56 pages • 1 hour read
Mike RoseLives On The Boundary
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Entering the Conversation”
Rose’s third chapter, “Entering the Conversation,” focuses on his four years as an undergraduate at Loyola Marymount University. After MacFarland helps get him admitted, Rose moves into a small apartment with one of his Mercy High classmates, John Connor, who was also starting at Loyola in the fall. The two choose classes based on MacFarland’s recommendations, and they immediately find themselves out of their depth. Rose—who was already only provisionally admitted—is floundering, but he does not reach out for help because he “felt stupid for telling them I was…well—stupid” (43). Instead, Rose “fortified” himself “with defiance,” and he spends his free time scoffing at what he and John dub “the Loyola man,” or the preppy, well-to-do, run-of-the-mill Loyola student (44).
Rose is in a precarious academic position by the end of his freshman year. His grades are close to dipping below a C average, which would violate the terms of his provisional acceptance and get him expelled from school. Rose’s problems are also compounded by deep personal tragedy—Lou Minton, the man who had helped care for Rose’s ailing father and had become a member of Rose’s family—commits suicide after having an argument with Rose’s mother. Luckily for Rose, he had kept in touch with MacFarland, who reaches out to his old connections at Loyola. One of his former professors and the then-current chair of the English Department, Dr. Frank Carothers, agrees to help create some special courses for Rose and his fellow Mercy High classmates that would serve as guided tutorials. Rose thinks of Lou’s death and MacFarland’s intervention as pivotal turning points in his academic career.
When he returns to Loyola for his sophomore year, Rose finds himself under the tutelage of four mentors. His philosophy professor, Don Johnson, helps him learn to read difficult material, which gives him confidence in his own abilities. Dr. Carothers offers Rose a glimpse of a “very different […] world far removed from his old house trailer” in South L.A., and Dr. Ted Erlandson helps Rose learn how to write better through gentle guidance, not grammar drills (53). Finally, Father Clint Albertson shows Rose how to study English, make sound arguments, and “enter the dialogue” of academia (58).
With the help and guidance of his professors, Rose goes from nearly failing out of college his freshman year to becoming an editor for El Playano, Loyola’s literary magazine, and winning Loyola’s Blenkiron Award for Excellence in English his senior year. His professors also take note of his improvement, and they encourage Rose to apply for fellowships to graduate school. While Rose does not win any of Loyola’s prestigious fellowships, he does earn “full support for three years of graduate study” at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), which would have been unfathomable to Rose just a few years earlier (65).
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Poem Is a Substitute for Love”
Rose is now in his first year in graduate school at UCLA, and unlike the scary transition from high school to Loyola, Rose is excited for his new adventure. He and his roommate from Loyola move to Los Angeles, and Rose jumps into his studies as an English grad student with both energy and trepidation. Even with the hands-on help he received at Loyola, Rose still feels unprepared, and he has to start “keeping vocabulary lists” to understand lectures. Rose’s life becomes studying at the library, memorizing dates, and trying to survive the “fierce competitiveness” of his department (72).
Although Rose’s fellowship pays for his tuition, he takes a job as a maintenance man for his apartment complex to cover the rest of his expenses. Rose’s work often leads him to uncover small baubles and notes left behind by past tenants, and the stories behind these objects spark his imagination. He begins to write poetry in his free time, and he shares these poems with his close friends. Rose encloses the poems in letters, and his friends offer long-distance encouragement and feedback.
Even though Rose is doing well in school—he says he “got one B; the rest were A’s, and I got to know several professors”—he ends his first year feeling unsettled (74). He begins considering dropping out of graduate school and teaching junior college, but when he asks his Loyola professors for advice, they encourage him to reconsider. Instead of leaving UCLA entirely, he decides to take a one-year leave of absence from his fellowship program to study psychology instead. He studies the basics, but it is humanistic psychology Rose enjoys most. Humanistic psychology encourages psychologists and psychiatrists to understand people as unique human beings and develop treatment plans that are suited to the individual, not the diagnosis. This new knowledge helps shift Rose’s perspective on life, and it introduces him to “a discourse of possibility” rather than just “images of defeat” (79). Perhaps even more importantly, Rose begins to understand “the remarkable complexity of human action and the difficulty of attributing causality to any one condition or event,” which became “valuable” knowledge when he starts teaching later (80).
