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Part Four, Chapter Eight
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 tries to think of Dante kissing a girl and imagine what he looks like with short hair. Instead of writing to Dante, Ari writes in his journal and wonders what it would be like to kiss Ileana. Ari tries to think about other things, but everything leads him back to Dante and Ileana. He feels sad, so he thinks about Bernardo. Ari tells the reader that he thinks that people dream so that they can think about things they don’t know they’re thinking about. Ari remembers a dream about Bernardo, in which Bernardo was walking with four-year-old Ari. Ari wonders if it’s a memory and thinks he might study dreams when he’s older. He’d like to help people who have bad dreams not have them.
The way that Ari conceptualizes dreams shows that the reader is correct in interpreting Ari’s dreams as coded versions of his truth: that he’s lost, in love with Dante, and mourning the loss of his innocence that happened with the accident. His desire to help people who have bad dreams, on the other hand, shows that Ari is looking forward. He is coming to realize that he’s not the only one who suffers with personal issues, and he wants to be a helpful part of society by making others feel better about their inner workings.
Themes
