47 pages • 1 hour read
Terry TruemanStuck In Neutral
Terry TruemanFiction | 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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Shawn introduces himself, saying his situation is like a good news-bad news joke. The good news: he loves everything about living in Seattle, including the rain and being close to the science center and sports arenas as well as living in the “former unofficial Grunge Capital of the universe” (1-2). He can also remember everything he hears perfectly with total recall, which he believes no one else can do.
Shawn remembers his gift starting when he was three or four—at first only bits and pieces—but by the time he was five “everything I heard just stayed in my head” (2). He remembers strangers’ conversations and the sounds of the outside world intertwined like a tape recorder. He thinks it is pretty incredible, although he does not want to sound arrogant. He thinks about how he doesn’t like it when people talk about other people being special; he believes that everyone is special, but that everyone also has bad parts about themselves, too.
Shawn remembers how his dad left because he couldn’t handle Shawn’s condition: “Everybody who knows me…anybody who even gets near me would tell you I’m dumb as a rock” (4). Shawn talks about the school tests he must endure, which he can’t complete; every year, the shrink tells his mom he has the mental capacity of a 3-month-old child. Shawn’s parents, along with everyone else, believes his brain doesn’t work, which Shawn says, “is only partially true” (5).
Chapter 2 Summary
Shawn discloses that he has cerebral palsy, a condition that happened after a blood vessel burst in his brain when he was born. He cannot control any of his muscles, including speech and bowel movements, even though he knows the answers to questions, for example, about George Washington. His body acts entirely separately from his mind; he blinks and makes noises but he can’t control any of it: “I can’t control any of my muscles and I know that I never will” (7). He has to wait for things as simple as his swallowing reflex to kick in when he wants chocolate cake, for example.
Even though Cindy taught him to read when he was younger—as more of a game than anything else because she didn’t believe he could actually learn—he can’t force his eyes to focus on anything; he just occasionally manages to soak up what he’s reading before his eyes decide to move somewhere else. Even though he found learning to read easy, no one knows he can. He listens to everything, learning, because he doesn’t have anything else better to do. He remembers everything, which makes him pretty smart.
However, it is difficult for him to understand some things, as he mostly relies on his hearing to gain knowledge. For example, it took Shawn a while to understand that euthanasia was not the same thing as youth-in-Asia (he had to see the word written out), and he still doesn’t know how a car wash works. He reflects on how difficult his condition is for his family, but he tries not to think about it too much because it depresses him. His mom talks to him like he’s a baby. He finds his situation frustrating, but “bitching doesn’t change anything” (12). He’s also pretty sure his dad is planning on killing him.
Chapter 3 Summary
Shawn reflects on his encounter with death, which happened when his mom drove him and Cindy to school one morning. A dog got hit by a car in front of them, and his mom pulled over the car. Cindy got out and cradled the dog’s head in her lap and Shawn locked eyes with the dog as it died. They drove back to the house, and Cindy told her mom that she didn’t believe in anything after death, and they started crying. Shawn felt sick, and thought about how he can’t really experience things: “The thing is my life has always been just kind of in my head. If you think about it, I haven’t really got a body…[h]earing things, or hearing about things, is different from actually experiencing them” (16).
Shawn believes what Cindy says, that death is like “nothing, a big fat nothing. It looked to me like when you die, you just, I don’t know, your life just disappears” (17). It makes Shawn sick to think that his dad might kill him.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In the first three chapters, the audience is introduced the story’s protagonist, Shawn. The audience learns about his life, both about his rare gift as well as how the outside world sees him. Here, the audience first witnesses the bifurcation evident throughout the narrative in terms of Shawn’s identity: outwardly, Shawn seems to have no identity, merely existing as a kind of toy for his family members, like Cindy, who play make-believe with him by teaching him how to read. Here, there is a split between Shawn’s reality and the reality of other people in the novel: they do not believe he is capable of learning, but still teach him anyway. This leads the audience to Shawn’s inward identity—he is actually something of a genius, being able to recall everything he’s ever sensed. These first three chapters focus on Shawn’s inward identity; the audience understands Shawn’s thoughts on many topics, including death.
Shawn’s thought process also leads the audience to acknowledge the major conflict within the story: Shawn’s belief that his father is going to kill him. Through Shawn’s encounter with death, the audience understands how Shawn feels disassociated from his body; his identity is almost entirely separate from his body, again reiterating the inward and outward bifurcation of the narrative. This differentiation, then, is confused when Shawn sees the dog die, as the dog’s spirit leaves its body and its body subsequently shuts down. This forces Shawn to realize that even though he feels separate from his body in terms of his identity, the two are necessarily intertwined. This then makes Shawn worry about the fact that his father might be planning on killing him, as he comes to believe that there will be nothing after death.
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