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Chapter 11: Aaron Hakimian
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
Tina has been sharing photos with Chase, hoping to jog his memory. When she shows him a photo of Johnny’s dorm, Chase retrieves a memory: as a seventh grader, he went with Tina to drop a terrified Johnny off at his freshman dorm—and felt contempt for his older brother’s perceived wimpiness. Chase is shocked by his past negative opinion of Johnny, given how caringly Johnny visited him while he was in the hospital. He realizes Johnny’s care probably wasn’t payback for any “wonderful brotherly loyalty” he’d given Johnny, and he wonders once again exactly how different he was before the accident.
Macho Frank has repeatedly criticized Johnny’s supposed wimpiness in front of Chase. Though this scene doesn’t explicitly say so, it’s implied that pre-accident Chase became contemptuous of Johnny by witnessing their father Frank’s contempt of him. Because Chase now has very few memories of Frank and Johnny’s relationship, he’s able to judge Johnny on his own terms and recognize for himself that Johnny is a good person, caring for Chase not to reciprocate “brotherly loyalty” but because it’s the right thing to do. Chase’s recognition of his own past poor judgment makes him wonder, yet again, about his pre-accident identity.
Themes
At Chase’s next appointment, the doctor tells him that his brain is fine, as evidenced by his ability to remember everything that’s happened since his accident. Chase, queasily, remembers with particular clarity how good it felt to stop Joey from bullying Brendan using “physical power.” He wonders whether Shoshanna’s right that he’s a violent person—whether the physical aggression he engaged in before the accident is reemerging. He feels as though he knows himself less well the more he learns about his past.
Chase’s enjoyment of exercising “physical power” over others suggests that while he doesn’t want to bully anyone physically anymore, physical bullying isn’t totally alien to his personality. His belief that the more he learns about his pre-accident identity, the less he knows himself indicates that his instincts and values “deep down” are at odds with the choices he was making prior to his accident.
Themes
The doctor tells Chase that even though he seems recovered, he shouldn’t play football this season because doctors still don’t fully understand concussions’ effects over the long term. Noting how upset Chase looks, Tina tries to sympathize, but Chase isn’t sure she understands that he’s upset because of how integral football was to his past identity. His father Frank only seems to talk to him about his football playing. Aaron and Bear are his only former friends who still speak to him, and he suspects they only do that because they hope he’ll come back to the team.
Chase mourns the loss of football not because he cares about football, per se, but because he wants some stable identity—any stable identity—and because several of the people closest to him, including his own father, seem to value him primarily as a high-status, macho athlete rather than as an individual in himself. Chase’s sense that his father and friends only value him for his athleticism may have contributed to his past antisocial behavior.
Themes
Chase knows that Aaron and Bear judge him for enjoying community service, but he enjoys helping people—especially knowing that he’s hurt people in the past. He enjoys learning things from the assisted living residents, too. In particular, he thinks that Mr. Solway—who once threw a grenade into an enemy tank—is amazing. By contrast, Mr. Solway doesn’t think that that one action defines him; he says that he’d never have done it if he’d stopped to consider it.
Mr. Solway argues that a single action doesn’t define his life. He also argues that that reputation-defining action isn’t representative of who he is because he didn’t have time to think before he acted. Contrary to people who believe impulsive actions are the most revealing of identity, then, Mr. Solway believes that the choices you make after thinking about them are the ones that define you. Mr. Solway’s beliefs indirectly reflect on Chase, who seems to be thinking about and reflecting on the morality of his actions much more now than he did before his accident.
Themes
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Mr. Solway can’t find his Medal of Honor. He believes he lost it somehow, and he blames cognitive decline that dates to his wife’s death. When he tells Chase that his life has been functionally over since she died, Chase tries to give him a pep talk, telling him he has friends. Mr. Solway informs Chase that everyone at the assisted living facility hates him; even the nurses call him “Mr. Happy Face” sarcastically. When Chase says he thinks he used to be a Mr. Happy Face too, Mr. Solway tells him he was—the accident improved his personality.
