Walk Two Moons

Walk Two Moons

by

Sharon Creech

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Walk Two Moons makes teaching easy.

Phoebe Winterbottom Character Analysis

Phoebe becomes Sal’s best friend in Euclid, Ohio. She has blond ringlets and a round face. Phoebe and her family live next door to Margaret Cadaver, and Phoebe has a wild imagination—so she believes Margaret is a murderer, or a witch, or otherwise nefarious. Sal implies that while Phoebe is, perhaps, unusually afraid and prone to making up scary stories, Phoebe also learned to be this way from her mother, Mrs. Winterbottom; Mrs. Winterbottom also fears intruders and people messing up her perfect world. Phoebe regularly makes assumptions and judges people; she’s self-important and believes herself to be an expert on everything. And though Phoebe seldom has anything nice to say about her mother, Sal eventually learns that Phoebe relies heavily on her mother’s cooking, presence, and comfort to make her feel secure. This becomes apparent when, seemingly out of the blue, Mrs. Winterbottom disappears. Phoebe is shaken and immediately decides that a young man whom she’s seen around town, who she refers to as “the lunatic,” kidnapped her mother (possibly with Margaret’s help). As Phoebe throws herself into proving that her mother was kidnapped, Sal realizes that Phoebe is doing many of the same things that Sal did when Momma disappeared. Phoebe, for instance, refuses to believe that Mrs. Winterbottom would leave of her own volition, since she knows that her mother loves her. In her mind, the only possible explanation is that someone forced Mrs. Winterbottom to go. Phoebe persists in this line of thinking until her English teacher, Mr. Birkway (who’s Margaret’s brother), explains that Margaret Cadaver isn’t evil, isn’t a murderer, and had nothing to do with Mrs. Winterbottom’s disappearance. Phoebe is despondent, especially when she later discovers her mother and “the lunatic” sitting together at a nearby college. Sal implies that eventually, Phoebe accepts her mother’s explanation: that “the lunatic,” Mike Bickle, is her son whom she gave him up for adoption before she met Mr. Winterbottom. But although Phoebe sometimes seems aware that she’s judgmental, there’s little indication that Phoebe actually learns to change her ways by the end of the novel.

Phoebe Winterbottom Quotes in Walk Two Moons

The Walk Two Moons quotes below are all either spoken by Phoebe Winterbottom or refer to Phoebe Winterbottom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Ben touched Phoebe’s arm. She flinched. “Ha,” he said. “Gotcha. You’re jumpy, too, Free Bee.”

And that, too, bothered me. I had already noticed how tense Phoebe’s whole family seemed, how tidy, how respectable, how thumpingly stiff. Was I becoming like that? Why were they like that? A couple times I had seen Phoebe’s mother try to touch Phoebe or Prudence or Mr. Winterbottom, but they all drew back from her. It was as if they had outgrown her.

Had I been drawing away from my own mother? Did she have empty spaces left over? Was that why she left?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“She looked as if she’d been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her.”

“Don’t you think she would say so then?”

“Maybe she’s afraid to,” I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe’s mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn’t see it—or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn’t want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn’t notice?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 81-82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

“He probably never took English,” Phoebe said.

To me that Y looked like the newly born horse standing up on his thin legs.

The poem was about a newlY born horse who doesn’t know anything but feels everything. He lives in a “smoothbeautifully folded” world. I liked that. I was not sure what it was, but I liked it. Everything sounded soft and safe.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

And just like Phoebe, who had waved her mother’s sweater in front of her father, I had brought a chicken in from the coop: Would Mom leave her favorite chicken?” I demanded. “She loves this chicken.”

What I really meant was, “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’ […] Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mary Lou Finney, Mr. Finney, Mrs. Finney
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

I knew Phoebe was convinced that her mother was kidnapped because it was impossible for Phoebe to imagine that her mother could leave for any other reason. I wanted to call Phoebe and say that maybe her mother had gone looking for something, maybe her mother was unhappy, maybe there was nothing Phoebe could do about it.

When I told this part to Gram and Gramps, Gramps said, “You mean it had nothing to do with Peeby?” They looked at each other. They didn’t say anything, but there was something in that look that suggested I had just said something important. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my mother’s leaving had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was separate and apart. We couldn’t own our mothers.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gramps (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Gram, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

I started wondering if the birds of sadness had built their next in Mrs. Cadaver’s hair afterward, and if so, how she got rid of them. Her husband dying and her mother being blinded were events that would matter in the course of a lifetime. I saw everyone else going on with their own agendas while Mrs. Cadaver was frantically trying to keep her husband and her mother alive. Did she regret anything? Did she know the worth of water before the well was dry?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Partridge, Mr. Cadaver
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. If I could toss rocks like you can toss rocks, I’d have plonked them both in the back of the head. Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting. And the lunatic, do you know what he did when she spit? He laughed. Then he leaned over and he spit.”

