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Chapter 13: Shoshanna Weber
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
Frank drives Chase home from dinner in his loud new Mustang (he wouldn’t “be caught dead in Corinne’s van”). When Chase mentions that he and Helene are friendlier now, Frank pulls a face, says that’s because Chase “played princess with her,” and notes that Chase didn’t used to care whether he was friends with a little girl. Chase suggests it’s preferable to Helene fearing him. Frank claims that she didn’t really, but Chase used to be “tougher,” like Aaron and Bear. Chase recalls both his past as a bully and as a sports star—he’s ashamed of the former, but the latter made him feel “important and confident and powerful” in a way he’s not ready to write off.
Frank criticizes his own wife’s perfectly functional van, insists on driving a muscle car, expresses distaste for Chase making friends with his little sister Helene because it involves “play[ing] princess with her,” and even implies that it would be better for Chase to scare her a little so long as Chase was “tougher.” In sum, Frank’s obsession with himself and his son embodying traditional masculinity is intense and unreasonable. Chase, more thoughtful than his father, sees both his negative past as a bully and his positive past as a successful athlete as characteristic of traditional masculinity: he wants to eschew the former but still appreciates how “important and confident” the latter made him feel.
Themes
As Chase gets out of the car, Frank quickly mentions that he’s found a doctor to give Chase a “second opinion.” When Chase asks why, Frank says that this new doctor might tell him he could play football this year, giving him a shot at winning two state championships, something Frank never did. Chase, awed that Frank would suggest Chase might surpass him, decides to do it and says he’ll tell Tina. Frank orders him not to, so as not to “worry her.” Then he assures Chase that he’ll have his “old life” back soon. Chase is excited to make up with his friends and get the positive feeling of being a sports star again.
Even though one doctor has already suggested it might be dangerous for Chase to play football for a while, Frank has hunted down a “second opinion” and instructed Chase not to “worry” his mother with the information. That is, Frank is trying to get Chase back on the football field by whatever means necessary and hiding this potentially dangerous course of action from his ex-wife, who would likely object. Though Frank’s obsession with athletic success and traditional masculinity are unreasonable, Chase wants his father’s approval so badly—and wants a stable, positive identity like “star athlete” so badly—that he goes along with the dubious plan.
Themes
Chase, Aaron, and Bear play catch with a football on their way to community service, endangering other pedestrians in the process. Chase hasn’t told them about his appointment with the new doctor because he doesn’t want to get their hopes up, but he himself is hopeful. At the assisted living facility, Chase spots Shoshanna entering—and quickly throws a distracting pass, because he doesn’t want to explain to Aaron and Bear that he’s partnered with her on a project.
There is nothing inherently wrong with athletics, but the fact that Chase, Aaron, and Bear play catch in a way that endangers other pedestrians suggests that the social status athletic success confers on them makes them reckless, careless, and mean to other people. Though it isn’t yet clear why Chase doesn’t want Aaron and Bear to know that he’s working with Shoshanna, his concealment of the fact suggests that he feels a tension between resuming his old identity of sports star and pursuing his new interests, e.g. film.
Themes
It’s Chase’s third day filming Shoshanna as she interviews Mr. Solway. Though many of his stories are tragic, a lot are funny: it turns out Mr. Solway was the army’s version of a “class clown.” During one such funny story, Aaron and Bear appear in the door, looking shocked. Chase calls for an intermission in filming and goes to talk to them in the hallway. Aaron’s angry that Chase would work with Shoshanna after her family got them community service. When Chase suggests that maybe if he helps Shoshanna, the family will be “forgiving,” Aaron tells him that will never happen—but he can ditch his friends to hang out with people who hate him if he wants.
The revelation that Mr. Solway used to be the army’s “class clown” may conflict with readers’ assumptions about how a decorated war hero would act—a conflict emphasizing once again the gap between what people assume about individuals based on their reputations and how those individuals actually behave. Aaron’s anger at Chase for working with Shoshanna highlights that he values loyalty over morality: he wants Chase to be angry at Shoshanna and her family because, he, Aaron, and Bear were punished for bullying Shoshanna’s brother, even though Chase, Aaron, and Bear are absolutely guilty of the behavior in question.
