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 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: "A Fresh Start"
Chick’s mother makes him eggs. He finally manages to express his shock and amazement that she is there with him aloud, but she seems not to hear him, instead urging him to eat the nourishing food she has made. She asks him hopefully if he will spend the day with her, and Chick agrees to.
We learn that rather than announcing to their children that they were getting a divorce, Chick’s father simply disappeared, leaving his children to deal with the confusion and guilt brought about by his absence. Though his parents would fight frequently before the divorce, they also had happy moments, and Chick remembers their beauty and charisma: “that’s how I saw my parents. They fought, but they danced” (45). Chick’s mother decides they all need a fresh start with the new school year, and that they should all start new projects. Chick, however, sullenly announces that he just wants to play baseball, with “the first of a million scowling faces” (46).
Chapter 9 Summary: "A Meal Together"
Chick finds himself becoming accustomed to his mother’s presence: “at some point, maybe when my mother said, ‘Eat,’ I physically surrendered to the idea of being there. I did what my mother told me” (47). He eats the scrambled eggs with chives that his mother has prepared, and is overcome with the memory of all the other times he found himself doing the exact same thing in the exact same place. She brushes aside his questions about why she is there by saying that it is time for them to leave, and that he should get his coat on. The chapter ends with a supportive note from his mother from just before he got his tonsils removed.
Chapter 10 Summary: "Chick’s Family After the Divorce"
Chick remembers how their neighbors’ attitudes toward him and his sister changed after his father left, because “small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes” (49). Though he noticed that adults were nicer to him and his sister, he also sees how his mother was blamed for her divorce. When some nuns from the local church give him and his sister food, assuming that their mother is struggling to feed them, his mother becomes angry and throws the food away. He begins to understand the changes in social position that come with his mother’s new identity as a divorcée as it becomes clear that many men in their town now see her as romantically available. His mother also senses the community’s discomfort with the fact of her divorce, and resents their unspoken assumptions.
Chick’s discomfort deepens when he sees a group of older boys spying on his mother through her bedroom window as she is changing clothes. When he realizes what is going on, he beats them up, though they are older and stronger than him: “I don’t think I ever felt fury like that, not before and not since” (52).
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
These three chapters deal with Chick’s reaction to his parents’ divorce and the early years of his adolescence. In Chapter 8, Chick’s memory of his parents dancing together at a wedding is both beautiful and painful; he is proud that his parents are the most beautiful adults on the dance floor, but the memory haunts him as the moment seems further and further away and his father’s permanent absence is impending. When he lets go of this memory, he both begins to accept the reality of his parents’ divorce and begins to grow up himself.
Chick’s experience of the often-painful transition to adolescence is paralleled here by a series of uncomfortable discoveries about his neighbors and the underlying beliefs that hold their small community together, all of which center on his mother. As Chick develops an identity separate from that of his parents and family, he discovers that his community is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of his mother, a single woman in her thirties, having an identity outside of her marriage. This discovery is even more unwelcome because it underscores the fact that his family has changed. As he is forced to confront these assumptions about his mother’s intentions and behavior, he feels threatened by the implication that she herself might change, and, in the process, that Chick might lose his most important link to the family life he misses.
He is still more uncomfortable when he finds that his mother is the object of sexual attention of men of all ages. He is torn between feeling a responsibility to stand up for her against the unfair and invasive actions of their neighbors and wanting to pull away from her, both to establish independence and to avoid being ostracized. For Chick, the essence of adulthood is taking on the responsibility of standing up for those he cares about, but he has not yet fully come to terms with this responsibility.
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By Mitch Albom