Related Characters: Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

Lately, I’ve been wondering if there might be something hidden behind the fireplace, because just as the fireplace was behind the plaster wall and my mother’s story was behind Phoebe’s, I think there was a third story behind Phoebe’s and my mother’s, and that was about Gram and Gramps.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: The Fireplace
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Walk Two Moons LitChart as a printable PDF.
Walk Two Moons PDF

Phoebe Winterbottom Quotes in Walk Two Moons

The Walk Two Moons quotes below are all either spoken by Phoebe Winterbottom or refer to Phoebe Winterbottom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

From what I could gather, Mr. Winterbottom worked in an office, creating road maps. Mrs. Winterbottom baked and cleaned and did laundry and grocery shopping. I had a funny feeling that Mrs. Winterbottom did not actually like all this baking and cleaning and laundry and shopping, and I’m not quite sure why I had that feeling because if you just listened to the words she said, it sounded as if she was Mrs. Supreme Housewife.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

Ben touched Phoebe’s arm. She flinched. “Ha,” he said. “Gotcha. You’re jumpy, too, Free Bee.”

And that, too, bothered me. I had already noticed how tense Phoebe’s whole family seemed, how tidy, how respectable, how thumpingly stiff. Was I becoming like that? Why were they like that? A couple times I had seen Phoebe’s mother try to touch Phoebe or Prudence or Mr. Winterbottom, but they all drew back from her. It was as if they had outgrown her.

Had I been drawing away from my own mother? Did she have empty spaces left over? Was that why she left?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mrs. Winterbottom, Mr. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“She looked as if she’d been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her.”

“Don’t you think she would say so then?”

“Maybe she’s afraid to,” I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe’s mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn’t see it—or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn’t want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn’t notice?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 81-82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom, Prudence Winterbottom
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

“He probably never took English,” Phoebe said.

To me that Y looked like the newly born horse standing up on his thin legs.

The poem was about a newlY born horse who doesn’t know anything but feels everything. He lives in a “smoothbeautifully folded” world. I liked that. I was not sure what it was, but I liked it. Everything sounded soft and safe.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

And just like Phoebe, who had waved her mother’s sweater in front of her father, I had brought a chicken in from the coop: Would Mom leave her favorite chicken?” I demanded. “She loves this chicken.”

What I really meant was, “How can she not come back to me? She loves me.”

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

All through dinner, I kept thinking of Bybanks, and what it was like when we went to my grandparents’ house for dinner. There were always tons of people—relatives and neighbors—and lots of confusion. It was a friendly sort of confusion, and it was like that at the Finneys’ […] Maybe this is what my mother had wanted, I thought. A house full of children and confusion.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Phoebe Winterbottom, Ben Finney, Mary Lou Finney, Mr. Finney, Mrs. Finney
Page Number: 150
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

It went on and on like that. I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Page Number: 155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

I knew Phoebe was convinced that her mother was kidnapped because it was impossible for Phoebe to imagine that her mother could leave for any other reason. I wanted to call Phoebe and say that maybe her mother had gone looking for something, maybe her mother was unhappy, maybe there was nothing Phoebe could do about it.

When I told this part to Gram and Gramps, Gramps said, “You mean it had nothing to do with Peeby?” They looked at each other. They didn’t say anything, but there was something in that look that suggested I had just said something important. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my mother’s leaving had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It was separate and apart. We couldn’t own our mothers.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Gramps (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Gram, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

I started wondering if the birds of sadness had built their next in Mrs. Cadaver’s hair afterward, and if so, how she got rid of them. Her husband dying and her mother being blinded were events that would matter in the course of a lifetime. I saw everyone else going on with their own agendas while Mrs. Cadaver was frantically trying to keep her husband and her mother alive. Did she regret anything? Did she know the worth of water before the well was dry?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Margaret Cadaver, Mrs. Partridge, Mr. Cadaver
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“They sat there on the bench having a gay old time. If I could toss rocks like you can toss rocks, I’d have plonked them both in the back of the head. Did you notice her hair? She’s cut it. It’s short. And do you know what else she did? In the middle of talking, she leaned over and spit on the grass. Spit! It was disgusting. And the lunatic, do you know what he did when she spit? He laughed. Then he leaned over and he spit.”

Related Characters: Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Mrs. Winterbottom, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle
Related Symbols: Hair
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

Lately, I’ve been wondering if there might be something hidden behind the fireplace, because just as the fireplace was behind the plaster wall and my mother’s story was behind Phoebe’s, I think there was a third story behind Phoebe’s and my mother’s, and that was about Gram and Gramps.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps, Phoebe Winterbottom, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: The Fireplace
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis: