Chains · Garden Heights

Part 6

for Chains · Part 6 · Chapters 31–36

8 Parts40 min

What Happens in Part 6

Fire destroys much of New York, and Isabel discovers Curzon among the American prisoners.

The City BurnsIsabel is lent out to Lady Seymour when firelight through the window wakes her. She rouses the old woman, who will not be hurried and insists on saving a portrait of a fair-haired man and a packet of letters. The ceiling gives way on the stairs, knocking Lady Seymour senseless, and Isabel drags her out and up the street. The letters and portrait survive; Ruth's doll burns with the house.

A Crowded HouseHundreds of buildings are gone, but the Lockton house still stands, and Lady Seymour, felled by a stroke, is carried there to be nursed. Isabel coughs for weeks from the smoke. British officers quarter homeless soldiers and families in the remaining rooms, and a pregnant soldier's wife named Sarah takes over much of the kitchen work. The plants grown from Isabel's mother's seeds die under the ash.

A Thin Red HatIn mid-November Isabel watches British troops march American prisoners taken at Fort Washington toward a jail near the Tea Water Pump, and among them she recognizes a worn red hat: Curzon. At Madam's victory dinner, officers discuss more than three thousand captives and agree that cold, hunger, and sickness will thin them out. Lady Seymour objects and is waved off. Isabel makes a plan.

Feeding the PrisonOn December second she carries a bucket of food to the prison, says she has come to see her brother, watches a guard eat half of it, and finds Curzon alive but frozen and barely himself. A sergeant shares out the rest, then asks her to carry messages to their captain; she refuses but promises to return, and keeps returning. Lady Seymour calls the work honorable. A bookseller's errand brings her a copy of Common Sense.

What We Will Learn

Section	What you will practice
Vocabulary	Words for a burned city and a cold prison: blaze, rubble, quarter, gaunt, squalid…
Literary Elements	Imagery built entirely from the senses, objects that work as symbols of what a person is allowed to keep, and the situational irony of who gets rescued
Cross-Curricular	The Great New York Fire of September 1776 — leather buckets, hand-pumped engines and fire hooks, the burned district, and an argument no one has settled

Chapter Summary

Ch.	What happens
Chapter 31	Saturday, September 21–Sunday, September 22, 1776 — Isabel wakes at Lady Seymour’s house to find the city on fire. Lady Seymour stops to empty a trunk and hands over a portrait and a packet of letters; on the stairs the ceiling collapses and knocks her senseless. Isabel drags her clear. Ruth’s doll is lost in the blaze.
Chapter 32	Sunday, September 22–Thursday, September 26, 1776 — Hundreds of buildings are gone and thousands are homeless. Lady Seymour suffers a stroke and is brought to the Lockton house to be nursed. Isabel’s lungs ache from the smoke, and officers order soldiers and their wives quartered in the crowded rooms — including Sarah, who takes on kitchen work.
Chapter 33	Friday, September 27–Saturday, November 16, 1776 — Ash settles over the city as winter comes on, and the plants grown from her mother’s seeds die. Lady Seymour, recovering, gives Isabel warm clothes. Then Isabel watches American prisoners taken at Fort Washington marched to jail and recognizes Curzon’s faded red hat.
Chapter 34	Sunday, November 17–Sunday, November 24, 1776 — Madam throws an elaborate dinner to celebrate the British victory. Over the food, officers speak of more than three thousand prisoners and expect cold, hunger, and disease to finish them. Lady Seymour objects and is dismissed. Clearing up afterward, Isabel settles on a plan.
Chapter 35	Monday, December 2, 1776 — With Madam out, Isabel carries a bucket of food to the prison and claims she is visiting her brother. A guard eats half of it. Curzon is alive but frozen and hollowed out. A sergeant shares the rest fairly, then asks her to carry messages; she refuses, and promises to return.
Chapter 36	Tuesday, December 3–Friday, December 13, 1776 — Lady Seymour sickens, and Madam presses a doctor to send her south to Charleston, a journey he says would kill her. Isabel is set to nurse her instead. Lady Seymour reveals she knows about the food, calls it honorable, and warns her to be careful. A bookseller slips Isabel a copy of Common Sense.

Part 1

Vocabulary

Study 10 key words from Chapters 31–36, then answer each question.

