If I Ever Get Out of Here

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-13

Part 2, Chapters 14-17

Part 3, Chapters 18-20

Part 3, Chapters 21-23

Part 3, Chapters 24-26

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 2, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Moon and Stars”

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Venus and Mars”

It’s Christmas. Albert is very excited for Lewis to open his present. It’s the Wings album Venus and Mars. Lewis loves the present. He and Albert get to talking about what Lewis and Carson did with the car. This also leads into a short discussion about George. Albert takes the opportunity to teach Lewis a lesson: Albert likens the reservation to Mars and George’s life to Venus.

Lewis’ brother, Zach, picks Lewis up and takes him to George’s house. Once there, Lewis shows George his two gifts. The first one is an album from Queen. Lewis plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” for George first before moving on to the Wings album. There is a song on the record titled “You’re My Best Friend.” Lewis finds it way too cheesy to come out and say those words to George, so he’s hoping maybe the song will communicate what he can’t put into words. Afterward, George and Lewis go to the neighbors’ where George is babysitting for the evening. George shows Lewis around the house. He and Lewis share a surreptitious round of cherry schnapps. Then, George shows Lewis where the stack of girly magazines is located. Lewis acts like it’s something special, though he’s seen this sort of stuff before, from his uncle Albert’s stash. They then listen to some more music and George talks to Lewis about Stacey because George likes Stacey and wants Lewis’ opinion about asking her out. As midnight approaches, George and Lewis shoot pool while they wait for the neighbors to return.

Once, back at George’s house, the two get ready for bed. Lewis doesn’t have any PJ’s, which makes him conscious of his family’s poverty. They talk about this and that, and the conversation turns to why George wanted to be friends with Lewis in the first place. George admits that it had something to do with his dad’s past. George tells Lewis that even though he is a US citizen, until moving to New York, he had never actually lived in the US, and so being able to connect to America via his dad was helpful. Lewis wants to know a little bit more about Mr. Haddonfield’s past with Native Americans, but George doesn’t know much. However, he does admit to knowing that his [George’s] grandparents used to work at a school on a reservation. Lewis wonders if it was a boarding school, but he doesn’t ask George directly. One reason he doesn’t is because he is afraid of the answer. Lewis is reminded of all the awful things his grandparents told him about the old boarding schools. One of the mottos of the schools was “Kill the Indian but save the man” (108). Lewis does eventually ask George if they worked at a boarding school, but George doesn’t know what kind of school it was. With a torrent of emotions, Lewis makes an excuse to go home early. Lewis now feels that he doesn’t exist in either world, not on the reservation and not in George’s world.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Fixing a Hole”

Later that day, in the evening, Lewis asks Albert if there are any more boarding schools. Albert tells him that they are all gone now. Lewis asks Albert if he has ever worn pajamas. Albert answers, “Pajamas? Like the Brady Bunch? Hell, no” (113). George and Lewis don’t see or talk to one another for the last few days of break, and so Lewis is surprised when he goes back to school and finds that George and Stacey are a pair now. There is a little talk of trying to hang out together, but Lewis still makes excuses why George cannot come over and visit. With George spending more time with Stacey, Lewis begins to feel lonely and isolated. As a way of filling the void, he starts taking guitar lessons from the Bug. The Bug insists that Lewis learn on a full-sized guitar and not a miniature one like Carson has. Carson takes lessons from the Bug too. There is still some animosity between the two since Lewis walked away that day after the episode with the car.

Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “No Words”

Spring break is over now and Lewis doesn’t make it into Choraliers. Instead, he must take the generic music class. George and Stacey make it into Choraliers, however. Around this time, Lewis spots a bulletin for a job at the school and applies. He hopes with the money to get himself a guitar someday. Lewis finally gets a chance to eat with George at lunch since he and Stacey seem to be cool at the moment. After lunch, Lewis watches as George and Stacey sit quietly together and negotiate something.

The school year is winding down and is again marked with an increase in fire drills. While standing outside during one of the drills, Lewis is accosted by the school bully, Evan, who hits him with a switch. Lewis uses expletives to refer to the bully, which only makes the situation worse. As the students are heading back inside, Evan jumps Lewis from behind. He tries to fight back. Evan’s friend breaks it up, only because he doesn’t want to get in trouble. They all move toward their homerooms.

