Freak the Mighty: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Max figures that he’s going to get in trouble for running into the pond. The cops drive him home. Grim hoses Max off with a weird look on his face while the cops make it sound like Max heroically rescued Freak. Grim seems surprised, but Max thinks this is silly—he knows it must’ve looked like he rescued Freak, but in reality, Freak rescued him. Gram rubs Max down with a towel and he gives Max a bowl of ice cream, while Grim makes Max a cup of coffee. He gives it to Max in a fancy china cup like it’s a big deal. Instead of asking why Grim is being so weird, Max just thanks him.

Max asks for sugar in his coffee and Grim calls Max “son” when he says yes. This is new—Grim always calls Max by Max or Maxwell. Gram’s expression suggests that she thinks this is how things are supposed to be. Gram makes Max promise to stay away from “the hoodlum boy” (Tony D.), but Grim insists that Max can handle himself. Max assures Gram that he’ll run from Tony D. Gram starts to say something about how Max is so much bigger than Tony D., but Grim interjects and says that Max is just going to avoid confrontation. Max just nods and he doesn’t mention that Tony D. carries a knife and probably has guns. Max doesn’t want Gram to worry.

In summers past, Max has spent most of his time watching TV and reading comic books. But this summer, with Freak around, Max gets up every day. Freak wakes Max up by banging on the basement door and shouting that they must go slay dragons and rescue maidens. One day, Max notes that Freak must have ants in his pants. Freak suspiciously asks if Gwen asked Max to say that, and then he says that out of the 2,247 species of ants, none are in his pants. Max just laughs.

One day, Freak proposes a quest of a journey to the East. Max now knows what a quest is—it started with King Arthur, since Arthur needed to keep his knights busy and he wanted to prove how strong and brave they were. Privately, Max thinks that the quests proved that the knights were dumb since they wore tin cans and prayed, but Freak is sensitive about quests and King Arthur. Freak goes on about how dragons aren’t just monsters; they’re symbols of the terrifying natural world and “an archetype of the unknown.” Confused, Max asks what an “archy-type” is.

Freak reaches into his backpack for his dictionary and hands it to Max. He walks Max through looking up the word, though Max hates it—none of the letters look right, and he doesn’t know how to spell. Max looks for the words underlined in red ink, since those are the ones that Freak has already looked up. Finally, Freak spells the entire word and Max finds the definition. He insists that it just means “pattern” and that it doesn’t say anything about dragons. Freak says that he meant the second definition, which refers to a symbol or idea that’s expressed in dreamlike images. Bored, Max pretends to understand. Freak shakes his head and he says he doesn’t know why he even cares—dinosaurs had peanut-sized brains and they ruled the earth for years.