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Part Four, Chapter Thirty-One
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Ethnicity, and Masculinity
Silence and Trauma vs. Communication
Family and Coming of Age
Intellectualism and Emotion vs. Physical Strength
Summary
Analysis
Ari thinks that summer is supposed to be about hope, which is why he loves it and hates it. He decides that this is going to be his summer, and he’s going to make it a good one. However, Ari’s going to work 40 hours per week at the Charcoaler, and Mom signs him up to work at the food bank on Saturday afternoons. On the first Saturday of summer, Ari gets up early and finds Mom in the kitchen. He tells her that he’s filling in for a coworker tonight, which Mom says is decent. He points out that she raised him to be decent, but he wants to be bad and it’s her fault he’s not. Mom says that bad boys are just bad; they don’t need permission.
Ari is testing limits here as he tells Mom that he’d like to be bad. He likely doesn’t really want to be bad; he just wants to feel as though he can make mistakes or try new, possibly questionable things, without feeling like he has to somehow make up for Bernardo’s crimes. Trying to blame this on Mom isn’t entirely wrong, as she is responsible for making Ari feel like he’s living in Bernardo’s shadow.
Themes
Mom and Ari look at each other and Ari asks what would happen if he quits his job. Mom insists it’d be fine, but Ari knows this is a lie. He suggests that he’ll mow lawns and when Mom takes issue with this, he asks if it’s too Mexican of a job. He says that flipping burgers is both reliable and unimaginative, just like him. Mom asks if Ari is going to beat himself up forever and points out that the Charcoaler is a transitional job, not a career. Ari thinks this makes Mom less of a Mexican mother, but Mom angrily says that being educated doesn’t make her less Mexican. Ari thinks that Mom’s anger is refreshing, since it doesn’t paralyze her.
Again, much of what Ari suggests is sarcastic and not necessarily serious, but Mom’s insistence that Ari should do something more than manual labor indicates that she has hope Ari will pursue intellectualism, rather than rely on his strength and physicality forever. When Ari recognizes that Mom’s anger doesn’t paralyze her, it denotes progress—Mom is more vocal about her feelings, which is why she doesn’t freeze, and this is something that Ari should emulate.
Themes
Mom asks Ari if he knows what an “ecotone” is. He says it’s where two different ecosystems meet, and Mom says this proves her point: Ari is in transition. They banter about Mom acting like a teacher and Ari being almost 17 years old. They apologize, and Ari wants to tell her that nobody knows him. Mom brushes Ari’s hair aside and tells him that she and Dad will give Ari money if he doesn’t want to work. She tells him to have a nice summer. Ari says he might fall in love and thinks that parents love their sons to the point where they romanticize their lives. He thinks that parents forget that being almost 17 is painful, confusing, and sometimes awful.
As far as Ari is concerned, being 16 is really no different than being 15 was last summer—until he becomes an adult, life is just a little bit scary and confusing. This reminds the reader that Ari is still trying to find his place in the world, and it suggests that it’s a common fault on the part of adults to forget that being a teen isn’t just a romantic period of discovery. In order to make important discoveries and mature, it requires mistakes that don’t always end well.
Themes