Summer bothers Lewis about looking disheveled. George asks him what happened. Lewis tells him and asks him why he wasn’t there to help. George explains to Lewis that if George’s dad ever caught George fighting at school, then he would ground George forever. Lewis and George both learn that Evan’s last name is Reiniger, and that he has a carte blanc do pretty much do as he wishes because Evan’s father is an affluent businessman who donates large sums to the school.

After school lets out, Lewis tries to find out what is going on between Stacey and George, but he doesn’t receive much of an answer. Lewis tells George about the job he is applying for. The talk of possible manual labor leads Lewis to segue into talks of racism and how people already have a certain opinion of him simply because he is a Native American. George finds Lewis’ talk hyperbolic. George then switches the conversation to the Wings concert in Toronto and invites Lewis along. He tells him that Stacey and Rose are good friends and that Rose can get them all tickets. George will loan Lewis $10 for the ticket, and Lewis can pay him back later.

Back home, Lewis tells Albert about the concert. Albert gives Lewis the money for the tickets and tells Lewis never to be indebted to a white man. When George picks up the tickets, Rose explains that Summer will be attending the concert, and that Rose has one ticket left; George refuses. Lewis explains to George that it is because Summer believes all the racist rhetoric about the reservation and doesn’t want him to go with them. Lewis remarks to himself just how far apart Venus and Mars are from one another.

Part 2, Chapters 8-10 Analysis

Chapter 8 is named after a Wings album and a short song about two friends waiting for a concert together. While this aspect of the song has no implications for Chapter 8, it does foreshadow the events in Chapter 10 when George invites Lewis to the Wings concert in Toronto. Three lines in the song are pertinent to all three chapters: “A good friend of mine, follows the stars / Venus and Mars / Are alright tonight” (cf. “Venus and Mars,” Paul McCartney and Wings: Venus and Mars). Even though George’s relationship with Stacey is affecting his friendship with Lewis, everything is and will continue to be all right between the two boys.

The album artwork for Venus and Mars is of a red and yellow billiard ball next to one another against a black background. The colors represent the two planets, and the fact that George and Lewis play billiards while George is babysitting is not a coincidence. The game links the two characters with the album, supplying more evidence that the contents of the album and song hold clues to the development of the boys’ friendship.

The significance for the title of Chapter 9 is apropos in that Lewis’ feelings of loneliness are compounded when George begins dating Stacey. For Lewis to “fill the hole” left by his friend’s absence, he begins to learn to play the guitar with an older Native American male, the Bug. Not only does learning to play the guitar reinforce the importance of music in Lewis’ life as a means of escape from his problems and providing him with a sense of refuge, it also reinforces one of the lines in the titular song: “And it really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong I’m right / Where I belong” (cf. “Fixing a Hole,” The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). One of the “holes” that Lewis needs fixed in his life is the acceptance and catharsis of the realization that where he belongs in life is there on the reservation with his people and family.

Chapter 10’s title comes from another love song written by Paul McCartney for his band, Wings. The song’s lyrics have little bearing on the chapter or book, but the title is an imaginary piece of dialogue one could imagine Lewis saying or thinking when he finds out that Rose and Summer have excluded him from the concert simply because of their racist prejudice toward him and his people.

Concerning the Venus and Mars motif, there is a third “planet” that is not named but which reappears in Chapter 8. George’s mother is German, which represents another type of “Other” than the typical “white” person with whom Lewis is familiar, but this Other transitions from simply another type of white person to another “planet.” George mentions that he, too, doesn’t have a sense of belonging anywhere. He may be an American, but he recognizes Germany as his home and even states that “Deutsch really is my first language, and Deutschland the home of most of my memories” (107). Unlike Lewis who can barely formulate full sentences in his peoples’ native tongue, George recognizes German as his mother tongue and not English, which he speaks fluently, lending one to understand that his German must be even better if it’s his first language. Not only does this separate George physically from the other white students at school, but also linguistically, which is something that not even Lewis faces.