Eleanor and Park Summary

In August of 1986, it is the start of Park Sheridan’s sophomore year of high school. Park takes the bus to school each morning, navigating its fragile social territory by listening to music to drown out the noise of the dumb, popular kids at the back like Steve and Tina—kids who mostly like Park but still make racist jokes in his direction. Park, who is half Korean, has gone through high school so far hoping to remain mostly invisible. When a new girl boards the bus—a heavy-set redhead with wild curls and a bizarre taste in clothing—no one lets her sit down but Park, who saves her at the last minute from the popular kids’ taunts. Eleanor herself is nervous about the start of sophomore year. She has recently returned to Omaha to rejoin her mother, Sabrina, and her four siblings in her stepfather Richie’s house, a year after having been kicked out during a cataclysmic fight with the drunken, abusive Richie. Eleanor’s home life is impoverished and depressing—Park’s is solidly middle-class and relatively happy, but his embarrassment over his immigrant mother, Mindy, and his clashes with his strict, hypermasculine father, Jamie, leave him feeling out of place and alone. As Eleanor and Park ride the bus to and from school together every day, Park notices Eleanor reading his comic books over his shoulder—and soon begins bringing some along for her to read, as well. When Park forgets to bring comic books one day, he pulls out his Walkman and lets Eleanor listen to some of his New Wave tapes instead—the two of them soon begin talking and discussing the music they both love.

One night, Park brings a comic over to Eleanor’s house for her to read only to realize, when Richie opens the door, that things in Eleanor’s home life are strange and difficult. The next morning on the bus, Park reaches for Eleanor’s hand and holds it, and both of them feel emotions and desires they’ve never felt before. Over the next several weeks, as Eleanor and Park’s friendship turns to romance, Eleanor tries to ignore bullying from Tina and the other girls which comes in the form of menstrual pads stuck on her locker and disgusting, sexually explicit notes written on her textbook covers. Park, meanwhile, argues nonstop with his father over driving lessons, and incurs Jamie’s verbal and even physical wrath as he struggles to learn to drive a stick-shift (manual) car.

When Eleanor is offered a babysitting job at her real father’s house one Friday night, she tells Park that she wants to have a phone date with him. On the phone, both Eleanor and Park are anxious and nervous—but nevertheless find themselves admitting that they don’t just like one another, they “need” and “live for” one another. At the end of the phone call, Park tells Eleanor he loves her—but the stunned Eleanor is unable to say the words back.

On Monday, in spite of Eleanor’s hiccup on the phone, Eleanor and Park are delighted to see one another. Eleanor tells Park that she’s lied to her mother about spending the afternoon at a girlfriend’s house—which means she can go over to Park’s all afternoon. Park is excited, but part of him is anxious about what his family will think of the eccentric Eleanor. That afternoon, when Park tells Eleanor to smile when she meets his parents, she becomes convinced that Park doesn’t truly like her for who she is. Things are awkward on the bus the following morning, and Eleanor tells Park she’s concerned that he’s embarrassed by her. When the bus pulls up to school and Steve begins taunting Eleanor, however, Park defends Eleanor—his “girlfriend,” he tells Steve—by using taekwondo moves to knock Steve to the ground. After the fight, Park is grounded and forbidden from having friends over—but just before Christmas break, his punishment is lifted. Park is excited by the prospect of seeing Eleanor more over the winter break, but it soon becomes clear to him that things at her home are not good. Eleanor is contending with Richie’s increasing instability—and the realization that her mother and her siblings, even in the face of violence and danger, are never going to take her side against him. Just before the break, Park invites Eleanor over again. He insists that he is not embarrassed of Eleanor and loves her for who she is. Eleanor comes over every day that week, and one night, she and Park share their first electric kiss. Eleanor reaches new levels of happiness, even as the cruel messages on her textbooks continue appearing with startling frequency. Eleanor believes Tina is the one leaving the notes, but when she tells Park about her suspicions, he insists Tina wouldn’t do something like that—and explains that he dated her in junior high. Eleanor becomes irate and more convinced than ever that Park will never understand her. As Christmas break arrives, Eleanor and Park are on the outs, and a three-week separation looms.

Things at Eleanor’s house are tenuous as Christmas arrives. Richie is on edge, and though he gives Eleanor a 50-dollar bill as her present, Eleanor is forced to spend it helping her mother buy groceries for Christmas dinner—a dinner Richie ruins when he becomes violent after discovering there’s no pumpkin pie. Late on Christmas night, Eleanor is surprised when Park taps at her bedroom window—she motions for him to head to the elementary school across the street, and quickly hurries and dresses to meet him there. As soon as Eleanor and Park see one another, they embrace and kiss passionately. Eleanor spends most of the rest of Christmas break at Park’s house, enjoying time with his family. As school starts back up, Eleanor struggles to balance her lies at home with her time at Park’s—and endures constant bullying from Tina and her crew each day at gym class.

