Summary
Chapter 50: A Winter’s Journey
Bert, Daisy, Roderick, and Martha trek through the bitter cold from Jeroboam to the Marshlands. Martha leads the way since she is the only one of the four that is familiar with this part of Cornucopia. They walk for three days and nights, each one secretly thinking that they may die from the cold. On the third night, Martha recognizes the smell of the marsh and tells them they are getting close to where the soldiers must be positioned, but when they reach the edge of the marsh they realize that the soldiers must have left. The narrator states that they are correct; the soldiers left the area five days before because of the brutal winter storm. They are excited to find a wagon the soldiers left that is full of delicious food, but they quickly realize that it is all covered in a thick layer of ice. Feeling hopeless, the four friends sink down into the snow, their minds growing fuzzy from cold and exhaustion. They all fall unconscious, so they do not see a shadow come over them and the Ickabog's "two enormous arms covered in long green hair" pick them up and carry them into the marsh.
Chapter 51: Inside the Cave
After a long sleep, the four friends wake up in the Ickabog's cave. Surprisingly, it is extremely comfortable and tidy. They have been put down to sleep on a large nest of sheep's wool, there is a warm fire, and the Ickabog has heated up pies from the soldiers' abandoned wagon. All four of the friends lay quietly after waking up because they are afraid of alerting the Ickabog that they are conscious. However, the Ickabog does not pay them any mind except to bring the pies over for them to eat.
When the Ickabog brings over the pies, it says "Eat them," showing that it can speak. The Ickabog is described as having "long, coarse, greenish hair that covered it from head to foot. Roughly shaped like a person, it had a truly enormous belly, and huge shaggy paws, each of which had a single sharp claw." Before starting to eat the pies, Bert asks the Ickabog what it wants with them. The Ickabog says, "I’m going to eat you. But not yet." It picks up some woven baskets and leaves the cave, trapping the children inside with a boulder. Before leaving, it doesn't actually roar but merely says "Roar."
Chapter 52: Mushrooms
Even though the children are terrified of the Ickabog, they eat the food ravenously. Martha even bursts into tears since she has been poor her whole life and never tasted the delicious foods from Baronstown. Once they have regained some strength from the pies, the children start to discuss their situation. They see drawing on the walls of a hundred Ickabogs being chased by people with spears and another drawing of the Ickabog facing one person who looks like King Fred. The narrator states that King Fred actually did come face to face with the Ickabog that night in the marsh, though the other soldiers did not see it. Daisy brings up that it is surprising that there are no bones in the cave if the Ickabog eats people, but Bert responds that the Ickabog must eat their bones too.
When the children hear the Ickabog returning to the cave, they hurry back to the sheep's wool nest. The Ickabog enters the cave with a basket full of mushrooms and more food from the soldiers' wagon. It says "Roar" again, but otherwise does not talk to the children. It warms pastries on the fire for the children and cooks the mushrooms for itself, eating each one carefully and happily off of its claws. After the Ickabog finishes eating, it goes to the mouth of the cave and sings a song in a language the children don't understand. The children fall asleep listening to the Ickabog sing.
Chapter 53: The Mysterious Monster
The children remain in the Ickabog's cave for many days. The Ickabog continues to feed them delicious food from the soldiers' abandoned wagon. When the Ickabog leaves the cave, the children discuss their many questions about the Ickabog: Is the Ickabog a boy or a girl? When will the Ickabog eat them? Is it possible for them to overpower the Ickabog? Why does the Ickabog sing every night? The children have little hope that they would be able to defeat the Ickabog physically, but Bert reassures them that the Ickabog will not eat them for a little while since Daisy and Martha are still so skinny.
Daisy brings up her thought that the Ickabog doesn't really eat people again. She points out that they have only seen the Ickabog eat mushrooms. That night, after the Ickabog gives the children their food and moves to the cave entrance to sing, Daisy gets up from the wool nest and bravely walks over to the Ickabog.
Chapter 54: The Song of the Ickabog
Just as the Ickabog is about to sing its nightly song, Daisy appears beside it. She asks the Ickabog what language it sings in, to which it replies, "Ickerish." Daisy asks what the song is about, and the Ickabog translates the song into English and explains the meaning. Ickabogs die when they give birth to new Ickabogs, but they must die in the right way or else the baby Ickabogs will not survive. The process of new Ickabogs being born while the parent dies is called "Bornding." This Ickabog is the last Ickabog left because people killed many of them, and many others did not survive due to bad Bornding. People are descended from Ickabogs, specifically from Fright, Bitterness, and Hatred. People pushed the Ickabogs from sunny areas into the foggy marsh, and now the last Ickabog wants to kill all people so that Ickabogs can rise to prominence again.
When the Ickabog has finished its song and explanation, Daisy asks the Ickabog how many people it has eaten. The Ickabog sighs and says it hasn't eaten any yet. Daisy surmises that the Ickabog is keeping the children around to eat them just as it Bornds its children so that the children will grow up to kill people. The Ickabog agrees that this is its plan. Daisy empathizes with the Ickabog, saying that she also lost her parents and has been kept alive by hope. She asks that when the Ickabog eats her, it eat her heart last since that is where she keeps her parents. She returns to where the other children are sitting, and she hears the Ickabog sniffle.
