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Chapter 27: 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
As Shoshanna marches toward the assisted living facility, she contemplates the “mix of good and bad” in Chase and worries that she can never unsay some of the false, cruel things she’s said about him. She, Joel, Brendan, and Kimberly barrel into Mr. Solway’s room. Mr. Solway comments sarcastically on all the strangers Shoshanna has ushered into his space. When she asks whether he’s seen Chase, Mr. Solway says that neither she nor Chase has visited for days. Guiltily, Shoshanna explains that she and Chase had a fight and were avoiding each other. Amused, Mr. Solway comments he’s glad he’s not young anymore.
Chase has been trying to become a better person, but that doesn’t mean that he’s a better person already: he still defaults to solving conflicts with physical violence sometimes, and he’s still too eager for his father’s dubiously valuable approval. Shoshanna recognizes this “mix of good and bad” in Chase but feels guilty for criticizing him too harshly anyway. Her guilt suggests that she believes you should judge people by who they’re trying to become, not just by who they are and who they’ve been.
Themes
Loud noises fill the hall. When Shoshanna goes to investigate, she sees Chase sprinting down the hall, holding a vacuum cleaner. Then he falls, and she sees that Aaron knocked him down by tugging on the cleaner’s trailing cord. Bear jumps on Chase and starts hitting him. Shoshanna yells in anger—as does Kimberly, who has joined her in the doorway. The girls rush to yank Bear off Chase. When Bear shoves them into a wall, Brendan comes to their defense, throwing passionate though inept punches at Bear. Bear punches Brendan in the face, knocking him to the floor, but Brendan jumps up and moves to continue fighting. Chase and Mr. Solway—who uses his wheelchair like a battering ram—join the action.
Shoshanna, Kimberly, Brendan, and even Mr. Solway rush to defend Chase and each other from Aaron and Bear’s physical attacks, even though Aaron and Bear are large, aggressive football players. Their eagerness to defend each other highlights their bravery and their earned loyalty to one another; it also suggests that the video-club kids have finally had enough of Aaron and Bear’s bullying.
Themes
Shoshanna sees Joel coming down the hall with Nurse Duncan and some security guards; she admires her brother’s intelligence at going for backup. The arrival of authority figures breaks up the fight. Bear blames the situation on Chase. When Nurse Duncan demands to know what, exactly, the situation is, Chase opens the vacuum bag onto the floor and picks out Mr. Solway’s Medal of Honor. He explains, miserably, that he stole it before his amnesia. When Brendan tries to reassure him that that was the “old” Chase, Chase denies that there are two versions of himself.
While Shoshanna, Kimberly, and Brendan’s willingness to defend each other and Chase is brave, it isn’t very smart of them to try to fight two large football players. The novel suggests that Joel’s approach—quickly finding adult authority figures—is a better response to adolescent bullying. When Chase denies that the “old” and “new” version of him are different people, he publicly takes responsibility for stealing the medal even though he can’t remember the theft—and, in so doing, asserts that he earned his bad reputation even if that reputation is no longer accurate. The medal, for Chase, thus represents both his well-earned bad reputation and the gap between that reputation and who he is now.
Themes
Mr. Solway asks whether Aaron and Bear were “in on it.” Chase claims he acted alone; he fell off the roof while hiding the medal, so he supposes he “got what [he] deserved.” Mr. Solway looks stunned, Joel and Shoshanna are struck dumb, Brendan’s jaw is swelling shut, Kimberly’s confused, and Aaron and Bear don’t want to say anything to incriminate themselves—so everyone stands there in silence until Nurse Duncan announces that she’s calling the police.
Chase is lying or at least omitting relevant truths when he claims he acted alone in stealing the medal: Aaron and Bear certainly were “in on it.” It isn’t clear whether he lies because he feels residual loyalty to his old friends or because he believes he’s the guiltiest party; given his anger at Aaron and Bear and his self-loathing claim that he “deserved” his head injury, the latter seems more likely. In saying that he “deserved” the accident that caused his amnesia, Chase is suggesting that he deserved to lose his memories and identity because he stole Mr. Solway’s identity, that is, the medal that symbolized the reputation as a hero that he earned during the Korean War (1950—1953).
Themes
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