fear of Clover’s irrational and violent reaction when the poppies die in Chapter 10 or her horror after she witnesses Clover’s murder of the sex worker in Chapter 13. Summer also feels increasing dread as the time approaches when Clover will rape her. She cannot stand his kisses or touch and feels “violated” when he looks at her in Chapter 10; in several chapters, she feels sick hearing the door to the cellar, knowing he is coming for meals and conversation as if their captivity is normal. These emotional and physical reactions, mostly revealed in Summer’s interior monologue, contribute to the overall mood of dread she feels and compounds her constant fear while confined to the cellar.
