Chapter 24 (21): The Polter-Monkey Appears
Spoiler Notice: This page discloses plot points from Chapter 24 of Elphie by Gregory Maguire. Continue only if you’ve finished the chapter or welcome spoilers.
Summary (Complete and Chronological)
Elphie stands alone in the center of the camp beneath the dense jungle canopy at high noon. Everyone else is occupied: Nessa is resting with a chest complaint in the girls’ tent, Ti’imit and Boozy are conferring behind closed tent flaps, Nanny is distracted with Melena—who hasn’t gotten up for days—and Frex has taken a canoe upriver. For the first time, Elphie feels a strange mix of loneliness and fear. She half-hopes the rumored migrating jungle cats will come and devour her so that her family will regret ignoring her.
Out of boredom or instinct, she begins to chant nonsense words, twisting her fingers and letting a spontaneous melody carry the syllables: “Seppada seppada meppada me, somebody somebody, twiddledy twee.” She barely notices she is singing. The sound draws a creature—at first she mistakes it for a shadowy version of Nessa, but it is a monkey-like being crouching at the edge of the clearing. It gnaws its knuckles and seems shy yet unafraid. Elphie speaks to it, calling it a nasty little monkey. It bares its teeth but doesn’t retreat, as if deliberately showing itself.
The creature appears mesmerized by her voice. Elphie, thrilled to have an audience, invents more nonsense lyrics, crafting a crescendo that puts the creature in a trance. It sways and holds its own elbows in a gesture reminiscent of Nanny. Then chaos erupts: Nanny yells at Elphie to stop the noise because Melena has begun screaming from a bad dream or some distress. Boozy and Nanny rush out. The polter-monkey vanishes instantly. Furious at the interruption, Elphie goes to check the spot where it stood and finds the small pair of tongs that had recently gone missing. The encounter leaves her with a new, bewildering sense of her own power.
Key Events
- Elphie is left entirely alone in camp while the adults attend to Melena’s illness and other tasks.
- She begins to chant nonsense verses, discovering an untapped melodic impulse.
- A strange, monkey-like creature—later understood as a polter-monkey—emerges from the jungle, drawn by her singing.
- The creature seems to fall into a trance as Elphie improvises a crescendo.
- Nanny’s shout and Melena’s screaming break the moment, and the polter-monkey disappears.
- Elphie locates the missing camp tongs on the ground where the creature had been, confirming the encounter was real.
Character Development
Elphie: This chapter marks a pivotal shift in Elphie’s self-awareness. Her feelings of loneliness and fear give way to defiance—the wish that she might be eaten to punish her family—revealing a deep sense of abandonment. When her singing accidentally summons the polter-monkey, she experiences a flash of genuine connection and creative power. The abrupt termination of that moment, and the adults’ dismissal, hardens her frustration. The discovery of the tongs ties her voice to something tangible, hinting that her singing carries an agency she doesn’t yet comprehend.
Nanny, Boozy, Melena, and Frex: Though offstage, their actions define the context. Melena’s prolonged illness, Nanny’s harried caretaking, Boozy’s secretive conference, and Frex’s solitary errand all underscore the family’s neglect of Elphie. Nanny’s shouted reprimand typifies the adult world’s refusal to see Elphie’s burgeoning gift as anything but a nuisance.
The Polter-Monkey: The creature serves as both a narrative catalyst and a mirror to Elphie’s otherness. Its response to her voice suggests an affinity between Elphie and the hidden, liminal denizens of the jungle.
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs
Isolation and Neglect: Elphie’s physical aloneness in the camp circle mirrors her emotional distance from every family member. The chapter repeatedly emphasizes that everyone is “busy” with something else, leaving her to conclude they’d be content if she were devoured.
The Power of Voice and Music: Elphie’s spontaneous singing is raw and untaught, yet it exerts an almost magical pull on a wild creature. This motif plants the seed for her future aptitude with spells and incantations that rely on vocalization. Her nonsense words become a bridge to the unseen world.
The Polter-Monkey as Symbol: Neither fully animal nor entirely spectral, the polter-monkey represents the threshold between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Its fascination with Elphie’s song suggests that her true belonging may lie outside her human family, among outcasts and mysteries.
Lost Tongs: The tongs are a concrete token of the encounter. Their reappearance after vanishing implies the monkey may have stolen them, and that Elphie’s music not only summons but also retrieves—perhaps a form of sympathetic magic or a promise of future retrieval of lost things.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 24 is a quiet but crucial turning point. For the first time, Elphie actively does something that produces an uncanny result, and she recognizes it, even if she cannot name it. The episode isolates her innate magical sensitivity, linking it to voice and music long before she meets any formal teacher. It also solidifies her emotional armor: the anger she feels at being interrupted—and the larger fury at being unseen—will fuel the prickly independence that defines her later in Wicked. The polter-monkey encounter is the first crack in the ordinary, revealing the strange magnetism that will shape Elphaba’s destiny.
Study Questions and Answers
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What does Elphie discover about her singing in this chapter? She discovers that her improvised, meaningless song can draw a hidden creature out of the jungle and hold it in a trance-like state. This suggests an instinctive magical power tied to her voice, one that operates without conscious spellcraft.
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Why does the polter-monkey vanish, and how does Elphie react? The polter-monkey disappears when Nanny yells at Elphie to stop her caterwauling, coinciding with Melena’s sudden screaming. Elphie is furious, feeling that a rare moment of connection has been ruined by the adults’ interference. Her anger underscores the gulf between her emerging inner world and her family’s dismissive attitude.
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What is the significance of the lost tongs? The tongs provide physical proof that the encounter was not a daydream. Their reappearance at the polter-monkey’s spot links Elphie’s singing to a tangible effect—either the monkey had taken them and dropped them while entranced, or the song itself influenced the material world. Either way, the tongs confirm that something real and extraordinary occurred.