One evening, Park’s mother Mindy—a beautician—gives the reluctant Eleanor a makeover. Eleanor endures the beauty treatment to be polite, but secretly worries that both Mindy and Park think she’d be more beautiful as someone else. When Mindy uses Park as a model to show Eleanor some eyeliner, Eleanor compliments Park on his punk look, and Park even feels confident about his altered appearance. The next day, Park puts on eyeliner as he’s getting ready for school—his father berates him for his effeminate new look, but Park, feeling like a rock star or a punk, heads out the door to school as he is. Kids at school actually compliment Park’s look—and Eleanor goes crazy for it. As Park continues to wear the makeup to school throughout the week, his already-tense relationship with his father sours even further.

On afternoon, Eleanor’s siblings Ben and Maisie confront her about having a boyfriend, claiming to have heard the truth about Eleanor and Park from Park’s younger brother, Josh. Eleanor’s siblings beg her to bring them along to Park’s house in the afternoons, but even seeing how desperate they are to escape the house, Eleanor knows she can’t bring them with her. Instead, Eleanor tells Ben and Maisie that they can play with her box of secret stuff, which includes comics, makeup, perfume, and other things she’s gotten from Park’s house. Eleanor worries that she is running out of time with Park. One Friday afternoon, when Tina and her crew dump Eleanor’s clothes in the toilet during gym class, Eleanor is forced to walk through the halls in her gym suit—Park catches sight of her in the skin-tight garment, and is unable to think about anything else for hours. The next day, Park’s whole family goes out for the day, but Park stays home and invites Eleanor over. The two of them spend the day kissing, touching, and exploring one another’s bodies, alone in the house for the first time ever.

The following week, Park’s mother takes him to get his driver’s license—in spite of his father’s protestations that he isn’t ready for the responsibility. Soon after, Mindy suggests Park take Eleanor out on their first real date. Eleanor and Park head downtown, exhilarated by the freedom of being allowed out on their own. When Park drives Eleanor home at the end of the night, they are both on cloud nine. Eleanor arrives home, though, her mother and Richie are fighting loudly in their bedroom, and when she arrives in her own room she finds that her box of special things has been desecrated—and Richie has left a note threatening to put Eleanor through a world of pain for her betrayals. Eleanor recognizes Richie’s handwriting as the same handwriting that has been appearing on her textbook covers, and flees the house without thinking twice. As Eleanor runs through the street towards Park’s house, Tina—who is hanging out in Park’s next-door-neighbor Steve’s garage—flags Eleanor down and tells her that Richie has been out looking for her all night. Tina, who, it turns out, also has an abusive stepdad, invites Eleanor in for a drink, but Eleanor insists on getting to Park. Steve goes over to Park’s house, knocks at his bedroom window, and wakes him up—Park hurries over to the garage, where Eleanor sobs into his chest and tells him she has to “leave.” Park brings Eleanor over to hide in an RV parked between his parents’ and grandparents’ yards, and promises that after his parents are asleep, he’ll drive her wherever she needs to go. Eleanor, who has been invited to Minnesota for the summer to spend some time with an aunt and uncle, asks Park to take her there. Even though he knows that this means he and Eleanor will be separated, Park agrees.

Later, as Park attempts to sneak out, his father catches him. After Park explains what’s going on, Jamie tells Park to take the truck, be safe, and check in at rest stops whenever he can. Park thanks his father for his blessing, retrieves Eleanor from the RV, and together they hit the road. The drive to Minnesota is difficult—Eleanor and Park both know they’ll soon be separated, and are miserable at the prospect of living without one another. Even so, Eleanor knows that she can’t remain in Omaha—she fears being rejected by her aunt and uncle, but Park insists that if they won’t take her in, he and his family will. Eleanor tells Park that after he drops her off at her uncle’s, he should leave right away, without looking back. Park tells Eleanor how difficult doing so will be for him, but nonetheless promises he will. After a quick kiss goodbye, Park leaves her. In the days and weeks that follow, Park writes Eleanor letters every day—letters she never reads or even returns. Eleanor knows that it would be too painful for Park to slowly stop loving her because of time or distance, and has decided to cut off the pain before it can even start. Back in Omaha, Park learns that Eleanor’s mother and all of her siblings have moved out of Richie’s house. He goes over one afternoon to confront Richie, but when he finds the man stumbling around drunk, leaves without hurting him.

A year later, Park still pines for Eleanor, but has stopped sending her letters. One day, a postcard arrives for him—it is from Eleanor, and it is “just three words long.”