The Wednesday Wars: October Summary & Analysis

All the Wednesdays of September and into October, Mrs. Baker has Holling wash chalkboards, clean erasers, put up bulletin boards, and clean out the Coat Room. This is something that Holling hates, especially since Doug Swieteck has a stash of disgusting food items stored in there to use for “Number 166” on his list of how to make teachers hate you. Holling cleans the rest of the room but doesn't touch the box. He doesn't complain, especially since in early October, his dad becomes one of two candidates for the Baker Sporting Emporium remodel, and he reminds Holling nightly to not make Mrs. Baker hate him.

By this time, Doug Swieteck's brother still isn't in school. Doug shares why: his brother enjoyed his ten days of medical observation so much, that he decided he didn't want to come back to school. One evening, when Doug’s brother returned to school with his mother to meet with the teacher, he took erasers and pounded them against his head before sticking chalk in his mouth and racing around the school, roaring and slobbering. It was pure chance that poor Mrs. Sidman was there, clearing out her desk after deciding to leave her position in the office. Apparently, you could hear her screams echoing in the hallways until dawn. For this stunt, Doug Swieteck's brother got four more weeks of medical observation.

The day after this all comes to light, Mrs. Baker glares at the class, and Holling decides she must believe the whole thing is his fault. However, suspiciously, Mrs. Baker stops glaring when the class heads to Mr. Petrelli's classroom for geography. Holling thinks Mrs. Baker looks like an evil genius when she smiles at him, and he is still mulling over this fact when Mr. Petrelli hands out Study Question Data Sheets to fill out in pairs. Meryl Lee approaches Holling to be partners and assures him that Mrs. Baker doesn't look like an evil genius. They argue about the answers on the Data Sheets, and Holling continues to wonder what Mrs. Baker has in store for him.

Holling explains that recess became much safer after Mrs. Baker's "failed assassination plot," as the "would-be assassins" now leave him alone after what happened to Doug Swieteck's brother. As Holling runs out the door, Mrs. Baker calls him back in and asks him to run down to the kitchen to fetch trays of pastries. She insists that they're not for the class; they're for the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers' gathering later in the afternoon. She tells him to not look so suspicious and sends him off.

Holling enters the kitchen on the first floor, prepared for the usual "fumes" of Mrs. Bigio's questionable food, but the kitchen smells like buttery pastries. He looks in awe at the trays of cream puffs, and Mrs. Bigio gruffly tells him to start carrying out the trays. Holling sadly reasons that he won't be thanked for his hard work with one of the cream puffs. Mrs. Bigio makes him carry the trays one at a time. This means twelve trips up three flights of stairs, which takes the entirety of recess. Holling arranges the trays under the open windows so the cream puffs can cool. When the rest of Holling's classmates returns from recess, they're excited to see all the cream puffs and somewhat distraught when Mrs. Baker sends them right off to math class.

Holling and his classmates spend the entirety of math class thinking about the cream puffs. When the Jewish students leave at 1:45 P.M., Danny threatens to kill Holling if he gets a cream puff, and ten minutes later, Meryl Lee promises to "do Number 408" to Holling if he gets a cream puff. Holling thinks he's safe, as he reasons it's more likely the President will show up than Mrs. Baker will give him a cream puff.

A fifth grader named Charles comes into the room carrying a box and assures Mrs. Baker that he got "them" all. He puts the box on Mrs. Baker's desk and looks sadly at Holling before he leaves. Mrs. Baker turns to Holling and explains that the box contains all the erasers from the school for him to clean. Holling wants to complain, but he thinks of the future of Hoodhood and Associates. Mrs. Baker suggests that if they both finish their afternoon tasks on time, Holling can have a cream puff. Holling feels as though this must be a dream, but he carries the box outside into the beautiful October afternoon and gets to work.

As Holling pounds the erasers against the wall, the chalk dust fills his lungs and wafts to the closed windows of the first floor. Holling thinks of the beautiful cream puffs as the chalk dust continues to drift—up to the open third floor windows. Frantically, Holling gathers the erasers and races upstairs. He discovers he's too late: the chalk dust already settled over the cream puffs like powdered sugar. Mrs. Baker instructs him to choose a cream puff and then help her carry the rest to her car. Holling's cream puff feels gritty, and he tosses it into the Coat Room.

The "story of the cream puffs" spreads quickly through the town: all the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers choked on the puffs (which Holling believes is an exaggeration), they quickly realized that Mrs. Baker would never play a practical joke, and they settled for demoting Mrs. Bigio from her position as the Official Cook of the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers. In tears, Mrs. Bigio shoved a whole cream puff in her mouth and refused to let herself cough, which landed her in the hospital. Holling's dad turns on Holling at dinner on Thursday night and begins asking if he did anything to the cream puffs. Holling is saved from lying when his sister, Heather, sits down at the table with a yellow flower painted on her cheek.

