54 pages • 1 hour read
Gordon KormanBorn to Rock
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains mentions of drugs, violence, and sexual assault.
Leo Caraway narrates his observations about having to undergo a cavity search, and the way it impacts a person. Leo intends to tell the story of how he went from the president of his high school’s Young Republicans club with early acceptance to Harvard to Cleveland Police Department’s private examination room. Leo used to believe he had control over his destiny, but now he feels people are just pinballs, reacting to the things that bounce them around.
Chapter 1 Summary
Leo first got involved in the Young Republicans club because of worries about a chaotic part of his DNA, which he refers to as “McMurphy.” He joined the Young Republicans partly to keep McMurphy in line and partly to aid Congressman DeLuca on his campaign trail after his friends took up the cause.
After Congressman DeLuca’s successful campaign, Leo reluctantly allows his oldest friend, Melinda, to accompany him to the victory party on a boat. Melinda dresses in goth attire and is vocally anti-Republican. She strongly disapproves of Leo’s new path and makes a scene on the boat. Leo is mortified by Melinda’s behavior.
After the party, Leo considers why he lets Melinda gets her way. They’ve been friends since they were young children, and their dads were best friends too. Melinda’s dad collapsed dead one morning while Leo’s dad was out getting them coffee. Whenever Leo wants to tell Melinda off, he recalls that day in fifth grade and stays silent.
Chapter 2 Summary
Leo enjoys his Republican friend group, which consists of Caleb Drew, nicknamed “Gates” for his computer prowess, and Fleming Norwood. But Melinda pushes Leo to change his mind about his current path, talking to him about music, art, and love. Melinda loves punk and metal music, which Leo dislikes. When Leo encourages Melinda to accept their differences—something she’s preached to him plenty of times—Melinda suggests the Young Republican club isn’t the true Leo.
Gates shows Leo Melinda’s blog, called KafkaDreams. Melinda’s posts are mostly rants and lists of things she dislikes, like war, anti-gay bias, and Young Republicans. Leo realizes Gates has a crush on Melinda. He tries to discourage Gates from pursuing Melinda, who would never be interested, but Gates likes that Melinda is feisty.
Leo tells Melinda about Gates’s crush, asking her to just gently turn Gates down. In turn, Melinda asks Leo to help her friend, Owen Stevenson. Owen was determined to be a genius at an early age, and he’s lived with the pressure ever since. Though all his school records note his intellect, he’s an average high school student, and he struggles in honors classes. Melinda wants Leo to tutor Owen on vectors for their upcoming math test. When Leo refuses, Melinda accuses Leo of discriminating against gay people. Leo isn’t prejudice against gay people; feeling cornered, he agrees to help.
Leo explains vectors to Owen by relating the concept to pinball, one of Owen’s interests. After many tutoring sessions, Owen seems to have a handle on vectors. However, during the big test, Leo notices Owen struggling on a vector question. Leo whispers a reminder to Owen about pinballs, and his teacher catches them immediately.
Chapter 3 Summary
Assistant Principal Borman believes that Leo and Owen were cheating. Leo explains that no answers were exchanged, but Borman is clearly gunning for Owen because Owen is gay. As Borman demands someone take the blame for this ethics violation, Leo feels McMurphy emerge. He asserts that neither of them cheated. Borman threatens Leo with a mark on his record, but Leo reiterates that he did nothing wrong.
Leo worries what this trouble could mean for his Harvard acceptance, so he calls his admissions officer, who reassures him that Harvard doesn’t care about one failed test. Fleming, however, threatens to remove Leo from his officer position in the Young Republicans club if Leo can’t sort out the cheating scandal.
Leo discovers Melinda has posted her 27-page English project on punk rock to her blog. Leo curiously peruses the paper until his eyes land on a familiar name, Marion X. McMurphy—the legal name of punk band Purge’s notorious frontman, King Maggot.
Chapter 4 Summary
Leo describes the major events of his life as pinballs being knocked around a pinball machine. When he first saw the name Marion X. McMurphy on his birth certificate before a 5th grade field trip, he asked his parents about it. While his mom didn’t want to talk, his dad explained that Marion is Leo’s biological father. Leo never saw his dad any differently after finding out. However, on the field trip, Leo acted out, and thus, Leo’s McMurphy side was born. Leo began to blame every instance of unruly behavior on McMurphy.