Themes
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Chase feels bad, as if he’s betrayed Aaron, because he concealed the project from him and Bear. Bear goes on to complain about Chase befriending Mr. Solway in particular. When Chase protests that Mr. Solway is a fascinating “war hero,” they both give him strange looks. Eventually, Aaron says they know that. When Chase says he thought they might’ve forgotten, Aaron and Bear get defensive and storm away—though not before Bear makes a crack about Chase’s own memory. Internally, Chase berates himself for making his friends feel like “they can’t trust [him] anymore.”
Aaron is angry at Chase for not showing him and Bear irrational loyalty; Chase, who wants to think well of his friends, willfully misrecognizes Aaron’s anger about his supposed “disloyalty” as anger about Chase’s actual dishonesty, and he feels guilty for acting in a way that makes his friends feel like they “can’t [trust] him.” Meanwhile, when Chase reminds his friends that Mr. Solway is a war hero, Aaron and Bear’s insistence that of course they know this is a little strange. After all, Aaron and Bear refuse to learn even the residents’ names, referring to them as “Dumbledore” and “Dumbledora.” Aaron and Bear’s acute awareness of Mr. Solway’s war-hero status suggests that Mr. Solway’s background may be important to Aaron and Bear in a way that Chase has yet to realize or has forgotten.
Themes
When Chase goes back into Mr. Solway’s room, Shoshanna is hunting through the stuffed, messy closet. She tells Chase that she wants shots of Mr. Solway’s mementos to intersperse with footage of him being interviewed. As Mr. Solway looks on curiously, Chase notes how much livelier Mr. Solway seems; he speculates that his and Shoshanna’s visits and interviews have given Mr. Solway a new reason to engage with life after his wife’s death. In the closet, Shoshanna finds several mementos, including the case for his Medal of Honor. Yet when she opens the case, it’s empty.
Elderly Mr. Solway has a new lease on life after making friends with two eighth graders, while Chase and Shoshanna are learning a tremendous amount of history from interviewing Mr. Solway. This unlikely fact shows how rigid social hierarchies and social spheres can prevent people of disparate kinds from making friendships that would enrich their lives. The empty Medal of Honor case, meanwhile, suggests that Mr. Solway was correct in supposing that he no longer had possession of his medal; his unemotional response to losing the medal shows his lack of personal investment in his own war-hero reputation, which the medal symbolizes.
Themes
Shoshanna and Chase can’t find the medal anywhere else in the closet. Shoshanna asks when Mr. Solway last wore the medal. At first, he responds sarcastically; then he admits he never wore it, because wearing it would have felt like a strange form of bragging in front of other, less decorated veterans. His wife took it out, cleaned it, and put it back in its case every Veterans Day; he suggests that she may have lost it during her cognitive decline before her death. Chase knows that it’s hard for Mr. Solway to talk about his wife, so he and Shoshanna soon make excuses to leave him be.
Mr. Solway never wore his Medal of Honor because it felt like a form of bragging. In other words, he felt that objects like the medal—physical symbols of an excellent reputation—reinforced a social hierarchy within the category of veterans that he didn’t believe in or want to support. Mr. Solway, a cynical but empathetic “class clown” type, doesn’t really respect reputations or hierarchies.
Themes
Shoshanna suggests that it’s strange of Mr. Solway to win a Medal of Honor and then treat it with such indifference. When Chase suggests that older generations are “more modest,” Shoshanna insists it’s still strange to bury a Medal of Honor in your closet. Abruptly, Chase intuits that Mr. Solway didn’t bury the medal—someone stole the medal and buried the medal case in the closet to hide the crime. He remembers Bear taking a $20 from the confused elderly woman and Aaron going along with it for pizza money. Shoshanna asks whether Chase is all right, noting that he looks strange. Chase claims he is, but internally, he’s wondering whether he’s a bad friend for suspecting Aaron and Bear of stealing the medal—and wondering what he should do.
Chase is correct that Mr. Solway is modest, in that Mr. Solway doesn’t want to rub his war-hero reputation, symbolized by the Medal of Honor, in other people’s faces. Yet Shoshanna’s insistence that Mr. Solway’s cavalier attitude is strange triggers Chase’s realization that the medal may have been stolen. Chase has good reason to believe that Bear and Aaron may have stolen it: he’s witnessed Bear stealing from a resident at the facility before. Yet loyalty makes him worry that his reasonable suspicions render him a bad friend.
Themes
