Chapter 16 Summary: Case Notes on Robert S.

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

⚠️ This page contains detailed plot and character information from Chapter 16 of North Woods. If you haven't finished reading through this chapter yet, you may want to return after completing it.

Summary

Chapter 16 is presented as a physician's dated case notes, spanning February 7 to March 22, documenting his involvement with Robert S., a young man institutionalized at Longridge asylum for schizophrenia.

February 7 — Lillian, Robert's mother, consults the physician alone. She is a forty-three-year-old widow; her husband died of appendicitis when Robert was six. Robert's sister Helen was conceived shortly before the father's death. The family once had means but lost much after the Crash, retaining income from a button manufacturing patent. Lillian describes Robert's decline: paranoia beginning at fifteen, checking locks, claiming to be watched, dropping out of school, and at eighteen being arrested for threatening a couple in Boston Common. He was hospitalized multiple times with diagnoses of paranoid or hebephrenic schizophrenia. The family moved to a country estate inherited from Lillian's father, who had tried to convert it into a hunting lodge. J., a married man, helped with repairs and persuaded Lillian to sell timber. Robert reacted catastrophically — disappearing, then found immobile, refusing food and speech for a month, until the buyer's accident and withdrawal of the offer. Robert wanders for days at a time, has gone as far as Boston and Quebec. After an altercation with a surveyor, he was sent to Longridge. Lillian read about the physician's surgical success and wants to pursue it.

February 13 — The physician examines Robert at Longridge. Robert describes the