105 pages • 3 hours read
Gordon KormanUngifted
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Statue of Atlas
In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan, one of the generation of gods who preceded and fought a war against the Olympians. After the Olympians’ victory, Zeus punished Atlas by forcing him to hold up the sky for eternity. In artistic renderings, Atlas is typically depicted holding a globe that represents the celestial spheres.
In Ungifted, a statue of Atlas holding a globe stands on Hardcastle’s campus. A company called Classical Bronze Foundries, which eventually went bankrupt, created the statue. Its design is flawed; a single bolt connects the more than 400-pound globe to Atlas’s shoulders. When Donovan smashes a tree branch against the statue, the bolt collapses, causing the globe to roll down a hill and crash into the school gym during a basketball game. The school’s insurance company, Parthenon Insurance Group, initially resists paying for repairs due to the design flaw. Atlas serves a symbolic function. The flawed and broken Atlas statue symbolizes Donovan’s humbling. After the accident and his lucky escape from Dr. Shultz, he feels “the presence of that bent-over Atlas,” and resists the impulse to engage in further pranks. He worries in particular about the consequences in regard to his parents, who are going through challenging times.
In addition, repetition of elements from ancient Greece—Atlas, Classical Bronze, Parthenon Insurance—evoke a recurring motif whose roots lie in ancient Greek thought. Ancient Athenian tragedy, which drew its plots from mythological stories, explored the idea that one’s greatest gift could also be one’s fatal flaw. The flaw and the gift, therefore, were two sides of a single coin. This is evident in Donovan and the gifted kids as well. Donovan’s impulse can cause trouble, but it also brings his ASD classmates to life, awakening them to the world beyond academics. Similarly, Noah, Abigail, and Chloe’s intelligence makes them gifted, but as Chloe notes, being gifted is not a gift because it exacts a price. Students are so focused on academics that they miss out on experiencing life. Further, in Athenian tragedies such as Sophocles’s Antigone, tragedy ensues because two opposing sides fail to find balance between their viewpoints. The growth arc of Ungifted’s characters—especially Donovan, Noah, and Chloe—moves them toward achieving balance between thought and impulse, academic and social.
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is a novel by L. Frank Baum originally published in 1900, and is also a 1939 film. In the story, a tornado spirits a girl, Dorothy, from Kanas to the fantastical realm of Oz, but Dorothy wants to go home where she belongs. She discovers that Oz is home to a wizard who grants wishes. On her journey to the see the wizard, she teams up with three other creatures who have wishes they would like Oz to grant them—a scarecrow, who wants a brain; a tin man, who wants a heart; and a lion, who wants courage. Eventually, the group discovers that the wizard is a con-artist who puts on an impressive show but has no special powers. However, the wizard advises the foursome that all is not lost. They have the power to make their wishes come true by believing in themselves. They want external validation, but what they really need is internal transformation.
In Chapter 16, Ms. Bevelaqua draws on The Wizard of Oz as a way to disparage Donovan. She compares him to the Scarecrow, “who needs a brain; what he gets instead is a diploma” (106). Ms. Bevelaqua’s simplistic parallel glosses over The Wizard of Oz’s message about self-empowerment, instead focusing on the literal contrast between brain and diploma. In The Wizard of Oz, Scarecrow does receive a diploma, but it has symbolic resonance in the story that Ms. Bevelaqua overlooks.
Characters in Ungifted parallel those of The Wizard of Oz. Ms. Bevelaqua resembles the wicked witch who insists on exacting vengeance. She does not lose her life, as the witch does, but she does lose Noah, her star pupil, when he intentionally gets himself expelled using the idea Ms. Bevelaqua suggests to him. Donovan echoes the Scarecrow in wishing he had more intelligence, initially because he needs to hide from Dr. Shultz but ultimately because he discovers connection, purpose, and belonging at ASD. Tin Man the robot represents the class and what they need—to come alive, to be humanized—and which they discover through Donovan. Chloe, in particular, resonates with Tin Man because she is so conscious of her desire to feel human; she describes Donovan as the “heart and soul” of ASD’s robotics team and class and credits him with bringing them to life (123). Noah’s journey in the novel resonates with that of the lion in The Wizard of Oz. Noah does not trust that he can be fully human because of his intelligence and the expectations his family and school have of him. However, when he discovers that he is human and capable of making mistakes, he gains “the confidence to do what needed to be done” (160).
Ancestry.com
In the first sentence of Ungifted, Donovan announces, “I want a refund from ancestry.com” (5). He has investigated his ancestors through the site, hoping to find a rational explanation for his tendency to do irrational things. He hopes to find an ancestor who also acted rashly, without forethought or self-control and with no discernible end other than satisfying his impulse in the moment. Donovan does not find answers among his ancestors, and this speaks to the limits of human knowledge and predictability. The past does not predict the future, and the future is not always a commentary on the past.
Though Donovan does not find an explanation for his impulsiveness, he does discover an ancestor who survived the Titanic’s sinking, James Donovan. James becomes Donovan’s inspiration for persevering through difficult times, an emotional life preserver. Some outcomes lie outside of Donovan’s control. For example, he does not meet the requirements for the gifted program, which he cannot change. He also benefits from luck, especially when Abigail hacks into his retest to answer the questions for him. Still, James represents a beacon of hope that seemingly impossible odds can sometimes be overcome. By drawing on ancestry as inspiration rather than blueprint, Ungifted emphasizes the importance of personal agency.
The Titanic
The Titanic was, at the time that it was built (1909-1911), the largest luxury ocean liner of its kind. Its name derives from Greek mythology, a reference to the Titans. The ship was advertised as practically unsinkable, and faith in its unsinkability caused its designers to include far fewer lifeboats than were needed to evacuate the ship’s 2,200+ passengers and crew in the event of an emergency. Infamously, the ship sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912. It remains one of maritime history’s worst disasters, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A disproportionate number of men died in the accident owing to the ethic of that time that dictated women and children should be evacuated first. Steerage passengers made up a majority of the sinking’s victims because evacuations proceeded according to class: first, second, then steerage. Consequently, the survival of Donovan’s ancestor, James Donovan, who was plucked from the Atlantic’s icy waters after the sinking, represents improbable good fortune—a positive outcome against all odds.
Donovan recalls James several times throughout the novel, typically when he needs a jolt of courage or encouragement. When Donovan realizes during his test that he does not understand the question, let alone the answers, he thinks of “the icy water that had surrounded James Donovan in 1912, and the suction of the sinking Titanic pulling him under” (104). Though “James had resisted,” Donovan does not have the right answers and accepts that he will sink. At the moment he accepts that he will fail, he realizes an invisible hand is directing his mouse to the correct answers. Donovan’s sudden reversal of fate highlights the Titanic’s two-pronged symbolic value within Ungifted. The massive ship created a tremendous suction as it went down, which James somehow managed to resist, suggesting both will and luck. In addition, the Titanic represents human arrogance (as it has historically), the belief that humans can create perfection, whether that perfection is an unsinkable ship, a screwup-free system (Dr. Shultz), or the belief that one knows literally everything (Noah). The Titanic sank. Screwups squeezed through Dr. Shultz’ system, and Noah incorrectly identifies the sex of Katie’s baby.
An additional parallel between Donovan and his ancestor is that both become witnesses to human error. James testified in Washington at the senate hearing investigating the Titanic’s sinking. Donovan submits testimony to the insurance company investigating the Atlas statue’s collapse. Both the Titanic and Atlas bore design flaws.
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