What is a summary of The Centipede by Rony V. Diaz?

Answer 1

Here is a summary of The Centipede by Rony V. Diaz:

Eddie is a little kid who often gets picked on by his sister. He describes a time when he went into her dollhouse and broke one of her dolls and she got so angry that she fell down, foaming at the mouth, and had to go to the hospital. Ever since then, the family has to be calm around her and work at not angering her or inspiring any extreme emotion because she has a weak heart. So Eddie takes it. He takes it when she complains about his pigeons and they have to let them go. He cries, but doesn't retaliate when she burns his butterflies. He says nothing when she asks that his monkey be killed because it is mocking her.

He tells of a hunting trip with his father when they first met a dog that he adopts, and how it has helped him since, how he hangs out with it every day, why it is important to him. And one day he sees his sister beating it with a stick. He says nothing, because he shouldn't upset her, but his hatred is building from all the times that she has been cruel to him and destroyed the things that he loves. She tells him that if he allows it in the house again she will have the workman kill it, because it ruined her slippers. He runs after the dog, calling it. He finally gets close enough to see it, though it won't come to him or allow him to touch it, and he sees that his sister has punctured the dog's eye.

When he comes home, the workman shows him a centipede that he found while chopping wood. Eddie kills it so that it won't hurt him to carry it, goes inside, and throws it in his sister's lap. She screams, accuses him of trying to kill her, and falls down, clutching her chest in pain, moaning. He feels bad, saying that the centipede is dead (it can't hurt her), but she doesn't move.

That is how the story ends. The reader is left to wonder what happened to the sister, and what happens next. It seems to be a story about how not allowing our emotions to be vented in some way can be dangerous, but also about injustice, and how we deal with it.

Answer 2

The theme is about the harshness of the sister, claiming and complaining about what Eddie does and has. The centipede, literally the insect, explains the sister and that it was like the hard feelings Eddie has felt through the years. The time when he came home and saw his butterfly collection in the bin and the eye of Biryuk damaged because of the stick Delia has been using to hit him. The main reason why she threw the butterflies was because of the ants they were calling attention on, and that made Eddie think that his sister was only trying to get attention and that she wanted to bug him,

Answer 3

Eddie simply symbolizes us...we whom have been hurt by people around us, judge us, blame us and it comes to the point that they really want to destroy what we have for the sake of their own happiness. He is also a symbol of patience that since in his childhood, he did not have a fight over his sister even though she must be the one to comfort and take care of him.

The most obvious symbolism is the existence of the centipede. Centipede has thorny feet and frightful appearance. And it only typifies "revenge". We do want the person who hurt us to feel more what sufferings he brought to our lives :)

Answer 4

When Eddie saw his sister beating his dog with a stick, he felt hate like a caged, angry beast in his chest. He could not cry to his sister because she had a weak heart. He recalled the things his sister did to him.

For Eddie, his sister, Delia was the meanest creature he knew. He remembered when he was furiously hit by his sister when she learned that the leg of her doll was accidentally torn by him.

Nothing Eddie did ever please her. Destroying willfully anything he liked had become a habit for her. She even told Berto to kill his monkey because it snickered at her one morning, while she was brushing her teeth.

Eddie did not tell anything when she told Father that she did not like Eddie's pigeon house because it stank and he had to give away his pigeons and Berto had to chop the house into kindling wood.

He learned how to hold himself because he knew they had to put up with her whims to keep her calm and quiet. But when she dumped his butterflies into a waste can and burned them in the backyard, he realized that she was spiting him.

Eddie got a big centipede that Berto found under the stack he chopped. He made sure that it was dead and placed it in a white cloth.

He unwrapped and threw it on the lap of his sister whom he hated so much. His sister collapsed. Her voice dragged off into a painstaking moan.

Eddie was engulfed by a sudden feeling of pity and guilt. He cried kneeling before her, telling her that the centipede was dead.
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