43 pages • 1 hour read
Chris GardnerThe Pursuit of Happyness
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2006A 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 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “The World Beyond”
When Gardner goes to naval bootcamp in Orlando, he has to be clean-shaven and disciplined. He graduates from bootcamp into “A” School, a kind of medical training for the Navy, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where “Jim Crow seemed like he was alive and well anytime we stepped foot outside the base” (129). Nevertheless, in the college atmosphere of Camp Lejeune, he played football and received a medical education on the job. He realizes that his desire to see the world will have to wait as he commits to life as a navy medic. He also enters into a relationship with an older woman who gives him an appetite for adventurous sex.
At the hospital, he is trained by Lieutenant Commander Charlotte Gannon and takes the opportunity to learn as much as he can by asking questions. Gardner excels at his work and earns the title “Doc,” despite having no formal medical training. He is able to overcome patients’ racial prejudice with his competence and also to alleviate his own prejudices about people of other races:
They seemed to be really changed, not because I changed them, but because they changed themselves by challenging their own beliefs […] For the first time since I had learned that the world wasn’t all black, I really began to see people as people (133).
Distinguished by his medical flair, Gardner goes to San Francisco, to be the research assistant for heart surgeon Robert Ellis and pursue a career in medicine.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Pictures of a Life”
Gardner arrives in San Francisco, which he comes to regard as “the Paris of the Pacific,” and lives with three friends at the YMCA in the Tenderloin District (143).
With Dr. Ellis, Gardner works in a research lab that concentrates on open-heart surgery. From the outset, Gardner shows promise, despite not having a medical degree, and learns on the job from Ellis, Rip Jackson and Gary Campagna, the latter of whom alerts him about the importance of having “the right touch” for heart surgery (150). He co-authors research papers and trains interns from Ivy League medical schools. Some are receptive to his instruction, while others look down on him for not having a formal education. However, he trusts in his own worthiness and remembers Bettye Jean’s lesson that “no one else can take away your legitimacy or give you legitimacy if you don’t claim it for yourself” (153). Given the work’s experimental nature, Gardner imagines himself becoming a prime candidate for a top Ivy League medical school.
In his personal life, Gardner finds himself unable to establish a relationship, and gets sexually frustrated. He calls Sherry Dyson and they set a wedding date of June 18th, 1977.
After a tasteful wedding in Richmond, Virginia and three years of a “storybook life,” in which Sherry and Gardner move among San Francisco’s artistic and intellectual circles, Gardner is unsatisfied. He misses wildness and is unsatisfied by their predictable and quiet sex life(159). The ideal home, which he craved throughout his childhood, is, ironically, “too rigid” (163). Gardner responds by going out drinking and is unfaithful to Sherry with a mentally-unstable woman.
By 1979, Gardner decides that he will not become a doctor because changes in the medical sector mean that even a top surgeon will get paid very little. When he breaks the news to Sherry, she is distraught, as she was attached to the idea of being married to a doctor. The couple drift apart and Gardner cheats again, this time with a sexually-uninhibited dental student named Jackie.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Turned Out (an intro)”
Jackie and Gardner “made love like there was no tomorrow” and nineteen days into their affair, she gets pregnant (173). Vowing to never abandon his child, Gardner moves in with Jackie, who is unsupportive in the non-sexual parts of their relationship. She taunts him about his potential to be a good father without ever having had one himself. However, Gardner’s bond with his baby son, Christopher, is set from the moment of his birth: “When I cradled him in my arms the first time, I had a strange feeling of familiarity, as if he and I knew each other from a previous lifetime”(176).
Following the birth of his son and Jackie’s belief that he needs to be a good provider, Gardner decides to get a better-paying job and starts out on $30,000 per year as a sales representative for medical equipment. He is new to sales but thrives on the competition.
During this time, Gardner tracks down and makes contact with his biological father, Thomas Turner, a man from Monroe, Louisiana. Gardner visits him with Christopher and is welcomed by a whole family of illegitimate children. While Gardner continues to regret what might have been, he is able to let go of the “no-daddy blues”: “There was no denying that a circle had been closed. It was somewhat fractured, not a perfect circle, but gaps had been filled in my understanding of who and where I came from” (191). This sense of closure gives Gardner confidence in tackling his next challenges.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
Gardner has opted to self-actualize through experience rather than formal education, hence his acronym “OJT” (On the Job Training). From the Navy and A-school, he gains medical skills, as well as the belief and affirmation in his own competence. Working with people of all races he encounters prejudice, while recognizing the common humanity in everyone he meets.
The root of Gardner’s self-belief is Bettye Jean’s statement that no formal degree is worth the “degree from God,” which translates as the “authentic belief system, an inner sense of oneself that can never be rocked” (153). Gardner breaks the chronological trajectory of his narrative to pass this teaching onto the reader, who is addressed in the second person and encouraged to take ownership of their worth:
This is your worth, who you really are, your degree that can go with you wherever you go, that you bring with you the moment you come into a room, that can’t be manipulated or shaken. Without that sense of self, no amount of paper, no pedigree, and no credentials can make you legit. No matter what, you have to feel legit inside first (153).
While Gardner once thought that having his biological father present in his life would give him legitimacy, the actual meeting with Thomas Turner feels more like the answer to a riddle. Gardner’s actual sense of legitimacy thus stems from the intrinsic beliefs he inherited from his mother, Bettye Jean.
While Gardner’s fear of becoming like Freddie means that he has never become dependent on alcohol or drugs, he enjoys the highs that adventurous sex provides. This is evident in his delight in sexually-uninhibited women such as the older woman he meets at Camp Lejeune, who ties him up; the mentally-unstable woman who fellates him in San Francisco; and Jackie, with whom he hurries “headlong as a door opened into a world that promised absolute sexual joys I couldn’t even begin to imagine” (171). The latter two affairs sabotage his marriage to Sherry Dyson, whom he initially thought was his dream woman.
In retrospect, Gardner reflects that life within the institution of marriage and the stability and predictability it affords, were unsuited to him at this stage in his life. The mistake he made about rushing into marriage ultimately stemmed from a lack of self-knowledge. While Gardner throws off his plan for an ordered life with Shelley as he embarks on a fiery affair with Jackie, a sense of discipline returns when his Christopher is born. Gardner determines to provide for him.