Holling's dad asks Holling's mother to tell Heather that she has a flower painted on her cheek. Heather assures her family she's aware, and the reason is obvious. Holling's dad says it's not obvious unless she wants them to think she's a flower child. After a moment of silence, Holling's dad tells her that she can't be a flower child. She argues that flower children are beautiful, believe in peace and helping each other, and will change the world. Holling's dad insists that flower children are just hippies who can't change their socks. When she mentions the flower children protesting the war at the Pentagon, Holling's dad snaps that he's a candidate for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967, an honor he won't receive if his daughter is a flower child. He sends her to wash her face. She complies, and Holling's dad asks for the lima beans.

Later that night, Heather comes into his room, angry that he didn't support her in standing up to their dad. She insists that they have to believe in something bigger than themselves, and says that it's time for Holling to grow up to be the person he's supposed to be, not just "the son who is going to inherit Hoodhood and Associates." She asks why he lets their dad bully him, and he insists it never works when she stands up to him. She touches her cheek and goes to her room to play the Monkees.

The next morning, Mrs. Baker finds Holling and explains that they need to make some changes to their Wednesday afternoon routines, though he must perform one more chore—possibly for one more cream puff. When Mrs. Baker walks away, Meryl Lee, Danny, and Mai Thi descend on Holling to find out if he truly got a cream puff. They don't believe him when he says he didn't eat it, and they tell Holling that he owes them all cream puffs. Holling stops at Goldman's Best Bakery the next day and discovers that it'll take three weeks' worth of allowance money to buy the cream puffs, so he tells his classmates on Monday that he needs three weeks.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Baker informs Holling that they're going to be reading Shakespeare on Wednesdays. Holling thinks this is the worst strategy ever, as teachers only ever invoke Shakespeare to torture students. Before they can start, however, she asks Holling to clean Sycorax and Caliban's cage. Sycorax and Caliban are pet rats. They were cute babies when Lieutenant Tybalt Baker bought them for Mrs. Baker, but they soon got big and scabby, with clacking yellow teeth. Nobody, Mrs. Baker included, likes to go near them.

Mrs. Baker tells Holling to dig out a small cage, transfer Sycorax and Caliban to it using food as a lure, and then clean out their large one. Her strategy for transferring the rats works surprisingly well, and Holling takes the cage outside to clean it. He brings it back up, spreads fresh sawdust, and positions the cage doors next to each other to move the rats back. As the rats start to clamber through, Mrs. Baker says that teachers don't teach Shakespeare just to bore their students. Holling is stunned to realize that Mrs. Baker knew what he was thinking, and he lets go of the cages and turns around to look at her.

The rats immediately begin pushing out between the cages, snarling and clacking their teeth. Holling thinks they look demonic, and he tries to shove the cages back together. Mrs. Baker shrieks, Sycorax leaps at Holling's thumb, and Holling jumps away. Mrs. Baker jumps onto a desk as the rats run into the Coat Room. In a strained voice, Mrs. Baker tells Holling to go fetch Mr. Vendleri. Holling leaves the room, jumping from desk to desk, and only explains to Mr. Vendleri what Mrs. Baker needs him to do when he arrives back at the Coat Room.

Mr. Vendleri gets two brooms and a shovel so that Holling and Mrs. Baker can flush the rats out, while he'll catch them with the shovel. Holling is stunned that he's being asked to get so close to the rats, and he notes that all three of them look scared stiff as they go into the Coat Room. The rats prove uncatchable: they snarl and howl and retreat into the radiators, right after Sycorax abandons her found cream puff. Before long, Mr. Vendleri, Mrs. Baker, and Holling hear the rats climb up the walls and skitter across the ceiling tiles.

Mr. Vendleri decides he should tell Mr. Guareschi, and from the safety of her desk, Mrs. Baker agrees that this is a good idea. When the two men return, Mr. Guareschi decides that nobody should know about the escaped rats and swears everyone to silence. Holling addresses the reader and amends his narration: he and his teachers cursed while they were chasing the rats.

When Mrs. Baker and Holling are alone again, Mrs. Baker remarks that Holling only pretended to eat his cream puff. She declares this a wise choice and tells him to sit down. Slowly, Mrs. Baker climbs down from her desk and pulls out a massive, smelly black book for Holling. She tells him to open to The Merchant of Venice. Holling thinks the pictures are ridiculous and the text is insanely tiny, but Mrs. Baker's strategy of boring him isn't working: the play is pretty okay. Parts of it even give him shivers, and he's thrilled to have spoiled her plot.

That night, Holling dreams that Doug Swieteck's brother is Shylock, and they're in a courtroom with their other classmates. Mrs. Baker is the judge. Holling and Mrs. Baker take two more days to read The Merchant of Venice, and when they're done, they discuss the character of Shylock. Holling suggests that he's not a true villain; he just wants to become who he's supposed to be. When Mrs. Baker asks why Shylock couldn't do that, Holling answers that the other characters decided that Shylock had to be a certain way, and it trapped him. Mrs. Baker declares that this is why the play is a tragedy.