47 pages • 1 hour read
Dinaw MengestuThe Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Sepha decides to make some phone calls before he leaves DuPont Circle and takes a train to visit his uncle, Berhane Salassie. He calls Berhane and gets his answering machine, but he does not leave a message. Then he calls Kenneth to tell him not to worry, but he hangs up after one ring. He calls the restaurant to ask if Joseph is working today, but he does not leave his name. He also calls his store and hears his neighbor Mrs. Davis answer. He does not say anything and hangs up the phone.
Sepha gets on the subway and heads to the restaurant where Joseph works. He recalls the days when he was briefly a student at a local community college and how Joseph also took some non-credit extension classes. One of the classes introduced Joseph to Dante and his poetry. Joseph felt that Dante’s work was a metaphor for Africa, and many things in his American environment became metaphors for Africa. On the subway ride, Sepha recognizes the signature of “Disco Dan,” a graffiti artist, and it recalls an aphorism of his father’s to add color to your life when you can.
Chapter 8 Summary
Turning back to the previous December, Naomi visits Sepha’s store daily, and he reads to her from The Brothers Karamazov. Naomi insists he do all the reading, and he obliges. He treats the customers as rude interruptions on these days. He has memories of how his own father used to tell him amazing stories for hours on end, and Sepha is so happy in these moments with Naomi that he almost can’t bear them because he knows they will end: “I thought about how years from now I would remember this with a crushing, heartbreaking nostalgia, because of course I knew even then that I would eventually find myself standing here alone” (103). Naomi has no tolerance for the people of the neighborhood and judges the local drunks who wander in. Eventually, she declares that Sepha’s store is filthy, and the two of them set about cleaning it up and performing some repairs. Sepha feels like a better person when he has Naomi’s attention. When Judith starts joining their reading sessions at the end of each day, Sepha begins to think they might have another chance at a romantic relationship. He tells Joseph about it, but Joseph isn’t convinced. At the end of one of these days, after he and Naomi read all day and Judith joins them with tea, he realizes how happy he is: “For those thirty minutes I had it all, and perhaps if I had been a wiser man I would have been content with just that” (112).
Chapter 9 Summary
After receiving the eviction notice for his store, Sepha decides he is going to find as much pleasure in the day as possible. He decides to take the train to the last stop and walk the rest of the way to his uncle’s house. His uncle lives in an apartment complex populated by Ethiopian immigrants. Sepha lived here with his uncle in his first few years in the country. His uncle was a prominent figure in Ethiopia but lives alone in DC. When Sepha finds his uncle is not home, he lets himself in with his old key. He knows his uncle keeps cash in a lockbox in his closet, and Sepha contemplates taking the money and heading home to Ethiopia. He instead gets distracted by re-reading his uncle’s letters to former US presidents. Sepha likes these letters because they are personal: “If he were to die tomorrow, they would be the only things of his that I would want to keep” (123). One of the letters to President Carter describes the death of Sepha’s father at the hands of soldiers because of some flyers they found in his father’s bedroom. Sepha notices what he calls “errors” in the account and seeks to correct them: His father walked out of his house on his own two feet, rather than being “carried” out. The flyers had been Sepha’s and were therefore in his own room, but his father took them out to protect his son. The soldiers beat his father when he refused to reveal who the fliers belonged to. The day after his father was taken away at gunpoint, Sepha’s mother sent him away with all the family valuables, which he used to pay his way across the border. His father’s cheap cuff links are all that remain by the time he gets to America. As Sepha reminisces about the past, he reveals that both he and his uncle are not immigrants but refugees, forced to flee their country of origin.
Chapter 10 Summary
Sepha recalls one of the evening tea sessions that ended with Judith bringing over an elaborate dinner of lamb and potatoes. He describes this as the beginning of the last phase of their relationship. From dinner, he drove to the National Mall with Judith and Naomi to see the National Christmas Tree and then on to their house to see Naomi’s tree. Sepha is struck by the lavish presents from Naomi’s father, and Judith explains that he likes his presents to be “ostentatious,” (134). Sepha asks her how she likes her presents, and Judith says she likes them “simple and elegant” (134). When Sepha says he likes his “small and cheap,” she tells him he has “picked the wrong family” (134). Despite Judith’s attempts to make light of the comment, it offends Sepha. When he learns that Naomi’s father is a professor, he looks around and realizes he will never belong with them. He abruptly leaves before tea Judith serves tea.