🚨Knowledge Bank · Leather Buckets and Fire Hooks

Technology · Colonial FirefightingNew York in 1776 had no fire department in the modern sense. Fire law made every householder part of the defense: each home was required to keep leather buckets hanging by the door, ready to be seized by anyone who ran past. When an alarm sounded, neighbors formed a double line called a brigade, one file passing full buckets toward the flames while the other returned the empties to a well or pump. Volunteer companies dragged hand-pumped engines through the streets, wooden tubs on wheels that four to eight men worked like a seesaw to throw a single stream perhaps fifty feet (fifteen meters). And when water was hopeless, crews reached for the fire hook — an iron claw on a long pole, roped to a team of men, used to tear down the building next in line so the flames would arrive at an empty gap. Saving a city sometimes meant wrecking part of it on purpose.

Visual AidThree ways a colonial city fought a fire

Structure diagram of the three defenses the Knowledge Bank describes: the double line of a bucket brigade running from a well to the flames, the hand-pumped engine that four to eight men worked like a seesaw, and the fire hook that pulled down the next building to leave the flames a gap. The people in the brigade are drawn as plain circles, the engine as a tub on wheels, and the numbers of both are cut down; a real alarm brought far more of each, in no such order. This shows the equipment of a colonial city, not the night of September 21, 1776. Notice the third panel: the tool of last resort destroys a house on purpose.

Colonial fire law, bucket brigades, hand engines and the fire hook, as described in the Knowledge Bank and in standard histories of firefighting in eighteenth-century American cities. Drawn for Garden Heights Academy.

blazen.Ch.31

A large, fiercely burning fire

“The blaze lit the window as brightly as a summer noon.”

scorchv.Ch.31

To burn the surface of something

“Falling embers scorched the shoulder of her shawl.”

rubblen.Ch.32

Broken stone and brick left after a building falls

“Whole streets were reduced to rubble by morning.”

quarterv.Ch.32

To house soldiers in private homes

“Officers began to quarter troops in every house still standing.”

feebleadj.Ch.32

Very weak; lacking strength

“Lady Seymour was too feeble to lift her own cup.”

desolateadj.Ch.33

Empty, ruined, and cheerless

“The burned blocks looked desolate under a gray sky.”

gauntadj.Ch.35

Thin and hollow-cheeked from hunger or illness

“Curzon had grown gaunt in a few short weeks.”

squalidadj.Ch.35

Filthy and wretched from neglect

“The prisoners were kept in squalid rooms without heat.”

pilferv.Ch.36

To steal small amounts, a little at a time

“She had to pilfer scraps that no one would miss.”

pamphletn.Ch.36

A short printed booklet that argues a case

“The pamphlet was passed from hand to hand across the city.”

ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1According to the Knowledge Bank, crews hooked down a house standing next to a blaze in order to ___.Ch.31

2To ‘scorch’ something is to burn its surface.Ch.31

3‘Rubble’ is ___.Ch.32

4To ‘quarter’ soldiers is to ___.Ch.32

5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.31–32

Word choices:blazefeeblescorchrubble- some words will not be used

Isabel woke to find the whole street lit by the .

After the fire, Lady Seymour was too to walk unaided.

6‘Desolate’ means crowded and cheerful.Ch.33

7Someone who looks ‘gaunt’ is ___.Ch.35

8‘Squalid’ conditions are filthy and neglected.Ch.35

9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.35–36

Word choices:pilfersqualidgauntpamphlet- some words will not be used

Isabel had to small scraps of food from the kitchen.

The bookseller slipped a printed into her basket.

10A ‘pamphlet’ is ___.Ch.36

Part 2

Comprehension

Show you understood what happens in Chapters 31–36.

🏕Knowledge Bank · A City of Ash and Sailcloth

Urban History · After the FireThe fire ended in a morning, and the trouble it made lasted seven years. British commanders declared martial law and searched the city for suspects, while thousands of people who had lost roofs needed shelter in a town already swollen with soldiers. Officers solved the shortage by quartering troops and their families in whatever houses still stood, ordering private citizens to take in strangers and feed them. That is why the crowded rooms of Part 6 fill up with soldiers, wives, and squalling babies. In the burned district itself, along the Hudson side of Broadway, the poorest refugees pitched tents and stretched old ship canvas across standing chimneys and cellar walls. The neighborhood that grew there was called Canvas Town, and it stayed for the whole occupation: muddy, lawless, and cold, a slum of scorched brick and sailcloth. New York would not finish clearing the ruins until after the war, and Trinity Church itself lay in rubble.

