82 pages • 2 hours read
Jason ReynoldsWhen I Was the Greatest
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. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Ali, Noodles, and Needles are again on the stoop. Congregants are leaving a nearby church, and Noodles is waiting for Tasha, who he thinks is his girlfriend. She eventually joins the boys but tells them she has to help her older brother Mo with his party. Mo, also called MoMo, throws legendary parties, but they are extremely exclusive, and invites are hard to come by. Ali recalls a sparring partner who claimed to have gone to one of these parties. He says there was a DJ with a complete system, dancers like strippers, a bar with a bartender, and a room “in case somebody gets lucky” (56).
MoMo is popular in the neighborhood but the black sheep in his family. He is an unemployed high school dropout and suspected drug dealer, although some think he makes his earnings by throwing parties. In contrast, Tasha gets top grades, his mother works as a college professor, and his father, who wears a suit and carries a briefcase to work, is employed in the city, though Ali is unsure where specifically. The parents own “a whole brownstone” (56) that Tasha says her family has held for three quarters of a century. Ali likes that she never shames them about only renting their apartments.
Ali and Noodles are desperate to go to the party, and after some persuasion, Tasha agrees to let them come on one condition: Needles must come too. This is a deal breaker for Noodles. Tasha thinks this will be enough to stop the boys from coming, but Ali calls her bluff and accepts. Bemused, Tasha leaves Ali to deal with an angry Noodles.
Chapter 5 Summary
Ali is very excited about going to the party, but Noodles is subdued, worried that Needles and his Tourette’s syndrome will ruin their night. Needles protests that he will not start “spazzing,” but Noodles, unpersuaded, makes a weak excuse to get away. He takes Ali upstairs to his apartment to talk about the party without his brother.
The air in the apartment is stale, paint is peeling off the walls, and there are no pictures of the boys or their family—nothing that makes an apartment feel like a home. Surprisingly, Noodles’s mother Ms. Janice is home. Ali gets a peek into her room and spots her smoking on a mattress on the floor. Ali works hard to persuade Noodles that even with Tourette’s, Needles is not that different from them and won’t cause a fuss at the party. Noodles eventually agrees to let his brother join them. Ms. Janice leaves in a rush for a waiting car wearing “skintight pants” and carrying a purse and an overnight bag with her. She tells Noodles she is going to work and, when downstairs, passes Needles without acknowledgement. Ali has never asked what she does but observes that Noodles seems displeased about it.
Back outside, the boys combine their scant money and head to the barbershop only to find it closed. A neighborhood jack-of-all-trades, Black, appears and offers to give Noodles and Needles haircuts within their budget. Ali has braids and doesn’t need a trim. With some hesitation, they ride with Black to his apartment. There, Noodles mocks Black’s place and refuses to go first, but Needles is happy to take the first turn. When it’s complete, Needles, who never smiles, beams at his sharp haircut.
After Noodles has his turn, he is critical of Black’s work and refuses to pay. Neither Ali nor Needles can find issue with the haircut, but Noodles becomes increasingly enraged and insulting toward Black. Ali tries and fails to calm him. The situation escalates, and Black’s girlfriend Kim tells them to go. Noodles crumples and throws $5, just enough money for Needles’s haircut, on the floor. Disappointed, Needles picks up the money and hands it to Black. Ali, having extra money because he anticipated something like this happening, leaves another $5 for Black. After leaving, Ali tells Noodles off for his behavior and gets a snipe about withholding money in return. Ali’s patience with this behavior begins to wear thin.
Chapter 6 Summary
Ali and Noodles are in Ali’s kitchen brainstorming ideas to get outfits for the party. Needles refused an invite to join them, choosing instead to stay on the stoop. Ali understands this because Noodles is very cruel to his brother and is generally difficult to be around. Ali knows there is no legal way to get money for clothes, but Noodles doesn’t mind the illegal route. He proposes robbing a bodega, purse snatching, lying to the church, and asking Doris to “get” stuff from her job at a store. He also suggests approaching a drug dealer for work. Ali thinks these ideas are absurd and ignores him.
As Ali watches Needles on the stoop, his frustration with the way Noodles treats him grows. He asks why Noodles is so cruel to Needles. Noodles gets defensive and angry, saying that Ali has no place telling him what to do and that Ali doesn’t know what life for them is really like. Ali admits he does not but defends Needles, pointing out that Noodles is the only person in the neighborhood who treats Needles differently. Noodles squares up to fight, but Ali can see that the threat is hollow. Still, neither backs down. The unexpected arrival of Ali’s father John interrupts the exchange. After a quick catchup, Ali asks John for clothes for him and the brothers. He figures his father will clothes since he steals them for money. John asks if Doris knows, and Ali answers truthfully, saying she does not. John agrees to provide clothes for all three boys in exchange for text messages when they arrive and leave the party.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
When presented with an opportunity to go to a notorious neighborhood party, Noodles and Ali jump at the chance. Their friend Tasha attaches bringing Needles as a condition because she expects it will deter them from going and allow her to avoid having to refuse them. She does this because she knows Noodles’s feelings about his brother’s condition—a signal that Noodles’s embarrassment about Needles is obvious to those around him. Noodles does not make these feelings difficult to decipher, especially when he uses derogatory words to describe the tics.
Noodles does show compassion in going upstairs to talk about Needles and the party in private. Unlike previous mentions of poverty, which were largely allusions, Ali’s visit to Noodles’s apartment in Chapter 5 is a thorough and painful survey of destitution. The apartment is both dirty and empty. The assumption, then, is that they cannot afford the appropriate treatment for Needles’s condition if they cannot even afford basic home supplies. Further, the bare, cold walls describe a place that is bereft of the comforts of a home. This, along with the absence of mementos of the children or relatives on the walls, suggests there is no real sense of family in the apartment. Given these conditions, it makes sense that the brothers spend so much time outside the building.
Ms. Janice is a key factor in the coldness of the home. She is often physically absent from the boys’ lives, but when she walks past Needles without a speaking, it is evident that she is emotionally absent too. Her clothes and the company she keeps point to her being a sex worker, but whether she spends any of her earnings on her children is unclear. What is clear, though, is the affect she has on Noodles. Ali’s politeness keeps him from directly bringing her work up, but there is still judgment in the way he talks about her. There is none of the respect or admiration he had for the way Tasha’s parents dress or where they work.
Noodles’s behavior at Black’s apartment surprises neither Needles nor Ali. Ali even prepared for it by carrying extra money in anticipation of needing to cover for his friend’s antics. This demonstrates a pattern of misbehavior that stretches beyond the incident at Knit Wit. Doris’s warning that Noodles is “trouble” now seems prescient. The tensions in Ali and Noodles’s friendship build to a confrontation that feels more about defending Needles than about Ali expressing any personal grievances. The row is interrupted before it can be resolved, but it confirms the suspicion that Noodles’s bravado is hollow while reinforcing Ali’s stance against fighting, especially with someone he loves.
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