Whirligig Chapter 8 Summary

Whirligig - Chapter 8

Jenny feels helpless as someone that she loves and close to is dying - her grandmother. When the old woman tells Jenny to give her a ride around town, Jenny decides to help her because her mom wasn't there, and she somehow desperately needed to see this place. So Jenny and her grandmother get into the car, and drive around the town. Her grandmother tells her to go places that don't even make any sense, like a birch tree, and an old run down house. This old house was Rachel's, her long dead sister. Jenny is confused at first about her grandmother's directions, and she is frustrated at not knowing what is going on in grandmother's mind. At the last stop, which was a spinning whirligig on an old, run down hostel, is when Jenny finally understands the journey. Her grandmother explained that she wanted to see all these special things in her life, before she died. The whirligig gave her and Jenny a message that not everyone is evil, and when people died in the Holocaust, they would have wanted the people that learned of them to spread joy and happiness, instead of grieving over their losses. She describes how the person who made the "wind toy" was of good spirit and intentions, and that life is just too precious to waste.

When Jenny's grandmother first asked Jenny to drive her to some place, Jenny wasn't all that up for it. She didn't understand what her grandmother was aiming for, and what she wanted. At first, Jenny agreed to do it because her grandmother seemed so anxious to go, and her mother wasn't there to drive her around. But by the end of the journey, she finally understood why her grandmother told her to drive to these places, and realized that her grandmother knew her time was to come. A major theme of this chapter was that life is precious, and even though there has been suffering, joy and happiness should still take place, instead of endless grieving and mourning over the losses. Jenny's grandmother talks about this when they visit the whirligig, and how everyone still has a good intention. I believe that after Jenny's grandmother has passed on, Jenny will remember her grandmother's spiritual words, and spread peace and joyfulness into the world.