56 pages • 1 hour read
Neal Shusterman, Eric ElfmanTesla's Attic
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Fate or Opportunity
For Nick, Caitlin, and the rest of the kids struggling with the Tesla devices, coincidences keep popping up until they begin to look like fate. The students realize that, though the events surrounding the strange pieces of technology might be foreordained, their responses to those challenges aren’t fated but theirs to command.
Caitlin’s favorite color, a shade of green, appears on a flyer that announces Nick’s garage sale, draws her interest, and pulls her into the Tesla adventure: “She took it as coincidence, though she would eventually come to doubt the very concept of coincidence” (13). Later, when she piles up the devices with the intent of setting them on fire, she and Nick notice that the machines are designed to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. By then, she knows these things were long ago prefigured to go together. It’s no coincidence.
The devices have an uncanny way of finding exactly the right person to oversee them. Petula’s love of photography makes her the perfect host for the box camera that takes pictures of the future; Vince loves the macabre and dead things, and he gets hold of the one thing—the wet-cell battery—that can revive them. Caitlin’s interest in art projects and her concern for her social position fit perfectly with the tape recorder that records people’s real thoughts: The results force her to rethink her aims and inspire her vision.
These events impose on the children a new perspective about fate. Things that seem predetermined aren’t fully defined. Petula’s camera foretells future events, but “if she knew what that future was, she had every power in the world to create it” (170). Sometimes a thing will happen, but it can do so in positive ways if people intervene appropriately.
When Danny’s baseball clove causes an asteroid to speed toward Earth, Nick sees it as an invitation rather than a threat, and he gets his dad to swing the Tesla bat at the oncoming giant ball of copper, which sends it into orbit around the world to create a dynamo and produce free electric power. Even the unpreventable death of Vince, instigated by the Accelerati, proves futile when Nick and Caitlin figure out that they can revive him with his battery.
The great lesson for all of them is that preordained events aren’t always disasters: With heart and ingenuity, they become opportunities.
The Advantage of Being the Underdog
The Accelerati seem to have all the advantages. They’re secretive, brilliant, vastly well-funded, much more experienced, and deadly in earnest. What they don’t possess, though, are the things Nick and his friends have: the Tesla devices and how to use them. This gives the kids an enormous advantage that all the money and expertise in the world can’t match.
Racking his brain to find something he can use against the murderous Accelerati, Nick arrives at a simple truth: “For whatever reason, the Accelerati needed Nick—which put him at a distinct advantage, because he definitely did not need them” (179). He has the freedom to do nearly anything, partly because he doesn’t yet know what he’ll do and partly because he can think up surprises. The Accelerati, with all their power, can’t always predict his next move.
Nick’s encounter with the Tesla machines gives him another significant asset. Re-using the truth tea after Jorgenson makes the mistake of throwing it away, Nick and Caitlin scour Nick’s mind for his precise memories of the people who came to the garage sale and the things they bought. With that information, Nick finds and re-acquires several of the items. This helps him and Caitlin to construct most of the mysterious Tesla device assemblage, whose purpose no one yet knows.
The Accelerati are especially interested in something called the Far Range Energy Emitter. Nick’s surprising use of the Tesla bat saves the world from the Felicity Bonk asteroid and puts the giant rock into orbit, where it provides free energy to everyone, which frustrates the Accelerati’s greedy desire to keep it to themselves.
The secret society tries to keep Mr. Svedberg’s knowledge from Nick’s team by killing him, but the kids thwart the Accelerati by using their knowledge of the revivifying battery to interview the dead jeweler and learn about Jorgenson’s plans. The society’s attempt to terrorize Nick by tricking him into killing Vince backfires when Nick and Caitlin decide to bring Vince back to life.
The arrogance of their antagonists fails to defeat the students because they care about each other enough to stand up to the bullies, overcome each of the obstacles the Accelerati constructs, and employ their youthful genius to outthink their self-satisfied opponents. Though they’re just kids and should be expected to quail and run, they instead use their brains and determination to make full use of the advantages they have and outwit the enemy.
The Painful Truth that Makes Things Better
Middle school often puts students into socially painful situations. Most children try to overcome their various humiliations by pretending to themselves that they’re doing better than it seems. For Nick’s friends, encounters with the Tesla devices offer them a chance to see themselves truthfully, and, though this hurts, it also frees them to see beyond their petty concerns to their unique abilities, which they then use to help each other. In the process, learn that they’re good people with lots to offer.
Caitlin’s embarrassing fiasco with the tape recorder initially seems to spell doom for her ambition to be one of the most popular students. Nick points out that it’s more important to have good friends who stick by her than many shallow fans who bolt at the first sign of problems. Popularity can burn up quickly, like a brush fire that roasts the underbrush but leaves behind big trees: “And the ones who stick by you […]? They’re the healthy trees” (74). Caitlin focuses thereafter on the friends who count, including Nick, and her purpose shifts to making a difference rather than putting on a performance.
Petula wants Nick for herself, but when she takes a future picture of her romantic life, it shows her kissing Mitch. Trying to get that uncomfortable fate out of the way, she kisses him and finds she likes it. Her involvement with the Tesla camera teaches her to look beyond what she expects to what might be better opportunities for her. The camera also helps her learn to use her intelligence and imagination to turn predetermined fates into ingenious opportunities.
Vince wants friends but expects that his morbid fascinations will drive pals away. His Tesla battery, though, draws to him the perfect companions—Nick, Caitlin, and Mitch—and he finds that his macabre hobbies prove helpful in a good cause. The battery enables them to glean critical information about the evil Accelerati. It later validates his preoccupations by giving his friends’ the tool to revive him after he’s murdered.
Mitch’s encounter with the Shut Up ‘n Listen device teaches him that his father’s prison sentence is unfair and that he and his family aren’t doomed to live in shame. He envisions a new purpose for himself, to vindicate his dad and get him out of prison. Near the novel’s end, the device also works best when he listens to it first and then speaks, a valuable lesson for the talkative Mitch.
The Tesla devices present harsh truths to each of them. Still, the lessons they learn give them new purpose and new abilities. They begin to take on the challenges and promises of a more adult, more confident outlook.
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