Mr. Solway’s loss of his Medal of Honor implies two things. One, it implies that he doesn’t care that much about his reputation: if he did, he would have tracked much more carefully the medal that symbolizes his reputation for great military bravery. Second, it symbolizes his loss of a good reputation in the assisted living facility, where even the nurses think of him as a miserable jerk. Mr. Solway’s casual assertion that amnesia has improved Chase’s personality, meanwhile, highlights both Mr. Solway’s blunt personality and the real changes Chase has undergone since his accident.
Themes
When Chase points out that the accident took his memories, Mr. Solway quips that “[m]emory is overrated” and admits he can’t remember the act for which he earned his Medal of Honor: the army medic told him he lost the memory due to the trauma of seeing a grenade explosion inside the occupied tank. Chase tries to comfort Mr. Solway by telling him that he was fighting an enemy during wartime, but Mr. Solway retorts that he still prefers to “forget the whole rotten business.”
The Korean War (1950-1953) was a brutally violent conflict during which both sides committed atrocities. Mr. Solway thinks of the war as a “rotten business,” believes “memory is overrated,” and found the incident for which he won a Medal of Honor so traumatically violent that he repressed it—details suggesting both that society may value traditionally masculine, violent, military bravery too highly and that people’s reputations may not square at all with their memories or their self-conceptions.
Themes
Chase wonders whether he can’t remember being a bully because he doesn’t want to, the way that Mr. Solway has repressed traumatic memories. He concludes that the situations aren’t parallel; besides, he’s begun remembering decontextualized images—though he’s not convinced they’re “real.” He dreams about cherry bombs going off in a kid’s piano, but when he checks an old yearbook, he discovers Joel Weber wasn’t the kid in his dream. He even dreams about blowing himself up during the Korean War because he can’t bring himself to drop a live grenade into a tank. His realest-seeming memory is still of the girl in the fancy dress.
When Chase considers—only to reject—a possible parallel between his amnesia and Mr. Solway’s repression of traumatically violent war memories, it shows his growing thoughtfulness. His suspicions about the “real[ity]” of his memories emphasizes that while memory is important to identity, it isn’t always trustworthy. Finally, his dream about the cherry bombs in the piano show his growing guilt about his past as a bully.
Themes
Chase is helping video club with the yearbook. So many kids flee when he comes to interview them that he’s started preemptively mentioning Brendan’s name. Though most video club kids are fine with Chase now, Shoshanna still makes snide remarks about him joining. Kimberly has joined too. She’s terrible at film, but Brendan defends her so spiritedly from criticism that Chase suspects he likes her.
Just as Chase’s bad reputation got him in trouble at the car wash and Brendan’s good reputation saved them, so Chase’s bad reputation hampers his ability to get projects done for video yearbook while Brendan’s good one helps him. Clearly, reputation doesn’t entirely track social status, as desperately uncool, low-status Brendan still has a better overall reputation than Chase.
Themes
After Brendan shows the club his latest YouTube short, Shoshanna tells him he should stop wasting his time and contribute to her National Video Journalism Contest project, which could be great if they choose the right interviewee. Chase suggests Mr. Solway. Shoshanna just glares, but Kimberly asks who Mr. Solway is. When Chase explains that he’s a veteran who won the Medal of Honor, Shoshanna asks how Chase would know “someone like that.” Chase awkwardly admits he knows him from community service. When faculty advisor Ms. DeLeo compliments Chase’s idea, Shoshanna looks furious.
When Shoshanna asks how Chase would know “someone like” Mr. Solway, i.e. the recipient of a Medal of Honor, she implies that Chase shouldn’t even know someone with a reputation for heroism—emphasizing, yet again, the gap between people’s reputations and their lived reality that the Medal of Honor symbolizes.
Themes
