Part 5
Out in the middle of the North Atlantic, the sea turns against them. What begins as a lively wind stiffens into a gale, and then the gale keeps building. The swells grow into moving hills of water; the boat climbs each one, hangs at the crest, and slides sickeningly into the trough beyond. The rigging howls, the deck heaves, and the crew battens down everything loose. Day and night blur into one long fight to keep the Wanderer pointed the right way and afloat. There is no time to rest; the sailors take turns at the wheel until they are gray with exhaustion, weary to the bone and drenched to the skin. In the middle of the ordeal, human moments still break through — Cody and his father Mo, so often at odds, begin to reach for each other, and Sophie feels how utterly small and alone a person can be against so much water. She tells the darkest Bompie story yet, the one in which he is nearly lost in the ocean itself. Then the wind reaches Force Ten, near the top of the storm scale, and the crew understands that the sea is about to test them as never before.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Storm words: gale, swell, crest, trough, weary… |
| Literary Elements | Vivid storm imagery, a sea brought to life, and rising action |
| Cross-Curricular | The Atlantic crossing — the Gulf Stream, weather, and the wind scale |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Chapters 36–41 | The Wind Rises — a gale builds into towering swells; the crew battens down and fights to hold the boat’s course as the sea grows wild. |
| Chapters 42–47 | Weary to the Bone — the crew battles on without rest; Cody and Mo grow closer; Sophie tells the story of Bompie nearly lost at sea; and the wind climbs to Force Ten. |
Part 5’s words raise a storm: a rising gale heaps the sea into swells that lift the boat to each crest and drop it into the trough, until the crew is weary to the bone. The North Atlantic is one of the roughest ocean crossings on Earth, and Part 5 shows why. Warm water from the tropics flows northeast in a great current called the Gulf Stream, and where its warmth meets colder air, storms are born and grow. Prevailing westerly winds tend to push weather — and boats — from west to east across this stretch, which is one reason crews sail toward England this way. To describe how hard the wind blows, sailors use the Beaufort scale, which numbers wind force from 0 (dead calm) up to 12 (hurricane).
The terms carry feeling as well as literal connotation.
ⓘ 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.
The narrative traces the rising danger: a gale that swells into towering seas, a crew fighting sleepless at the wheel, Cody and Mo reaching for each other, the darkest Bompie story, and a wind that climbs to Force Ten. Chapters 36–41: The Wind Rises — a gale builds into towering swells; the crew battens down and fights to hold the boat’s course as the sea grows wild. Chapters 42–47: Weary to the Bone — the crew battles on without rest; Cody and Mo grow closer; Sophie tells the story of Bompie nearly lost at sea; and the wind climbs to Force Ten. Out in the middle of the North Atlantic, the sea turns against them. What begins as a lively wind stiffens into a gale, and then the gale keeps building.
Across the episode, details preserve narrative continuity.
- The wind climbs to Force Ten near the top of the storm scale.
- The exhausted crew fights sleepless at the wheel.
- A lively wind stiffens into a building gale.
- Sophie tells of Bompie nearly lost in the ocean.
- Towering swells lift and drop the boat.
Part 5 works with three tools: sensory language that puts you in the storm (imagery), a sea given a living will (personification), and danger that steadily climbs (rising action). Again and again the storm chapters give the sea a will of its own — it ‘battles,’ it ‘howls,’ it seems to reach for the boat — a technique called personification, describing a nonliving thing as if it were alive. This is more than decoration. By making the ocean feel like a living opponent, Creech raises the human stakes: the crew is not just enduring weather, they are wrestling something that appears to want them. For Sophie the personified sea is especially charged, because water in this book is bound up with her buried past. When the sea seems to hunt her, we sense that her private fear and the real storm are becoming one and the same.
Repeated details gather meaning as symbolism.
This part brings together a building gale, hills of gray water, a sea that seems to howl, a wind at Force Ten. Feel how Creech makes the storm real through imagery — language that appeals to the senses. We do not simply read that the weather was bad; we hear the rigging howl, feel the deck drop from under us, taste salt spray, and see gray water rising into hills. Both narrators pour these details onto the page because a storm is not an idea, it is an experience of the whole shaking body. Strong imagery pulls the reader out of a safe chair and onto a pitching deck. The narrative reveals how the sensory details also carry emotion: the same crashing sea that terrifies is, in a strange way, thrilling, and the writing lets us feel both at once.
Another person’s position broadens moral perspective.
Imagine the world reduced to water and noise. The wind is no longer a breeze but a living scream in the rigging, and the sea has stopped being a surface and become a range of moving gray mountains. The Wanderer claws up the face of each swell, teeters at the top where the wind tries to tear her sideways, then plunges into the trough with a shudder that runs through every bone aboard. The crew has not truly slept in days; they are drenched, salt-stung, and weary past words, taking the wheel in turns because to stop is to lose. And a thirteen-year-old girl, gripping a rail as the ocean lunges at the boat, feels her oldest, deepest fear and the real storm outside become one single, roaring thing. The needle climbs toward Force Ten. The worst is still ahead.
The North Atlantic is famous among sailors as one of the hardest oceans to cross, and the reasons are written into the water and the air. A vast current of warm water called the Gulf Stream sweeps up from the tropics and curves northeast across the ocean. Where its warmth meets colder air above, storms are born and quickly grow. The winds in these latitudes usually blow from west to east, which is why a crew bound for England often rides them across — but those same westerly winds also drive one weather system after another straight along the route, giving little rest between them.
To describe how hard the wind is blowing, sailors use the Beaufort scale, which runs from 0, a dead calm, up to 12, a full hurricane. A Force 7 is already a near gale; a Force 10, the strength the Wanderer meets, means shrieking wind and towering, breaking seas that can roll a boat completely over. Experienced crews try to read the weather before it arrives by watching the sky and the barometer, an instrument that measures air pressure; when the pressure drops quickly, a storm is usually close behind. Far from any coast, a boat cannot outrun such weather or steer around it. The crew can only prepare, hold on, and endure. For a sailor, respect for the sea is not weakness or fear — it is the relentless attention that keeps a crew alive.
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 5 “Holding On”
The crew cannot outrun the storm; they can only prepare, hold on, and endure. Write about a hard time you had to get through when quitting was not an option — a long challenge, a scary day, a task that tested you. What made it hard, and how did you keep going? 6–10 sentences. End with how you felt when it was finally over.
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 5 Complete!
You finished Chapters 36–47 of The Wanderer.
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Your writing was checked automatically for length, spelling, grammar, and whether you included the key parts of the scene. Scroll back to Part 5 anytime to read your feedback and improve your work.
Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sharon Creech. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Sharon Creech’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.