An engraved eighteenth-century plan of lower Manhattan showing streets, wharves and open fields, with a long wedge of blocks along the Hudson side of Broadway washed in orange — Photograph of a printed plan of New York surveyed by Bernard Ratzer in 1766 and 1767, with the district lost in the fire of September 21, 1776 washed in orange. The coloring was added to the map to record the loss, so this is a marking on a survey rather than a picture of the fire: it shows how far the burning reached, not the hour or the path the flames took, and the streets are drawn as they stood a decade before the war reached them. Follow the orange — it runs up the Hudson side of Broadway from the fort. That scorched wedge is the ground where Canvas Town rose out of chimneys and sailcloth, and Trinity Church, which the Knowledge Bank leaves in rubble, stood inside it.
Plan of the city of New York surveyed by Bernard Ratzer, 1766–1767, printed impression with the district burned on September 21, 1776 shaded; New York Public Library. Source: Wikimedia Commons, file "NYCGreatFire1776.jpg", public domain.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1The Knowledge Bank explains that rooms filled with soldiers, wives, and babies after the fire because ___.Ch.31

2What does Lady Seymour stop to collect before leaving?Ch.31

3Isabel carries Ruth’s doll safely out of the burning house.Ch.31

4What happens to Lady Seymour as she and Isabel go down the stairs?Ch.31

5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 31–36

A sergeant asks Isabel to carry messages out of the prison.
Lady Seymour is hurt on the stairs and carried out.
Isabel wakes at Lady Seymour’s house to a city on fire.
Isabel recognizes Curzon among the marching prisoners.
The Lockton house fills with strangers who will not leave.

6After the fire, officers order soldiers and their families housed in the Lockton home.Ch.32

7How does Isabel recognize Curzon among the captured soldiers?Ch.33

8At Madam’s victory dinner, how do the British officers speak of their prisoners?Ch.34

9Isabel agrees to carry the prisoners’ messages to their captain.Ch.35

10What does Lady Seymour say about Isabel’s trips to the prison?Ch.36

Part 3

Literary Elements

Understanding HOW and WHY Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story across Chapters 31–36.

🎭Knowledge Bank · What the Fire Takes

Literary Craft · Imagery and SymbolLaurie Halse Anderson (author) writes the fire almost entirely through the body. Isabel does not observe a disaster from a safe distance; she reports heat on her skin, grit in her lungs, and a roaring loud enough to swallow speech. Language that works on the senses this way is imagery, and it is why the chapter feels closer than a history book ever could. Underneath the sensory rush, Anderson (author) is also sorting objects. A portrait and a packet of letters come out of the house; a small cloth doll does not. Each object is a symbol — a thing that carries a meaning larger than itself. The letters stand for a family Lady Seymour is allowed to keep and to mourn in public. The doll stands for a sister taken from Isabel, whose loss she is not permitted to name at all. Watch which keepsakes survive in this novel, and notice who is permitted to grieve.

Imagery

The fire arrives through the senses first — heat on skin, grit in the throat, a roar loud enough to swallow speech — rather than through explanation.

Symbolism

Objects carry meanings larger than themselves: a packet of letters, a portrait of a fair-haired man, a small cloth doll that does not come out of the house.

Situational Irony

Isabel saves a woman who owns her neighbors’ world and loses her own last keepsake, and Madam hands the nursing of Lady Seymour to the girl she torments.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1The Knowledge Bank explains that the packet of letters and the cloth doll are symbols because they ___.Ch.31

2Ruth’s doll burning while Lady Seymour’s letters are saved works as ___.Ch.31

3Imagery is language that appeals to the senses.Ch.31

4Madam plans a journey she hopes will kill Lady Seymour, then hands the nursing to Isabel. This is ___.Ch.36

5A symbol means exactly what it is and nothing more.Ch.31

6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Chapters 31–33

Word choices:imagerysymbolcoupletindex- some words will not be used

Smoke that stings the eyes and throat is .

A doll standing for a lost sister is a .

7Anderson (author) lets the plants grown from Isabel’s mother’s seeds die under the ash mainly to ___.Ch.33

8Situational irony happens when a result turns out opposite to what was expected.Ch.36

9Which detail is the clearest use of imagery?Chapters 31–32

10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Chapters 31–36

Word choices:ironyimagerystanzaglossary- some words will not be used

A rescuer losing her own treasure is .

Heat pressing down like a hand is .

Part 4

Think Deeper

Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.

🔍Knowledge Bank · Who Set the Fire?

