47 pages • 1 hour read
Terry TruemanStuck In Neutral
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Shawn speaks about his father, who he believes is trying to kill him. He remembers the week before, when his father stopped by. Shawn was in his wheelchair on the porch, and his mom and dad were talking. His mom went to answer the phone, leaving Shawn alone with his father for the sixth time since his dad left ten years before. His dad tries small talk with him but laughs sadly at the absurdity of it, then asks, “‘You’re not getting any of this, are you, Shawn’” (19).
A crow lands on a telephone pole, and Shawn’s dad starts yelling at it, assuming that if he (Shawn’s dad) weren’t there, the crow would try to peck out Shawn’s eyes. His dad picks up his mom’s glass of iced tea and throws it at the crow. The crow flies away. His dad worries aloud what would have happened if he hadn’t been there as Shawn is helpless, wondering “’Maybe you’d be better off if I ended your pain”’ (21). His dad’s question makes Shawn feel nervous, but his mom comes out and she and his dad talk without mentioning the crow or his mom’s missing iced tea. Shawn says his dad does love him but is freaked out by his condition and his seizures.
Shawn has had grand mal seizures six-twelve times per day since birth. When he was younger, they were incredibly painful, “as if it’s twisting and turning your brain all up and down and inside out” (22). Back when his dad lived with them, he would hold Shawn during his seizures as he screamed and flailed, but he couldn’t handle Shawn being in pain, and, “He still can’t. But I think it’s getting worse. It’s like he’s going to explode” (22-23). Shawn reflects on his father’s fame, and how he is both a great and terrible person who is famous for a poem he wrote about himself and Shawn.
Chapter 5 Summary
Shawn reflects on the beginning of his father’s poem, which he loves. He goes on to talk about the rest of the poem, which “tells about how Dad was never able to deal with my condition; with the ‘pain’ he thinks I experience during my seizures” (25). Shawn reflects about how his father believes he is a vegetable as well as the absurdity of calling someone a vegetable. On some level, Shawn believes that his father pities him because he’ll never be able to have all of the great experiences his father has, but Shawn pities his father because his fame relies on his father being a victim.
Shawn remembers when his father read the poem publicly two years ago at a mansion, which was after his father had read it to his mother and they cried. At the public reading, his mom looked gorgeous, but Shawn laments that she dressed him ridiculously, making him look “like Bing-Bong the Idiot Puppet-Boy” and parking him in the kitchen during the reading. Everyone cried and applauded, and Shawn jerked in his chair involuntarily, which elicited the pity of a waiter sitting next to him. Shawn wished he could be the waiter, and his mom wheeled him into the living room, so everyone could applaud him, which irritated Shawn. However, Shawn did enjoy a large-breasted woman leaning over him. The evening passed with strangers speaking about him as though he wasn’t there, and Shawn felt awful: “to be known for who I’ve never been by a roomful of strangers was the worst” (29). He does, however, enjoy being famous and likes his dad’s poem. Shawn thinks of the irony in being the “country’s most famous retard” (29) while also having total recall in memory. Shawn reflects on his dad’s fame—as a whiner, victim, and deadbeat—and that his dad doesn’t know how much he loves his seizures.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
These two chapters present the externality of Shawn’s world, in which every person who comes into contact with him believes him to be an idiot. Based on the previous three chapters, the audience of course knows that this is far from the case. In fact, the audience recognizes the incredible abilities that Shawn possesses, which render his memories like newly-lived experiences. In this way, the author constructs dramatic irony between the audience and Shawn on the one hand and the rest of the characters in the novel on the other. Shawn and the audience know what no other characters do: that Shawn is far from an idiot, but rather a deeply intelligent individual who remembers every aspect of his life. In fact, Shawn finds irony—as does the audience—in the fact that he is the most famous idiot in America, courtesy of his father’s poem, when in fact both he and the audience know that he is anything but an idiot. This shared knowledge distances the audience from the other characters within the novel while forcing the audience to empathize with Shawn. Although the audience may find Shawn’s life hard to comprehend, the author makes the audience understand him by linking Shawn to the audience via this shared knowledge.
Similarly, Shawn repeatedly feels like an outsider, a fly on the wall at the life events of other people, a casual observer. This loneliness inherent within observation is also another way that the author allows the audience to empathize with Shawn. Every reader has been in the position where he or she either could not or chose not to participate in something, and instead watched from the sidelines. In this way, Shawn’s life almost becomes a television show, as he cannot really interact with the people around him—although sometimes, they interact with him, breaking the fourth wall, as it were—but rather conceptualizes them as characters within the drama of his life.
These two chapters also present Shawn’s first characterization of his father. The audience sees Sydney as Shawn sees him, a complicated man for whom Shawn holds mixed feelings. Chapter Five also includes Sydney’s poem concerning Shawn, and the audience understands just how poorly his father understands Shawn. This impresses upon the audience the importance of communication in determining external identity—the person who others see you as. Communication and interaction are key for others to develop an understanding of a person. Otherwise, the person becomes two-dimensional, a paper drawing instead of a fully-realized being.