Chapter 55: Spittleworth Offends the King
After the incident with the mail coach, Lord Spittleworth puts even more strict rules in place regarding mail. All mail in Cornucopia can be read for signs of treason, which include criticizing the king, the Ickabog tax, or Lord Spittleworth as well as saying that "Cornucopia wasn’t as happy and well fed as it had always been." People in Cornucopia become even more frightened of being accused of treason, and mail and travel all but ceases. To keep the king happy, Lord Spittleworth also puts together a group of soldiers to forge fan mail to the king, praising the king, Lord Spittleworth, and the work of the Ickabog Defense Force.
One night, King Fred is having dinner with Lord Spittleworth and Lord Flapoon. He brings up that he is very pleased with the letters he has been receiving, saying "I had no idea so many Ickabogs had been killed, Spittleworth! In fact—come to think of it—I didn’t even know there was more than one Ickabog!" Lord Spittleworth realizes that Lord Flapoon has not been proofreading the fan mail as he was supposed to. King Fred recalls that Professor Fraudysham said that killing an Ickabog creates two more, and the lords must come up with another lie to explain how they have been preventing this reproduction. King Fred is satisfied with their answers, and suggests that with the killing of Ickabogs going so well, they should have an Ickabog stuffed and hold an exhibition. This idea scares Lord Spittleworth because, of course, they have no Ickabog bodies to stuff and display.
King Fred brings up that he has heard people singing the national anthem recently. He believes it is the servants singing out of celebration, though Lord Spittleworth knows that it is actually the fifty or so prisoners in the palace dungeon. The king suggests that they should hold a ball since they have not had one in a long time. Lord Spittleworth tells Lord Flapoon that they should go discuss this, but King Fred halts them and says they did not ask his permission to leave the king's dinner table. Lord Spittleworth apologizes, but King Fred seems irked and reminds Lord Spittleworth that he is the king.
Chapter 56: The Dungeon Plot
After leaving King Fred's presence, Lord Spittleworth and Lord Flapoon argue about whose fault the situation is and what they are going to do. Lord Flapoon suggests sewing a fake Ickabog. Lord Spittleworth storms away to the dungeon and yells at the prisoners to stop singing the national anthem. He sees with dismay that the soldiers seem much healthier and happier than before. Lord Spittleworth's footman Cankerby has been assigned to run between prison cells distributing cooking equipment. Lord Spittleworth asks Cankerby whether he has been keeping track of the equipment and collecting it all at the end of the day, and Cankerby lies and says he has been. In fact, the narrator says that the prisoners all had "knives and chisels hidden beneath their blankets, and behind loose bricks in their walls" and were plotting against Lord Spittleworth.
Analysis
Chapter 50 is perhaps the biggest turning point in The Ickabog. Though Rowling implied that the Ickabog really exists in the first few chapters of the story, many readers will have forgotten this and come to believe that the idea of the Ickabog is merely a tool Lord Spittleworth is using to scare people into listening to him. When the Ickabog is introduced, there is situational irony in the fact that readers thought the monster did not exist, and there is even more situational irony since we come to realize that the Ickabog isn't frightening at all. This teaches young readers to judge people based on their actions, not by rumors they have heard about them.
Rowling builds the reader's empathy for the Ickabog through her descriptions of the Ickabog's appearance and behavior. For example, Rowling describes the Ickabog's eyes as "mournful," meaning that they express sadness, regret, or grief. She also explicitly says that the Ickabog is "roughly shaped like a person." These descriptions personify the Ickabog, which makes it more relatable and less like a monster that readers would immediately see as an antagonist.
Rowling's description of the Ickabog also includes a Biblical allusion. The Ickabog keeps the children in a cave and rolls a large rock in front of the cave entrance when he goes out to keep them prisoners inside. There are multiple similar stories in the New Testament. In one, Joshua orders stones to be rolled in front of the mouth of a cave to keep five prisoners inside. In another, Jesus calls for stones to be removed from the entrance of a cave so that he can bring a man back from the dead. It makes sense for Rowling to include a Biblical allusion in The Ickabog since she identifies as a practicing Christian and has purposefully included allusions to the Bible in her other works such as the Harry Potter series.
The Ickabog's song, when translated into English, has a steady iambic tetrameter (four pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables in every line). Its rhyme scheme during the verses is AABCDDBC, and the rhyme scheme in the chorus is ABAC in which the first and third lines are identical to one another. The repetition of meter, rhyme, and chorus would be appealing and catchy to young readers, which again causes them to empathize with the Ickabog and its tragic history.
At this point in The Ickabog, King Fred barely ever appears. In fact, after his voice is heard in Chapter 42, when Mrs. Beamish goes to the palace at night to talk to him, he is not actually seen again until Chapter 55, at dinner with Lord Spittleworth and Lord Flapoon. At the beginning of The Ickabog it seems as if King Fred is going to be the main character, even the hero of the story. However, he fades into the background since he is not as brave as Bert and Daisy, nor as clever as Lord Spittleworth, nor as resilient as Mr. Dovetail and Mrs. Beamish.
