46 pages • 1 hour read
Beautiful Creatures
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Chapters 29-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 29 Summary: “2.05: The Battle of Honey Hill”
Lena decides to give up on the Book of Moons when they cannot find anything to help her. While the school discusses the reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, Link tells Ethan that Ridley wants to throw Lena a party for her birthday. Ethan does not think that Lena will like this, but Link says that Ridley has already invited the whole school.
Chapter 30 Summary: “2.11: Sweet Sixteen”
The morning of Lena’s birthday, Ethan arrives at Ravenwood. Aunt Del tells him that Lena will not let anyone into her room. Ethan mentally promises Lena that he will love her even if she is Dark. She lets him into her room, and he gives her a birthday present of a necklace with his mother’s ring on it. When Lena comes downstairs, Lena’s grandmother surprises her. Link and Ridley arrive, inviting Lena to the party. Macon forbids Lena from going, even though she wants to pretend that she is a normal 16-year-old girl. Lena and Macon argue when Macon tells her she can never be normal. Lena goes back up to her room. She meets Ethan at the party, explaining that Larkin helped her sneak out. Ethan and Lena dance together and express their love for each other.
Chapter 31 Summary: “2.11: Lollipop Girl”
Link runs up to Ethan. He says that Ethan’s dad is on the balcony of the Civil War Museum, acting like he will jump. Larkin promises to take Lena back to the house while Link and Ethan run toward the museum. They run up to the balcony and see Ethan’s dad on the ledge with Ridley near him. Ethan’s dad threatens to jump if Ethan tries to get close. Ridley tells him that he will find peace through jumping.
Link realizes the power Ridley has been using on him and tells Ridley that he believes there is good within her. Ethan understands that Lena is in trouble and that Ridley succeeded in separating them. Ethan begs Ridley not to hurt his dad, and Ridley releases her hold. Link tells Ridley that he knew that she was not all bad.
Chapter 32 Summary: “2.11: Family Reunion”
Ethan leaves his father with the medics and rushes back to Ravenwood with Link. He and Link catch up with Larkin and Lena when Mrs. Lincoln steps out of the darkness. Lena yells for them to get Macon. Something explodes, and Ethan finds himself pinned against a tree with magic. Mrs. Lincoln tells Ethan that she feels excited to finally meet her daughter’s first boyfriend. Ethan realizes that she is Sarafine.
Mrs. Lincoln’s body splits down the center. A woman who looks like Lena steps out of it. Mrs. Lincoln’s body fuses together again and crumbles behind her. Ethan realizes that Sarafine has been controlling Mrs. Lincoln for months. Larkin removes an illusion that’s been disguising him and reveals that he has yellow eyes, marking him as a Dark Caster. Sarafine tells Lena that Macon has lied to her and that at midnight, she will be able to Claim herself. Since Lena is the second Natural in the family, after Sarafine, the curse allows her to choose her own fate.
Macon arrives and confronts Sarafine. Next to Sarafine, another man materializes, who Macon says is his brother, Hunting. Macon tells Lena that she does have a choice but that her choice carries consequences. If Lena chooses to go Dark, all the Light Casters in the family will die. If she chooses to go Light, all the Dark Casters and creatures will die, including Macon. Macon tells Lena he did not tell her because he did not want her to feel guilty about killing him. Sarafine tells Lena that if she chooses to go Dark, she will show Lena a way for her to be with Ethan. Lena looks confused, and Sarafine reveals that Casters can never be with Mortals physically without killing them.
Chapter 33 Summary: “2.11: The Claiming”
As Sarafine tells Lena that she will never be able to marry Ethan or have children, Ethan finally understands why he feels pain every time he kisses Lena. Macon warns Lena not to listen to Sarafine. If Lena chooses to go Dark, she will not remember her feelings for Ethan; she may even kill him like Sarafine killed Lena’s father. Hunting suddenly attacks Macon. Boo tries to interfere, but Hunting wounds both Boo and Macon, and they collapse to the ground. Lena attacks Sarafine with fire and releases Ethan and Link from their bonds. She holds off Sarafine, telling Ethan to get Ryan to help Macon.
No one hears Ethan as he pounds on the door of Ravenwood because the house is Bound. Ethan jumps in Link’s car, and they drive to the Caster Library. He asks Marian to help them get to Ravenwood through the library tunnels. Marian guides them, and they enter through Ravenwood’s basement. Ethan asks Ryan to help Macon and Boo, but Lena’s grandmother tells them that she will use her power to transfer Ryan’s powers to herself.
Lena’s grandmother and Ethan run through the fields toward Macon. Lena’s grandmother heals Macon and Boo and then helps Mrs. Lincoln. Ethan hears Lena in his mind, asking him to help her on top of the family crypt. Ethan rushes to the crypt and finds Sarafine waiting for him. She stabs him, and Ethan crumbles to the ground.