Rose’s increasing interest in writing poetry, coupled with his experience as both an English graduate student and a psychology student, leads him to one harsh truth: he no longer wants to be in graduate school. He decides to resign his fellowship and leave UCLA in favor of joining the Teacher Corps, which places “teacher interns in poverty-area schools” (83). Rose’s decision is not an easy one. After signing his resignation papers—which Rose notes only took a few minutes—he walks back to his apartment in a daze, lays down in his bed, and cries.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
This section follows Rose as he becomes a college student, first at Loyola Marymount and then a graduate student at UCLA. He uses this part of the narrative to help readers understand two of Lives on the Boundary’s central ideas: that overcoming the damage done by vocational education programs is difficult, and that the only way to help those students struggling in the system is through a hands-on approach to education.
The ramifications of Rose’s time in Mercy High’s vocational education stick with him, despite his admission to Loyola Marymount. In many ways, the consequences become even more dire: unlike Mr. MacFarland, who was well aware of Rose’s situation and accommodated him through reading groups and extra instruction, Rose’s professors are not aware of his history. He is treated like any other “Loyola man” and expected to perform on the same level (44). As the difficulty of the coursework ramps up, Rose struggles through classes like Introductory Psychology and General Biology, and Rose finds he is totally “out of [his] league” (43). He feels like an outsider because in many ways, he is. Unlike his classmates, many of whom come from well-off families and good preparatory high schools, Rose has to limp forward with his cobbled-together education. This emphasizes Rose’s difference, not just in terms of his educational preparedness, but in regards to his life experiences as well. His classmates make him realize “the impotence […] and isolation, and […] deep sadness” of his life growing up in South L.A. (44). Rose is isolated both academically and socially Loyola. Rose uses this part of his story to show that for vocational students, the “education gap” is only one part of the problem that is exacerbated by pressures like race and poverty.
Rose recognizes that by the end of his freshman year, he was well on his way to becoming a statistic—his grades were poor, he “drifted through the required courses,” and he “fortified” himself with “defiance” in the face of his own deficiencies (43). In all likelihood, he would have failed out of LMU in the next year. It is only through the intervention of MacFarland—who sees more in Rose than Rose sees in himself—and the guidance of his professors that Rose is able to turn the ship around. MacFarland calls in favors to ensure Rose will get the one-on-one attention he needs, and Rose’s professors treat him with kindness and dignity, despite his struggles. They coach him through what it means to be a student, not just a warm body in the classroom, and Rose slowly gains “confidence that if [he] stayed with material long enough and kept asking questions, [he] would get it” (51). While Rose does start to gain traction in school, his progress is not about quantifiable success. Rather, through this sort of one-on-one attention, Rose realizes that knowledge is “empowering” and unlocks the real power of education (46).
Thus, Rose offers a blueprint for what education should be, especially when it comes to teaching remedial students. Through his own story, Rose shows readers that students like him are often the victim of circumstance, not ability. At best, vocational education programs fail to consider the problem of low performance from a holistic level and ignore how outside factors affect how students learn. At their worst, these programs punish students for their socioeconomic status. In other words, it is easier for the system to pin the problem on the individual (and label them “remedial”) than it is to tackle the outside issues (like poverty) that plague vocational students like Rose. Through his own educational experiences, Rose shows how tailored, hands-on instruction is a critical part of educational reform. Rose’s professors are able to help him because they understand his unique issues and create solutions that work for him, not just the lowest common denominator. Ultimately, this creates a learning environment where vocational students can succeed; in doing so, this creates the kind of environment where everyone benefits. As Rose explains, his Loyola professors “gave [him] the best sort of liberal education, the kind longed for” not just in vocational education programs, but throughout the humanities (58).
