Intellectualism and Emotion vs. Physical Strength Theme Analysis

One of the reasons why Ari and Dante become friends so quickly is that, though Ari doesn’t know it at first, they’re both intellectuals. Dante is interested in art, literature, and poetry, and he encourages Ari to develop his taste for the written word in particular throughout their friendship. Though Ari follows Dante’s example and genuinely enjoys writing, reading, and thinking—he is, after all, interested in figuring out the titular secrets of the universe—Ari leans much more heavily on his strength. At times, allows his strength and his anger to keep him from enjoying or engaging with intellectual pursuits. As Ari and Dante’s friendship develops and becomes more complicated, Ari comes to discover that his strength doesn’t actually have to exist entirely in opposition to his budding intellectualism or his emotions—but if it does, the consequences can be unfulfilling at best and disastrous at worst.

While Ari suggests in his narration that he’s always enjoyed reading and has been something of a writer since he was in elementary school, that part of who he is begins to fade. Now, in the novel’s present, Ari is 15 years old and has focused on building up his physical strength rather than his emotional capacity or intellect. Writing in particular represents an embarrassing willingness to speak the truth, something that Ari feels unable to do for a variety of reasons, including the secrecy surrounding his brother and Ari’s unwillingness to face up to his own sexuality. In Ari’s understanding, Dante’s intellectualism is linked to a number of his other qualities, specifically his kindness, his sensitivity, and eventually, his sexuality. Dante begins to show Ari that Ari can do both: he can join Dante in discovering poetry and novels, as well as discussing philosophical questions about the world, while also being a strong, active boy. This begins to show that these two ideas aren’t actually as opposed as Ari might have thought they were at first glance.

The relationship between intellectualism and physical strength begins to look more like a dichotomy when, at the end of Ari and Dante’s first summer, Ari dives in front of a speeding car to save Dante and the car runs over Ari’s legs in the process. Notably, Ari insists that he saved Dante out of instinct, not because it was the right thing to do, because he loved Dante, or any other easily accessible reason. Insisting that he acted out of instinct shows Ari refusing point-blank to critically consider his actions, his motivations, or even the sense of diving in front of a moving car in the first place, and because of this, Ari turns even more fully to his strength.

Ari does this by instituting several rules with Dante, most notably that they’re never going to talk about the accident. Instituting this rule is one way for Ari to try to gain some power and control while he’s otherwise powerless (his injuries mean that he’s confined to a wheelchair and can’t even bathe himself for weeks), but it’s also a coping mechanism that allows him to ignore his emotions. However, even as Ari shuts himself off emotionally, he still accepts Dante’s offers of classic novels and poetry—an interest that continues through the next school year as Ari’s English teacher, Mr. Blocker, has a habit of making students write. Ari enjoys this and even begins keeping a journal again like he did as a kid. The journal, however, betrays how uncomfortable Ari is with his emotions and with his interest in anything that isn’t lifting weights in the basement and running with his dog, Legs.

The tension between Ari’s unthinking strength and his emotions comes to a head when he discovers that four boys found Dante kissing another boy in an alley. While the other boy ran, Dante stood his ground and was beaten up to the point of being hospitalized. Ari, in a rage, tracks down Dante’s kissing partner, Daniel, and then Julian, one of the boys who beat him, and breaks Julian’s nose to get revenge for his friend, showing the violent consequences of relying on one’s physical strength to solve problems rather than approaching situations with calm rationality. In the aftermath of this, Ari remains unwilling to tap into his emotions. He insists to Mr. Quintana and Mrs. Quintana that “it was a loyalty thing” and has nothing to do with the fact that he’s in love with Dante—something that everyone but Ari himself can see. However, Ari still escapes a lot of the trouble he could have gotten in by breaking Julian’s nose, which stands as a grudging acknowledgement that violence like this, when undertaken in service of a friend, has its place.

Ultimately, once Ari is willing to accept his sexuality and that he’s in love with Dante, it becomes clear that his anger, violence, and focus on physicality were nothing more than crutches to keep him from experiencing the full range of his emotions. With this, the novel suggests that while physical strength might not be intrinsically harmful or dangerous on its own, it can become just that when it acts as a stand-in for emotions—while academic pursuits, novels, and philosophy have the power to lead an individual in the direction of greater emotional enlightenment.