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Chapter 6: Brendan Espinoza
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
Brendan’s car wash video puts the video club in a state of admiration and hilarity—until they see Chase listed as a coproducer in the credits. Shoshanna, furious, asks whether Brendan wanted to get hurt. Brendan retorts that Chase was a great camera man, superior to anyone in video club. When Shoshanna says, “You didn’t!”, Brendan admits that he did, in fact, invite Chase to join the club. The whole club starts shouting out stories about Chase, Aaron, and Bear bullying them. Brendan asserts that they bullied him most of all but that the amnesia has changed Chase: “maybe he forgot what a jerk he was.”
In the last scene, Brendan seemed worried that Chase’s tendency to bully uncool kids was an unchanging characteristic, as instinctive as a shark’s tendency to eat fish. Yet now he argues that amnesia might have made Chase “forg[e]t what a jerk he was”—an argument suggesting that memory and experience are as important to shaping an individual’s personality as that individual’s baseline mental and emotional makeup.
Themes
Shoshanna, furious, points out that Joel left the school because of Chase and that no one in the club wants Chase to join. The club’s faculty advisor, Ms. DeLeo, reminds them that student clubs can’t exclude students—Chase can join if he wants. A moment later, Chase enters. He notices the hostility in the room, but when Brendan assures him that their video was well received, he asks what video club does other than film wild behavior. Shoshanna, miffed, thinks that an idiot like Chase would only notice Brendan’s “moronic stunts” and not his intelligence or potential. She thinks: “The simplest way to make the world a better place would be to kick out Chase Ambrose.”
Shoshanna assumes that Chase is ignoring Brendan’s good qualities and focusing on his “moronic stunts.” Readers know that isn’t true: Chase has already praised Brendan as “special”—and he thought the tricycle stunt was hilarious, not moronic. Shoshanna’s incorrect interpretation of Chase’s question shows how her anger and her loyalty to Joel are warping her judgment. Her desire to exclude Chase from video club and “kick [him] out” of the “world,” meanwhile, show that social hierarchies can work both ways: while the kids at the top of the hierarchy bully those below, the kids at the bottom may develop excessively negative judgments of those at the top and try to prevent them from participating in “nerdy” activities.
Themes
The faculty advisor Ms. DeLeo tells Chase that some club members will enter the National Video Journalism Contest. Brendan, laughing, says that only Shoshanna will be doing that. Shoshanna informs Brendan that if he weren’t so obsessed with YouTube, he might realize that the contest guidelines for this year—to interview a senior citizen with fascinating stories—are really interesting. Ms. DeLeo also tells Chase that the club produces the “video yearbook” and suggests he should profile the school’s sports teams. Chase points out that he doesn’t know the school’s athletes anymore, though they know him. Shoshanna realizes that Chase really does have amnesia, wonders whether he’s changed, and concludes that even if his memories are gone, his personality must be the same.
Dr. Fitzwallace told Chase that he alerted the school’s faculty to Chase’s amnesia—yet the video-club faculty advisor, Ms. DeLeo, still stereotypes Chase and assumes he'll want to interview other athletes. Similarly, Shoshanna assumes that Chase’s pre-accident personality must have resulted solely from who he is “deep down,” not from the memories and experiences he no longer has access to. This negative stereotyping of Chase and refusal to admit he might change shows how adults and “uncool” kids can prop up social hierarchies and cliques in the same way that popular kids and bullies do.
Themes
That evening, Shoshanna messages Joel to fill him in on Chase’s amnesia. When Joel says he feels weird about his bully not remembering the bullying, Shoshanna predicts that Chase will remember soon—or Bear and Aaron will fill him in. When Joel expresses surprise at how much she seems to know about Chase, she avoids explaining that Chase has joined video club—the fact that the club kids are tolerating Chase’s presence will only make Joel feel terrible.
When Shoshanna chooses not to tell Joel that Chase has joined video club, it implies that she views their “toleration” of Chase as disloyal to Joel, whom Chase bullied. This view is unfair—the video-club kids can’t control who joins the club, as their faculty advisor explained—and shows how a fixation on loyalty is distorting Shoshanna’s reasoning.
Themes
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Shoshanna implies that she knows about Chase’s amnesia only because the whole school is gossiping about it. When Joel bemoans the school’s idiocy, she asks whether Melton is an improvement—and Joel emphatically denies it. When Shoshanna points out that Joel felt wretched back at home, Joel retorts that by Melton standards he’s mediocre at piano, whereas back home he was “special.” Shoshanna feels another burst of anger toward Chase.
Joel’s claim that he was “special” at his original school implies that different social spheres within the larger social hierarchy respect different values: among the nerdy and uncool kids at his original school, Joel was valued for his musical talent, even as the cool kids bullied him. At Melton, everyone is excellent at music, so Joel no longer feels valued—he misses the status his musical talent gave him among his nerdy peers back home, even though the kids at the top of the hierarchy bullied him.
Themes
