46 pages • 1 hour read
Mitch AlbomFor One More Day
Fiction | Novel | AdultA 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 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: "Chick Returns to His Old House"
Chick and his sister, Roberta, have maintained their home in Pepperville Beach, keeping it as it was when they were children. Chick is not surprised when he comes home to find the house smelling of “a faint, sweet smell of carpet cleaner” (31). He is more surprised, however, to find the fridge full of food and a dirty dish soaking in the sink. Chick hears his mother’s voice calling his name from the second floor.
When he was six, Chick’s mother made him a mummy costume for a Halloween parade. When it starts to rain, the costume, which is mostly made of toilet paper, begins to fall apart and he is left standing in his pajamas. He remembers with a wince how, as the other children mocked him, he yelled at his mother, “‘You ruined my life!’” (32).
Chick hides on the back porch, terrified by what he has heard. When his mother comes out on the porch to find him, he accepts that, for whatever reason, she is there with him now, and he gives her a hug “as if I’d never let her go” (34). The chapter ends with a memory from when Chick was eight: his mother explains how an echo works, a metaphor for his current situation.
Chapter 6 Summary: "The Melody Changes"
Chick remembers his mother’s love for the song “This Could Be the Start of Something Big,” and big band music in general. The memory is bittersweet, since it reminds him both of his mother’s upbeat personality and his father’s coldness to her. He remembers how, after his father left, his mother never again played the music she had loved: “I figured she didn’t want to be reminded of how the ‘something big’ had backfired” (37).
Chapter 7 Summary: "The Encounter Inside of the House"
As Chick is sitting at the kitchen table with his mother, who is cleaning his self-inflicted wounds with antiseptic, he remembers a time in grade school when his sister and he carved their names into the kitchen table. Though both parents were angry, his mother was able to see the humor in the situation - they had only managed to carve part of their names, and they all laugh when his sister suggests they finish, “‘so at least we spell our names right’” (38).
His mother was careful to encourage his intellectual growth as a child, and was quick to rush to his defense. He remembers how, when a librarian told him that the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was too hard for him, his mother insisted that he be allowed to check it out nonetheless. His father was perpetually unsatisfied with his mother’s attempts to cook Italian food, and once compelled Chick to agree with him that his mother’s baked ziti was inedible. These examples contrast his mother’s willingness to stand up for Chick with his feeling that he failed to do the same for her.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
These three chapters switch the focus away from the day Chick and his mother spend together to expand on plot developments of the parallel story of Chick’s past. Chapter 5, where Chick enters and explores his childhood home, uses the theme of memory to transition to this focus on the past - his memories of the house blend with its strangely lived-in appearance and confuse Chick. The boundary between present and past in turn begins to blur— an instance where Chick’s perceptions influence the narrative’s flow of time. The theme of food is introduced here as well, as a bewildered Chick looks over the familiar contents of the cabinets and fridge, finally finding a dirty dish just before he hears his mother’s voice. The dish, evidence that someone who otherwise seems to be a ghost has eaten a meal, is symbolic of the fact that the chapters that follow will take place in a transitional space between present and past, and between reality and imagination.
These chapters also illustrate the depth and strength of the bond between Chick and his mother, and that bond’s roots in the time preceding his parents’ divorce. His father’s cold, critical behavior emphasizes his mother’s role as defender of her children, both from their father and from the judgments and expectations of the outside world. The episode in Chapter 7, when Chick rejects his mother’s cooking under duress from his father, begins to show the origins of his shame as an adult over his treatment of his mother, and echo the imagery of the food and dirty plate Chick finds in his mother’s kitchen. This repetition ultimately strengthens the connection between food and motherly love. When Chick allows his father to pressure Chick into rejecting his mother’s food, a parallel rejection of her love is implied. With this episode, Chick begins to take responsibility for what he sees as his choice to value his father’s love over his mother’s, a choice that proves destructive.
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By Mitch Albom
