39 pages • 1 hour read
Antwone Quenton FisherFinding Fish
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act 2: “The Rain that Falls”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: “1976 to 1977”
Antwone encounters racial prejudice while living at the center during which Antwone tells Mrs. Brown, one of the staff, that she will read about him one day in relation to something positive he has done. Homelessness follows a period living at the Children’s Center.
Next, Antwone attends George Junior Republic reform center for boys across the border in a beautiful part of Pennsylvania. He meets Bill Ward, who will become a mentor. Bill advises him to have a plan for when he turns eighteen and is no longer under state care. Antwone dreams of his former friends. Mrs. Ewart from the children’s center offers Antwone a home, but Antwone feels too unworthy of accepting.
Antwone attends a dance at a neighboring girls’ school. He begins to be less shy but decides he won’t go out late, drink, or take drugs so he can avoid incarceration and accidental parenthood. Antwone is given his birth certificate. With some effort, Antwone gains the marks he needs to pass high school before he turns 18. He starts independent life at a YMCA in Cleveland. Some of the other lodgers are sexually threatening toward Antwone, and in need of money, he becomes employed by a criminal called Butch. After making a mistake, Antwone is badly beaten by Butch and learns that his work has facilitated child trafficking.
“1976 to 1977” Analysis
Only just surviving the institutionalized life that he has acclimated to, Antwone is unprepared for the independence that adult life will offer him. Though he is emotionally wounded, his evolution is nonetheless catalyzed by his experiences:
hiding from layers of hurt and anger about everything that had happened, as I spun my own cocoon from the threads of things I imagined for myself that would prove Mrs. Pickett wrong. Without knowing I had begun my own transformation, that one desire became my reason to live (235).
Along with his own troubled childhood, Antwone’s expression of guilt over briefly assisting in child trafficking may belies his subsequent volunteer work and the optimistic dedication of his memoir to children.
Summary: “1977”
Antwone’s eighteenth birthday passes without him realizing, and while he is homeless. Antwone bumps into old friends and stays on his friend Jessie’s couch for two weeks. Jessie is shot, and Antwone returns to being homeless. He runs into his half-sister, Flo, who is living with Mercy in Bedford Heights, a local suburb. Antwone calls Mercy, and she invites him over. Dwight lives there, too, and the foster siblings are reunited for a few months. Antwone goes to a Dramatics concert with his high school crush, Freda. Shortly afterward, Antwone joins the marines.
“1977” Analysis
Antwone talks about developing an “extraterrestrial vision” while he is homeless. His sense of alienation and disorientation at this time recall that of his early childhood, when he imagined that Mrs. Pickett was an alien. While homelessness is an extremely distressing experience, it equips Antwone with the “otherworldly eyes” that will help him envision his autobiography and Hollywood screenplays so clearly: “even after you leave, and no matter how your own circumstances improve, you will continue to see the world that lies in shadows just beyond the gates; and you understand how easy it is to be pushed back out” (233-34).