Chapters 7-10 Analysis
In this section, Sepha reveals the tragic series of events that dictated the course of his life: After finding Sepha’s revolutionary and illegal flyers, the police killed his father. Although he does not explicitly say so, it is evident that Sepha feels responsible for his father’s death. In fact, Sepha’s lack of emotional reaction to these events supports the assumption that he is living with this trauma, and it is the source of his numbness. If he does feel responsible for the murder of his father, the despair of his family, and his own banishment from Ethiopia, then it explains why Sepha seems incapable of meaningful and substantive relationships because he is fearful of loss and failure.
This revelation also explains Sepha’s passivity. When Sepha fully embodied his own sense of agency, attempting to change the course of his own life and that of his country through revolutionary activism, he experienced brutal, life-altering consequences. In this light, we can better understand and appreciate his apathy; to Sepha, individualism and action breed negative consequences. The sense of shame he feels for his role in his father’s death also explains why Sepha does not let himself feel happy, proud, or accomplished. He does not feel he deserves to be alive, and that he should have died, not his father.
Sepha’s perspective is further clarified by the revelation that he and his uncle are not immigrants but refugees. Such a status speaks to Sepha’s sense of displacement and his discomfort in connection, as his position is precarious. As with many refugees and immigrants, Sepha feels identity-less, furthering his unmoored milieu. When he reflects on his and Joseph’s brief identity as students, it seems he knew who he was as a student. He understood the role, it justified his residence in America, and it provided his mother with a sense of pride. Yet this role was temporary, and without the clear definitions it provided, he again loses his sense of identity. Without clear-cut definitions of his role and identity, Sepha is largely lost.
With this context, the reader can finally understand Sepha’s behaviors with Judith outside of the more obvious lenses of race and class; the death of Sepha’s father and his position as a refugee further alienate Sepha from Judith. The final interaction in Judith and Sepha’s not-quite-love affair shifts into focus. Although he spends the evening attempting to fit into the stereotypical box of an American family, when Judith naively implies he is out of place for preferring “cheap” gifts, the outsized differences that Sepha lets define him become overwhelming. Sepha internally compares himself to Judith and to Naomi’s father, and in each case he is a failure by contrast.
Another interesting aspect of this interaction is Sepha’s refusal to communicate. Rather than address the situation, he chooses to leave early and play out the possible scenarios in his head rather than try to work things out in the moment with real people. He is much more comfortable with his fantasies and memories than with the people themselves because he can maintain distance and control. Sepha’s inability or lack of desire to connect largely defines his character, and this is blatantly symbolized when he literally calls people and places and hangs up without a word. Yet he admires these traits of connection and communication in others. For example, Sepha continues to marvel at people like Disco Dan, the graffiti artist who tags his name everywhere. His name is familiar and brings comfort to Sepha, reminding him that one man can have an impact.
Sepha’s relationship with Naomi complicates his identity. He inhabits a fatherly role to pass his values on to Naomi, and she vests in him a hope that he and Judith may become romantically involved. Yet Naomi is not an empty vessel into which he can pour his ideals but a symbolic figure who already exhibits a greater sense of autonomy than Sepha. She takes a disdainful stance toward figures in the community (figures to whom Sepha relates) and declares Sepha’s store, in which he is perfectly comfortable, filthy. While she claims to accept Sepha, she strives for change—much like gentrification itself. She and Sepha make physical improvements to the property and inventory but simultaneously shun the local neighbors. The changes he enacts at the behest of Naomi and to adapt to the new, whiter community do not bring success, only eviction.
Sepha recalls his time with Naomi and Judith as some of his happiest days and blames himself for the failure of their relationships. But as the reader gleans a better understanding of Sepha’s past, it sparks empathy for his experience and actions.
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