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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Red Ferrari 308
The trigger of Gardner’s life-changing conversation with Bob Bridges and his decision to become a stockbroker is the “gorgeous, red Ferrari 308 […] slowly circling” the parking lot of San Francisco General Hospital (1). The Ferrari, a luxurious Italian sportcar, is an international symbol of affluence and worldly success. Gardner’s admiration of the car indicates that he is mentally prepared for a meteoric rise in living standards.
To Gardner, as well as being seductive and appealing to the parts of him that are a “red-blooded American male,” the car “symbolizes all that I lacked while growing up—freedom, escape, options” (3). This is especially alluring at a point in his life when he is stuck in a dysfunctional relationship with Jackie and the responsibilities of new fatherhood. His one-time dream of travelling and seeing the world has been postponed for the foreseeable future. But this encounter with the Ferrari “would crystallize in (his) memory—almost into a mythological moment that I could return to and visit in the present tense whenever I wanted or needed its message” (3). Thus, the image of freedom sustains him when he finds himself stuck in homelessness and has difficulty making ends meet.
The Music of Miles Davis
A key motif in the autobiography is the music of Miles Davis and its improvisatory, mood-altering qualities. The first time Gardner hears a record of Davis playing “Round Midnight,” he is about eight years old and at a grown-up party. Gardner watches the atmosphere change from “hot and happening, boisterous and loud” to “more intimate, more cool, more fluid,” as the guests absorb “the mastery of his trumpet playing, the haunting tone that crept under [Gardner’s] skin”(68).
In the short term, Gardner seeks to imitate Davis by learning to play the trumpet. However, Davis’ more profound effect on Gardner is the emotional and transformational impact of his music. The motif of Davis’s music comes up every time Gardner is faced with a life-altering opportunity. In his mind’s eye, he hears the “cool horn” of Davis’s music when he spots the red Ferrari that will change his destiny (3). He also experiences the thrill of a Davis tune when he goes to visit the trading floor for the first time and gets intoxicated by the energy. Throughout Gardner’s life, his musical hero is there to guide the instinct that he is approaching something promising or lucrative.
The Sense of Smell
The sense of smell is important in Gardner’s autobiography as it indicates whether he is safe or in danger, is about to be uplifted or humiliated. A sense close to the body, smell prefigures a person’s instincts and is one’s natural way of knowing, without having to resort to logic, sight or touch.
An example of a promising smell is Bettye Jean’s “clean, warm, good smell that wraps around [Gardener] like a Superman cape, making [him] feel strong, special and loved”(15).The vagaries of this smell, one that is not “perfume or anything floral and spicy,” but somehow blended in to both the appetizing candy that Bettye Jean makes and her personal beauty, testify to its instinctual, elusive nature (15). Gardner feels both loved and in the presence of magical powers when he is surrounded by this scent. Later in the narrative, when his mother is sent to prison and he is loading clothes into a dryer at a relative’s house, he catches a drift of the scent and is reminded of his mother’s loving, empowering nature and everything he is currently missing in his life.
Conversely, Gardner’s humiliation when he is raped by a man who was ostensibly going to purchase his hustled goods is accompanied by a bad smell: “His smell overwhelms. Funky. Rancid even, inhuman” (101). The smell encapsulates and foreshadows the vicious harm that is coming to him, and, later, when he finds the man and knocks him out with a cinder block, he recognizes the man by his scent.
