Chapter 174: Paper Airplane – Summary & Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Jutta Pfennig and her young son Max walk through a Parisian park after visiting a natural history museum. Max recounts what he saw—forty‑two thousand drawers of dried plants, the beak of a giant squid, a plesiosaur fossil. Jutta feels tired and leans against a tree. She unfolds a tourist map to find the way back to their hotel, noting that few cars are on the streets and nearly every window glows blue from a television. She reflects on the absence of bodies after war, thinking that the sod seals them over, allowing people to forget.
In the hotel elevator, Max presses the button for the sixth floor. Jutta hands him the room key; he fumbles with the lock before opening the door. She asks if he showed the lady how the house opened (referring to the miniature house Werner built), and Max replies that he thinks she already knew. Jutta turns on the television and removes her shoes. Max opens the balcony doors and folds an airplane using hotel stationery.
From the balcony, Jutta sees a half‑block of Paris that reminds her of the cities she drew as a girl: a hundred houses, a thousand windows, a wheeling flock of birds. On the television, a football match is being played far away; a goalkeeper has fallen and a wing has nudged the ball toward the goal line with no one to kick it away. Jutta picks up the phone beside the bed and dials nine numbers (an international code). Max launches the paper airplane over the street; it sails a few dozen feet and hangs for an instant. The voice of Jutta’s husband answers.
Key Events
- Jutta and Max visit the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (implied by the specimens Max mentions).
- Jutta feels exhaustion and reflects on how the dead are covered over, enabling forgetting.
- They return to their hotel room; Max mentions the miniature house he showed to a woman.
- Jutta watches a football match on television while Max folds a paper airplane.
- Max launches the paper airplane from the balcony.
- Jutta dials an international number and her husband answers.
Character Development
- Jutta Pfennig: Now an adult mother, Jutta carries the weight of her past. Her reflection on the sod sealing over bodies reveals her lingering trauma from World War II. She is weary but tender with Max, allowing him to lead and explore. Her decision to call her husband shows that she has built a new life.
- Max (Jutta's son): Max embodies youthful curiosity and innocence. He recalls the museum exhibits with wonder, fumbles with the hotel key like any child, and spontaneously folds a paper airplane. His question about showing the woman the miniature house suggests he is aware of his mother's history but does not fully understand it.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Memory and Forgetting: Jutta's observation that the absence of bodies allows people to forget directly confronts the novel's central tension between remembrance and erasure. The television's blue glow and the football game serve as distractions from the past.
- The Paper Airplane: Max's folded airplane is a fragile, momentary object—symbolically connecting the present to something airborne and hopeful. It echoes Werner's childhood fascination with flight and radio waves.
- The Museum of Natural History: The vast collections of dried plants and fossils represent a human attempt to preserve and catalogue the natural world, contrasting with the way human lives are not similarly preserved.
- Cities Drawn by a Girl: Jutta's memory of drawing cities as a child links her current view of Paris to a pre‑war innocence that is now tinged with loss.
Why This Chapter Matters
This quiet epilogue‑style chapter shows the long aftermath of war. Jutta has survived and started a family, yet the past remains close—evoked by the museum, the miniature house, and her reflection on covered bodies. Max's paper airplane, launched over Paris, is a hopeful gesture that also echoes Werner's fate (his final invention was a paper‑airplane‑like glider). The chapter demonstrates that while the dead are sealed over, the living continue to create, remember, and reach out across distances—the phone call and the airplane both bridge separations. It underscores Doerr's theme that light and connection persist even in the shadow of catastrophe.
Study Questions and Answers
-
What does Jutta mean when she thinks, “It’s the absence of all the bodies … that allows us to forget. It’s that the sod seals them over”?
Answer: Jutta suggests that because the dead are buried, hidden from view, it becomes easy for the living to ignore their sacrifice and move on. The phrase “sod seals them over” implies a physical covering that also covers collective memory. She is critiquing the way society allows war to fade from consciousness once the physical evidence is out of sight. -
Why does Max ask if the woman already knew how the house opened? What does this moment reveal about Jutta’s past?
Answer: The “house” refers to the intricate miniature model Werner built in the attic of the children's home. Max has presumably shown it to a woman (likely Marie‑Laure). The question shows that Jutta has shared this part of her brother's legacy with her son. The woman “already knew” implies that Marie‑Laure may have recognized the model, connecting the two surviving characters in a quiet way that requires no explanation. -
How does the detail of Max folding a paper airplane tie into the novel’s larger symbolism?
Answer: Throughout the novel, Werner is associated with flight—his early radio work, his obsession with the science of waves, and the model airplanes he builds. The paper airplane Max launches is a simple, childlike echo of that fascination. It also mirrors the final scene of Werner's life, in which he constructs a paper airplane just before his death. Here, the airplane is launched into a peaceful Parisian evening, suggesting continuity and the possibility of future flights.