Historical Method · Disputed CausesBefore dawn on September 21, 1776, hundreds of buildings were gone, and the argument about why began almost as fast as the flames. British officers had no doubt: they believed rebels had set the fire deliberately as the army marched in, and soldiers dragged more than two hundred people out of the streets that night on suspicion. Some were beaten. Yet no case was ever brought, no confession held up, and no name was ever attached to a first match. Historians have argued the question ever since. On one side sits real motive — George Washington had asked whether the city should be burned rather than handed over, and Congress had refused. On the other sits a plain fact about a wooden port in a dry September with a hard wind: such places burned regularly, without help. Weigh the evidence the way a historian must, and notice how much of it is only rumor.

Picture waking in a strange bed and thinking the sun has come up in the middle of the night. It has not. The window is orange because the street is orange, and so is the next street, and the one after that. A thirteen-year-old girl has about four minutes to decide what a life is worth carrying down a staircase. She chooses an old woman who cannot hurry, and while she is choosing, the one small cloth thing that still connects her to her sister is somewhere behind her, in a room that is already gone. Part 6 is the night a quarter of New York City burns, and the long gray weeks that follow it — ash on every sill, strangers billeted in the kitchen, and a column of captured American soldiers shuffling up the street toward a locked door. One of them is wearing a red hat that has faded almost to brown.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1Claim: “Part 6 shows that Isabel keeps choosing to act for other people even when nothing in her situation rewards it.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence

2The fire decides, or A person decides? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two

◄ The fire decidesA person decides ►

3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect

A hard wind drives flames through wooden streets→

Isabel pulls Lady Seymour out of the falling house→

Fort Washington falls to the British in November→

Officers treat three thousand captives as good as dead→

🧠Knowledge Bank question

4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument

According to the Knowledge Bank, historians still argue about the fire because , and because a dry wooden port in a hard wind .

Part 5

Standardized Test

The Night New York Burned · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice

The Night New York Burned

The British had held New York City for less than a week when it began to burn. Flames appeared shortly after midnight on September 21, 1776, near the crowded wharves at the southern tip of Manhattan. A hard wind from the south drove them north and west through a city built to burn: wooden houses packed along narrow lanes, many roofed with cedar shingles. Before dawn the fire had crossed Broadway and was running toward the Hudson River.

Fighting such a fire meant hand labor. Householders kept leather buckets by the door, and neighbors formed a brigade, a double line passing full buckets toward the flames and empty ones back to the well. Others worked hand-pumped engines or swung long hooks to pull down the next house in line, since an empty gap could stop a fire that water could not. That night almost none of it worked, because most of the population had fled the occupied city. Trinity Church burned to its foundations; a bucket line on the roof of Saint Paul's Chapel saved that building alone.

When the wind shifted and residents finally checked the flames, somewhere between four hundred and five hundred buildings were gone, burned down to smoking rubble, perhaps a quarter of the roughly four thousand that had stood. Families who could not salvage a home camped for years afterward in the burnt district under tents and old sailcloth, a squalid shantytown of mud and ash called Canvas Town. How the fire started is still disputed. British officers were certain that rebels had set it and questioned more than two hundred people, yet no one was ever charged. Historians still divide between deliberate arson and an accident in a tinder-dry wooden city.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas

2According to the passage, the fire began ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

3The passage says long hooks were used to ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

4It can be inferred that the fire spread so far mainly because ___.SAT · Inference

5The author mentions Trinity Church and Saint Paul’s Chapel mainly to ___.SAT · Author’s Purpose

6About how many buildings did the fire destroy?TOEFL · Factual Information

7In paragraph 2, brigade most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

8Prose Summary (TOEFL). The passage explains how one September night destroyed much of New York City — and why the reason is still argued about. This TOEFL task lists six sentences; choose the THREE that best capture the passage’s main ideas. The other three do not belong — they state minor details or ideas the passage does not present.TOEFL · Prose Summary

9In the passage, rubble most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary

10In the passage, squalid most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

Part 6 · Optional

Creative Writing

A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.

About This Section

This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!

Writing Task — Part 6 “What You Would Carry Out”

Lady Seymour spends her last safe minutes choosing what to take out of a burning house, and what Isabel carries down the stairs is not her own. Write about something you own that would be hard to replace — not because it is expensive, but because of what it stands for. Describe the object, explain who or what it connects you to, and tell what you would feel if it were gone. 6–10 sentences. End with one thing about that object that no one else would understand.

You can start with: “It would not look like much to anyone else, but...”

0 / 40 words minimum

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.

Part 6 Complete!

You finished Chapters 31–36 of Chains.

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🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

Move on to Part 7 →

Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Laurie Halse Anderson. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Laurie Halse Anderson’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.