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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
That Saturday, Chase is filming a preseason scrimmage between his old football team, the Hurricanes, and another school’s team. The football field evokes no memories or emotions in him. He thinks about how much he loved filming with Brendan and how video club feels like “the place for” him. Someone yells “Champ!” at Chase. It’s Frank, on the bleachers with Helene. He tells Chase that he attends each one of the Hurricanes’ games and that Helene is beginning to like them. Chase notes that Helene is playing with dolls and completely ignoring the game.
Amnesiac Chase likes Brendan and loves video club—which suggests that, prior to his accident, he failed to pursue more friendships and different activities due to social pressure, not due to his inherent personality. When Frank calls Chase “Champ,” it suggests that Frank narrowly defines Chase according to his athletic prowess and—specifically—the state football championship his team won. Adult Frank’s obsession with a middle-school football team and his refusal to recognize that his four-year-old daughter Helene likes dolls, not sports, show his overinvestment in his adolescent athletic career and in stereotypical macho pursuits.
Themes
As the scrimmage progresses, Frank gets angrier and angrier, criticizing the players and telling Chase how much better he was than they are. Chase realizes he understands the game even if he can’t remember playing it; he also notices that the Hurricanes aren’t that good and feels surprised they won a championship. When he comments to Frank that the players are “out of sync,” Frank vehemently agrees and slaps Chase too hard on his injured shoulder. Chase grasps that he craves Frank’s “approval.”
Frank’s angry responses to a middle-school football scrimmage—one in which his son isn’t even playing—again show his overinvestment in athletics and in stereotypical masculine pursuits. When he hits Chase on his injured shoulder, it shows his reckless indifference to his son’s physical wellbeing. Chase’s realization that he craves Frank’s “approval” hints that some of Chase’s cruel, macho, bullying behavior may have derived from his relationship with Frank.
Themes
Helene, done playing with her dolls, asks Frank whether they can leave. When Frank says no dismissively, Chase offers to shoot a movie of her dolls. Helene starts reassembling her dollhouse. Meanwhile, the Hurricanes throw an interception, and Frank blows up, demanding to know why Chase is recording the game rather than playing. Sensing that Frank will react badly if he explains about yearbook, Chase blurts that he wants to play—and he will, as soon as the doctor says it’s fine. Frank, appeased, asserts: “We’re Ambrose men. We’re the doers. Other people take pictures of us!”
Frank ignores the interests and preferences of his daughter, which again emphasizes his overinvestment in masculinity and contempt for femininity. Chase fails to explain that he likes filming because he thinks his father will react badly, illustrating how Frank’s obsession with football may have steered Chase away from exploring non-athletic interests in the past. Frank’s brag that “other people take pictures” of “Ambrose men,” not vice versa, suggests that he doesn’t value film because he thinks of it as an insufficiently active or masculine pursuit.
Themes
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Chase chats about football with Frank but simultaneously films the doll story that Helene is puppeteering for the camera. When he shows her the footage, she “squeals” happily—which triggers in Chase a memory of Helene squealing while holding back tears after he tore off her beloved teddy bear’s head. Chase announces that he’s remembered something. Frank asserts that Chase is fine and will be playing again soon. Chase focuses on the game again, realizes that he knows how to play better than the guys on the field, and realizes: “I am a player”—an assertion that helps him ignore what he’s just remembered about how he’s treated Helene.
Chase can talk about football with Frank and help Helene with dolls simultaneously, which indicates that he doesn’t need to choose between stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine pursuits: he’s capable of both. Yet when entertaining Helene triggers in him a memory of bullying her, he chooses to focus on football and define himself as a “player” to distract himself from his previous bad behavior, a mental move that suggests he may have used his identity as a football star to repress his own misgivings about his cruel, macho, bullying behavior.
Themes
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