Lena sees Ethan stabbed and starts to repeat the words of the spell she remembers Genevieve cast to help Ethan Carter Wate. Amma appears beside her, and the world around them freezes. Amma warns her about repeating Genevieve’s mistakes. Amma explains that the moon has disappeared due to Lena’s power, which means that Lena has postponed her Claiming. Amma gives Lena the Book of Moons and reminds her that there will be consequences and that Ethan may not come back to life.
Lena recites the spell, but when she opens her eyes, she sees that Ethan still lies in front of her. Furious, she finds Hunting, Sarafine, and Larkin and uses her power to electrocute them until they disappear. When Lena returns to the crypt, she finds Macon lying in Ethan’s place. Amma stares at Macon and tells Lena that she paid the book’s price. Lena feels devastated, knowing that she killed Macon. She runs to where Macon lay earlier, finding Ethan. She holds Ethan’s hand as he wakes up and promises that she will never leave him.
Chapter 34 Summary: “2.12: Silver Lining”
Ethan sits with Lena as she mourns Macon. The next morning, Ethan learns that Lena’s powers caused her to block the moon and stop her from being Claimed. Ethan finds Lena lying on the crypt where Macon died. She tells Ethan she regrets that the last things she said to Macon were hateful words. She looks up at him, and Ethan realizes that one of her eyes is green, while the other one has turned yellow.
Ethan walks home and thinks about Macon. He knows that Macon sacrificed himself for Lena. He wonders if Macon is still around them, like his mother. He holds the locket and decides that he and Lena will have to find Ethan Carter Wate’s grave and return the locket to him like Genevieve wanted. Ethan puts his headphones in and realizes that there is a new song on his iPod called “Seventeen Moons.” He plays the song and listens to the lyrics that foreshadow Lena’s decision to Claim herself on her 17th birthday.
Chapters 29-34 Analysis
The last section highlights Fate Versus Free Will and the link between love and agency. Although Lena fears her birthday, Ethan’s love helps her to grow strong again. Ethan gives Lena a necklace with his mother’s ring on it, mirroring the locket that Ethan Carter Wate gave to Genevieve before he died and emphasizing the parallel between the two love stories. Ethan’s feelings foreshadow how, like Genevieve and Ethan Carter Wate, he and Lena will almost lose each other. He wonders if “this was what it felt like to love someone, and feel like you had lost them. Even when you were still holding them in your arms” (473).
Macon is a foil for Ethan. In contrast to Ethan, he believes that Lena lacks agency and is powerless to challenge fate. He forbids Lena from going to the birthday party that Ridley made for her, telling her, “You can’t be normal. You weren’t meant to be normal” (489). However, Lena exerts her free will by sneaking out to meet Ethan at the party. This suggests that she is moving closer to embracing her own destiny.
Although Lena and her family believe that the Duchannes children do not have free will, and that going Dark will alter them forever, Ridley proves that there is more complexity than Macon allows. Ridley shows her nuance and innate goodness when releasing Ethan’s father from her spell. Link tells Ridley that she is “not all bad,” despite what people say about her (509). This interaction reveals hope and suggests that there is not a strict dichotomy between Light and Dark. Although Ridley still aligns herself with the Dark, she reveals that she has empathy and compassion for other people and that her love for Lena did not completely disappear when she was Claimed. In the same way, Macon is a Dark creature who chooses to feed on dreams instead of blood. Macon proves that he is more than his darkness when telling Lena he wants her to choose to be Light, even if it means killing him.
This section introduces Sarafine, an elusive villain and Lena’s Dark Caster mother, who will continue to be one of the series’ main antagonists. Sarafine can hide her identity by masquerading as Mrs. Lincoln. This exemplifies another element of the Southern Gothic tradition, in which villains disguise themselves as friends of the protagonist. Sarafine’s arrival presents Lena with the impossible choice of choosing to be Light or Dark and either killing her family or Macon. Sarafine is similar to other dark figures in literary tradition. Like the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden and the enchantress Circe in Homer’s The Odyssey, she represents duplicity and temptation. She tries to tempt Lena to the Dark by offering to make it possible for her to be with Ethan. However, as Macon says, Lena will not remember Ethan because her “heart will be so Dark, he won’t mean anything to [her]” (528). Even though Macon lied to her, Lena still trusts him, which is why she chooses to attack Sarafine with her power rather than listen to any more of her lies.
In the final chapters of the novel, Lena seems doomed to repeat the past. After Sarafine stabs Ethan, Lena instinctually begins repeating the words to the spell that Genevieve used to try to bring Ethan Carter Wate back to life. Amma intervenes and tells Lena that she should not “start this darkness all over again” (546-47). However, Lena convinces Amma to help her because they both love Ethan and would do anything to save him.
As forewarned, Lena’s magic comes with a great price, Macon’s death. At the same time, it has pushed back her Claiming a year, giving her the freedom to reflect and choose her fate for herself. The transformation of her eye color—one is green, the other now yellow—reflects how she is both Light and Dark. Her embodiment of each reflects the book’s message, that there is not a binary between the two. Instead, everyone encompasses elements of both.
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