37 pages • 1 hour read
Jacqueline WoodsonIf You Come Softly
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998A 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 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Ellie and Jeremiah meet at the New York Public Library in the snow. Outside, a Black woman gives them a strange look, and Ellie wishes those looks and reactions from other people would go away. Jeremiah says it’s just like the weather: “changing but still constant” (131). He says not to mind it, as the only way to stop the looks is to end their relationship. Ellie tells Jeremiah that when she would dream about her true love, they never had a face, just a feeling. She confirms that she still would have pursued a relationship with Jeremiah if she had known how difficult it would be prior.
Chapter 17 Summary
As Jeremiah and his dad drive to the Hamptons, Jeremiah’s dad talks about white people and the way that they “don’t know they’re white” (134). Jeremiah worries about how his father will react to his relationship with Ellie. He thinks about the time Ellie took his hand when there were boys shouting racial slurs at him. Jeremiah asks his dad if he thinks there are any white people who do get it—who want to use their whiteness to “change the world” (136). His dad pauses to think before replying that he hopes so.
Chapter 18 Summary
Marion stands in Ellie’s doorway showing her daughter the absent note she received from the day Ellie and Jeremiah decided to cut class and kiss in Central Park. Marion warns Ellie not to do this to her just because she is angry about their past, and Ellie explains that not everything is about Marion. Marion warns Ellie that she’ll see how “your life turns around on you and sets you down in some strange other place” (139). Ellie considers this and it makes her nervous, but she assures herself that this has already happened: Life turned her around when she met Jeremiah and it has put her down in a beautiful place.
Chapter 19 Summary
Jeremiah has breakfast at his dad’s, and his dad shares that he feels like he never sees Jeremiah and doesn’t know what’s going on in Jeremiah’s life. Jeremiah explains that he’s just been hanging out with some friends from school in Central Park. His dad warns him to be careful there, as a Black boy in a white neighborhood, and there should be “no running.” When they discuss a movie Jeremiah saw about bugs, they reminisce about Jeremiah and his cousin catching fireflies at his grandma’s down south, and Jeremiah brings up how he misses his grandmother. Jeremiah thinks about his parents and how his dad says they outgrew each other. He doesn’t want to ever outgrow Ellie or not be with her. He wonders what happens when you die, and he asks his dad if he thinks they “go back to the dust” or if it’s “something bigger” (147). Jeremiah still feels his grandma around, and his dad hopes that there’s something bigger.
Chapters 16-19 Analysis
In contrast to the previous three chapters, these next chapters depict the reactions and reality of the world around this new couple. While Jeremiah and Ellie feel the bliss of their love and begin to hope their lives have only changed for the better, the world around them reacts in a way that illustrates the inevitable challenges of an interracial relationships in a racist world. Though Jeremiah had previously observed the world around them by simply turning away, he and Ellie now face looks and words from strangers when they are together in public. While Ellie struggles with how difficult it is to face the opinions of the outside world and the doubts of her mother, she continues to hope for a beautiful future for her and Jeremiah. Jeremiah, meanwhile, has long understood that this is the reality when you are Black in this society, but he continues to hope for something bigger in love and life. Ultimately, these chapters shape the inescapable impacts of racism on the young, hopeful couple and develop the theme of “The Power of Fate and Inevitability.”
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By Jacqueline Woodson
