Lines of Courage

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Parts 5-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “1915-KARA”

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary

The novel now shifts to the point of view of Kara, a young British girl. She is awoken during the night when German ships start bombing her small fishing town. She and her mother try to find shelter but soon encounter injured people in the street. Kara’s mother is a nurse and immediately offers her help. Kara admires her mother’s work and remembers that her father, who died a hero, asked her to help with the war effort, so Kara helps a woman who sprained her ankle get to safety. After the bombing stops, Kara’s mother tells her that the Red Cross has offered her a position as a nurse on one of the ambulance trains bringing injured soldiers home. Kara is immediately taken by the idea of joining her mother on the train and decides to join also, helping her as an orderly.

Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary

At the station, Kara waits impatiently for the ambulance train, while her mother tries to warn her of the horrors they are about to face. When the train arrives and hundreds of wounded are unloaded on stretchers, Kara starts to doubt her decision. An officer named Corporal Bryant gives them an overview of the train’s organization, then asks Kara to take her and her mother’s bags to their bunks. As Kara walks through the wards, she bumps against an injured man and is distraught about accidentally hurting him. Later, she offers him some water and regains confidence when the man seems happy to make conversation with her.

Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary

Kara gets used to the work on the ambulance train quickly, and she does her best to learn from the other nurses, in hopes of becoming an orderly. One of the nurses, Sister Mary, explains that the Red Cross does not discriminate between Allied and enemy soldiers. Captain Stout, a medical officer, also compliments Kara’s efforts.

Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary

The train is called to a battle zone where soldiers have been wounded with poison gas. Part of the rails have been destroyed, so the train stops further away than usual, forcing the nurses and orderlies to go out in pairs, carrying stretchers to bring back the wounded. Kara is disappointed that she is not allowed to leave the train, but Captain Stout insists that she must follow the rules. However, Corporal Bryant’s partner accidentally twists his ankle and is unable to continue carrying the stretcher. Kara volunteers in his place, and Corporal Bryant accepts despite Captain Stout’s orders.

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary

Kara and Corporal Bryant make their way to the battlefield’s medical station. Kara is overwhelmed at the number of wounded soldiers and their fresh injuries, but she gathers her courage. She and Corporal Bryant are about to pick up a soldier when a shell falls next to them. Kara is not hurt, but Corporal Bryant’s femur breaks when a heavy branch falls on him. Kara frees his leg, braces it, then helps him onto the stretcher. Kara then starts pulling the stretcher, when another shell falls nearby. Instead of exploding, this one leaks poison gas.

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

Kara pulls Corporal Bryant away from the gas as fast as she can. Two orderlies soon come to their aid, picking up the stretcher and leading Kara back to the train. She drinks water to fight the burning in her throat, then prepares for a night of work with the newly boarded soldiers.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary

A few months later, Kara, who has now decided to become a doctor, watches as the train stops to pick up a group of wounded soldiers. Orderlies set one man aside, despite his serious condition. They tell Kara that he is an Austro-Hungarian enemy and will be brought on board last, if there is enough room. She approaches the soldier, who introduces himself as Sergeant Baum and tells her that he has a son named Felix. Kara decides to help him against her orders, so she sneaks him into her own compartment.

Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary

When Kara finally gets back to Sergeant Baum after helping with the other soldiers, she realizes that his wounds are more serious than she had thought. Unable to help him on her own, she asks Captain Stout and another nurse to tend to him. Captain Stout is furious that she has broken the rules, so he asks Kara to wait in the dining car until they are done. Later, he asks Kara to hand back her Red Cross apron and bans her from working on the train any longer. Kara is heartbroken, but she stands by her decision.

Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary

The next day, Sergeant Baum asks to see Kara. He thanks her for saving his life and tells her about his family and the war. He then offers Kara his medal, the Golden Cross of Merit, for her courage.

Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary

When the fighting quiets down for a while, the nurses are allowed to take a break and visit the town of Verdun. Kara and her mother decide to do some Christmas shopping, but the town seems deserted. They meet a young girl named Juliette, who tells them that rumors of the Germans advancing on Verdun have forced most families to flee. She is selling items to collect money in order to bribe the German soldiers who have arrested her father, so Kara and her mother buy a necklace and a hat to help her out. Kara then gives Juliette the hat back before parting ways.

Part 2 Analysis

In the second part of the novel, Nielsen introduces Kara, a 13-year-old British girl. She is characterized as ambitious and slightly impulsive, but driven by her desire to help others. She joins her mother’s nursing unit partly to honor the memory of her father, who died a war hero the previous year. However this heroic association with the war leads her to have a glamorized idea of the battlefield, and she enters the narrative naïve to the true horrors of war. When Kara sees the wounded for the first time her understanding of war and her idea of taking sides shifts: “Kara [finally] understood her mother’s warnings: Nothing about war was exciting, or glamorous, nor could she ever be fully prepared for whatever was coming next” (71).

As a result, Kara’s strong sense of justice moves away from country loyalty. She subscribes fully to the Red Cross policy of not discriminating between allies and enemies when treating the wounded. In the novel, she personifies empathy in the overarching theme of Anger Versus Empathy in Times of Conflict. Kara finds her courage early in her narrative; when her hometown is being bombed, her mother tells her to stay hidden in a car, but Kara “already knew she was going to ignore the rule. She just needed enough courage to pull on the handle” (64) to go help others. This combination of compassion and courage leads her to take risks and break rules, occasionally resulting in dreadful consequences.

For instance, when Kara breaks the rules to help Corporal Bryant’s partner carry the wounded back to the train, she is rewarded. However, the next time Kara breaks the rules to save Sergeant Baum’s life, she is punished—losing her position at the Red Cross and her dream of being a nurse. Through these inconsistent reactions from the Red Cross, Nielsen shows that the approval or disapproval of her supervisors has become irrelevant, and that Kara’s strong sense of morality is now situated within herself.

These events work to reiterate Kara’s belief that “every life mattered, regardless of where the person came from, their race, or their rank. This man’s life mattered just as much as any other man’s” (107), and also serve to reillustrate that Kara has Found her Courage to do the right thing.

This courage is further highlighted when Sergeant Baum gives Kara his Golden Cross of Merit, a recurring symbol of bravery in the novel. Unlike Felix in the previous section, Kara accepts the medal, as she has symbolically earned it.

At the end of this section, Kara meets Juliette, and Juliette’s Red Knitted Hat is introduced as a symbol of love, family, and hope. Finally, Kara and Juliette part in Verdun, which the reader may recognize as the site of the longest and deadliest battle of WWI. By choosing the setting of Verdun, Nielsen alludes to this upcoming tragedy and heightens the narrative tension. She concludes Kara’s section with the ominous foreshadowing that “Kara feared when she saw Juliette again, it might be inside an ambulance ward” (125).