35 pages • 1 hour read
Gary SotoTaking Sides
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1991A 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 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
It is Friday, which means no basketball practice, but when Lincoln’s mom tells him they are going out for dinner that night with Roy, Lincoln lies, saying that practice might go late. The mention of Roy makes Lincoln think of his father, and Lincoln asks his mother about him. Lincoln learns that his father is still a parole officer and that Lincoln looks like him—“strong,” his mother says. Lincoln opens the geography textbook to avoid further discussion of his father; he lands on the page with the camel driver.
Lincoln goes to school with James; as they talk, he is surprised to learn the latter’s father is a surveyor rather than a doctor or lawyer. After algebra, Lincoln’s teacher asks him about his declining grades, and Lincoln can only say that he finds this school “different.” Instead of eating lunch, Lincoln goes looking for Monica, unsure what he’ll say when he finds her. She is journaling in the library. She tells him she told her father she wanted to quit aikido, but he said she was spoiled, referencing the field labor he performed as a boy. Lincoln says, “Yeah, I know the rap. My mom did her share of field work in the valley” (41). Lincoln takes a leap of faith and asks Monica on a date to play basketball. She accepts and Lincoln “walk[s] to class in a daze” (42).
Chapter 5 Summary
Lincoln takes the bus to the Mission District after Tony calls him and tells him he needs to come without revealing why. Before they get off the phone, Lincoln reminds Tony about the $2 Tony still owes him from the old 49ers bet.
When Lincoln arrives in the Mission District, everything feels familiar to him. He remembers the sights and sounds and is at ease. Tony’s mother is on the telephone with an encyclopedia salesperson when Lincoln arrives: “That’s weird, Lincoln thought. Telephone salespeople were hitting on poor people, too” (46). Once she’s off the phone, Tony’s mother showers Lincoln with hugs and love. Tony finally reveals that he has discovered Lincoln’s stolen TV; he is sure it is the same one because of the crayon marks on the side. Lincoln wants to see for himself.
Chapter 6 Summary
Lincoln and Tony are outside a thrift shop kicking at the ground and making small talk. They’re nervously waiting to go into the store. Their plan is to tell the shop owner that they are looking for forks. Lincoln reminds Tony to keep his temper, but Tony is convinced the old man stole the TV: “Wake up, Linc. This guy’s a crook. You been livin’ with white folks too long” (53). Lincoln objects to this characterization of him, but they patch things up. Before walking in the store, Tony picks a dime off the ground, telling Lincoln to count it toward the $2. They make the bet double or nothing and flip a coin; Lincoln wins.
Inside the store, Tony is rough and aggressive with the shop owner, who can barely get out of his chair and can’t hear when Tony speaks to him. Lincoln sees the man is sick and couldn’t have stolen the TV, so he leaves the store and walks angrily away from Tony. Lincoln walks until he is in front of his old school, where he sees the past two years flash before his eyes. He jumps the school fence, walks the open-air halls, and opens his ex-girlfriend, Vicky’s, locker. Inside, he finds the camel driver in the same geography book. He leaves the school grounds and takes a bus back to Sycamore.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapters 4-6 further clarify who the characters are, what their motivations are, and what the conflict is. At the beginning of Chapter 4, Lincoln is still clinging to the idea that if he could just get back to Franklin and the Mission District, his life would be what it was, which he views as the ideal. This notion is so deep-seated that he struggles to find anything positive about himself or his environment, meeting almost every change with immediate disdain.
Lincoln’s relationship with Roy is an example. Learning of the dinner his mother has planned, Lincoln reflects on his disdain for his mother’s boyfriend: “[He] didn’t like Roy, who was shorter than his mother. He drove a baby-blue BMW—a girl’s color, Lincoln thought—and was […] pudgy and pale” (35). While Soto makes it clear that Lincoln’s mother has arranged this dinner in the hopes Lincoln will warm to Roy, Lincoln either doesn’t recognize or doesn’t care about her wishes; instead, he denies the new and clings to his past as his identity. In doing so, he does exactly what he believes everyone in Sycamore is doing to him: He makes judgments based on external appearances and false preconceptions.
As a new social connection, Monica seems like an exception to this rule, but Lincoln is drawn to her in large part because she looks like him, went to Franklin, and shares his Hispanic American roots. Their conversation about their parents’ history as agricultural workers exemplifies this dynamic. Her comments about her father resonate with Lincoln, who responds in kind. This conversation goes well for him, and she accepts his offer for a date, but their relationship is based largely on Lincoln’s attachment to his past, which Monica in his mind embodies.
By presenting Lincoln with what he wants—a chance to return to the Mission District, if only for a visit—Chapter 5 marks a turning point in the narrative. Initially, it seems as though the visit will confirm Lincoln in his opinions. Tony’s mother showers Lincoln with love, as she always has, and he and Tony fall right back into their old routine. Lincoln is comfortable and happy being back where he think he belongs. In Chapter 6, however, Lincoln encounters change exactly where he expects familiarity: his friendship with Tony. Tony’s actions before and during the two enter the thrift shop feel wrong to Lincoln, and their ensuing fight shows Lincoln returning “home” is not what he thought it would be. He now sees himself and his life there from a different vantage point; whether he likes it or not, life in Sycamore has changed him.
Tony’s return to his old school further underscores the gap that separates him from his old life, developing themes not only of Identity as Multifaceted but also of The Gains and Losses of Growing Up. The visit underscores the distance that separates Lincoln from his former, younger self. Lincoln on some level understands this—the moment he takes to “breathe[] in the years gone by” implies recognition that the era has passed (61)—but he remains reluctant to embrace change despite its inevitability. When he opens Vicky’s locker, he is greeted by the camel driver: a symbol of something new and foreign he must learn about. Lincoln, however, enjoys the image because it connects him to Vicky and thus his past: “It was like being back together, still side by side as they did their homework” (). Nevertheless, the final sentence of Chapter 6, which has Lincoln “[taking] a rattling bus back home to Sycamore” (62), underscores that the past is the past: Sycamore, for better or for worse, is now Lincoln’s “home.”
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By Gary Soto
