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Chapter 10: Kimberly Tooley
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Restart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Memory, and Responsibility
Reputation vs. Reality
Masculinity
Social Hierarchies and Bullying
Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
Aaron wonders why amnesiac Chase seems like a completely different person—and why he wants to hang out with social outcasts like the video club instead of the football team. He can’t decide whether the Chase he knew will ever return. That matters not only because Aaron wants his friend back, but also because Chase may not know that he’s in possession of an object that he, Aaron, and Bear co-own.
Aaron’s belief that Chase has become a totally different person since losing his memories may or may not be true, but in either case, it emphasizes the importance of past memories and experiences to an individual’s present behavior: without his memories guiding him, Chase really does act different.
Themes
Bear wants to demand the object back. When Aaron points out that Chase may not remember having it, Bear suggests that Chase is feigning memory loss to monopolize the “valuable” object. Aaron tells Bear that he’s a “jerk” for talking about their friend like that—though he almost wishes Chase were fooling them if it meant they could have their friend back. Then he explains to Bear that they can’t confront Chase about the object because the new, amnesiac Chase is a moralizer who might snitch on them. When Bear suggests again that Chase is lying about his memory loss, Aaron says they have to “wait and see.”
The revelation that Chase is in possession of this mysterious, “valuable” object sheds new light on Aaron and Bear’s skeptical, suspicious, and disturbed responses to the news of his amnesia: Bear thinks Chase might be lying about the amnesia to keep the object, while Aaron is disturbed because amnesiac Chase may no longer know where the object is. Aaron’s claim that amnesiac Chase might snitch on them, meanwhile, hints that pre-accident Chase, Aaron, and Bear shouldn’t have taken the mysterious object in the first place. Finally, Aaron’s criticism of Bear for suspecting Chase of lying and his longing to have his friend back both show Aaron’s loyalty and his emotional depth—despite his other bad behavior.
Themes
Aaron thinks the easiest place to finagle information out of Chase should be community service—except all the assisted living residents love Chase now and keep monopolizing his time. To Aaron’s dismay, Chase has become especially friendly with “the one resident he should be staying away from—the crotchety old warhorse in 121” (Mr. Solway). Chase is interested in Mr. Solway’s stories about the Korean War. When Bear asks what Chase and Mr. Solway could possibly talk about, Chase insists that Mr. Solway is an intriguing, unusual person; after all, he won a Medal of Honor. Aaron hates that Chase keeps mentioning this fact; it makes him “nervous.”
It isn’t clear whether Aaron thinks Chase should “be staying away from” Mr. Solway because Mr. Solway is “crotchety” and has dangerous miliary experience—or for some other, as-yet-unrevealed reason. Regardless, Aaron and Bear’s bafflement that Chase is befriending elderly people shows yet again that Aaron and Bear’s commitment to the middle-school social hierarchy has narrowed their possibilities for friendship, while Chase’s complete forgetting of the hierarchy has widened his. Chase’s interest in the Medal of Honor emphasizes Chase’s fascination both with heroism and with people’s reputations.
Themes
When Bear insists that Mr. Solway must have narrated the entire Korean War to Chase already, Chase laughs and calls Mr. Solway “nice.” Bear points out that, in fact, Mr. Solway is mean and widely disliked. After Chase goes to help another resident, Aaron suggests to Bear that maybe Chase just enjoys “war stories.” Bear retorts that he never used to. Aaron acknowledges the truth of this: they don’t understand new, amnesiac Chase, and so they don’t know “how worried [they] should be.”
Because Chase doesn’t know Mr. Solway’s reputation as a mean old jerk, he’s able to interact with Mr. Solway in a friendly way, creating an opportunity for a pleasant social connection. This reveals how reputations can cloud people’s judgment and narrow their social possibilities. Aaron and Bear’s uncertainty and worry over what amnesiac Chase might do next, meanwhile, emphasizes yet again how important individual’s memories are to determining their behavior.
Themes
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