Leo’s mother has always avoided conversations about his biological father, dragging out elaborate jigsaw puzzles to distract herself from thinking about it. The most she’d say is that she was young or not thinking clearly. He’s never gotten any information about Marion X. McMurphy until now.
Chapter 5 Summary
Melinda’s essay details King Maggot’s legendary presence in punk rock history. King Maggot has a rap sheet full of convictions for civil disobedience, destruction of property, public indecency, and the like. He once drove his motorcycle through the band’s lawyer’s window when they believed the lawyer was embezzling. Purge was responsible for so much controversy that they were the original targets of warning labels on music. Through his influence in the punk music scene, King Maggot was “the cultural boogeyman of his time” (39). Purge was active from 1984 to 1990 and is largely considered the most influential punk band of all time.
When he’s done with Melinda’s essay, Leo decides he was right to blame all his bad behavior on McMurphy for all these years. He scours the internet for more about King Maggot. In a famous photo, King’s eyes are black, as though he’s been punched, and he clutches a microphone, looking full of rage. Leo is so captivated by this photo that he doesn’t hear his parents approach. When Leo’s mom sees the photo on Leo’s computer screen, she faints.
Chapter 6 Summary
Leo’s mom has pulled out a massive puzzle to work on. Leo tries to get answers from her, but she remains quiet. After some back and forth, as Leo’s dad insists it’s time Leo heard the truth, Leo’s mom confesses to a tryst with King Maggot. She’d never been into punk music, but Purge was infamous and her friend had tickets. She wanted to see what the fuss was about. They got invited backstage, and Leo’s mom was starstruck. She doesn’t remember much of the night and admits that she was using substances. She regrets the way Leo was conceived because now it's a painful memory, but she doesn’t regret having Leo.
Leo comments on Melinda’s blog anonymously, telling her that her essay changed his life. He buys a Purge album, but he doesn’t really enjoy it. He can’t understand the songs or why everyone is so angry. When he tells Melinda about it the next day, she thinks he’s mocking her at first, but when she realizes he’s telling the truth, she excitedly gushes about the songs. Through Melinda and Owen, Leo learns that Purge’s music is about letting out anger at societal issues. Leo still doesn’t like it, but he’s glad it’s about something.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
The prologue and first six chapters of Born to Rock establish the novel’s tone, themes, and important character dynamics. Leo’s first-person narration allows the story to unfold through his perspective as he faces challenges to his identity as a teenage Republican and struggles with his genetic destiny as a McMurphy. The Prologue contrasts Leo position as President of his high school’s Young Republicans club with Leo’s unpleasant experience submitting to a cavity search by the police. This juxtaposition through Leo’s narration sets the novel’s tone as both mature and comedic.
This section introduces one of the novel’s symbols, pinball: Leo often feels like his life is subject to the “the impact of the flippers” (4). The pinball imagery symbolizes the way Leo feels life is not fully in his control—he is like the ball caroming around a pinball machine seemingly at random. Later, Leo will use his “pinball theory” to teach Owen vectors, nodding to the symbolism of pinballs as a representation of the uncontrollable circumstances in life. Chapter 4 returns to the pinball symbolism, as Leo describes being knocked between flippers as “the story of my life” (31).
Leo’s identity is further explored through the McMurphy motif. Leo explains that he has McMurphy “in my DNA, a total loose cannon rolling around my personality” (5). McMurphy represents to Leo all the parts of himself he suppresses, so much so that Leo “joined the G.O.P. to help myself control McMurphy” (5). Leo’s struggle against McMurphy introduces the theme of Genetics and Identity, with the McMurphy alter-ego as an overt way to show how affected he was to discover that his biological father is someone named Marion X. McMurphy. From that point on, Leo separates McMurphy from himself, choosing to blame McMurphy for “Every misstep, broken rule, and temper tantrum” (34). Leo even explains that he feels he’s not alone in his brain with McMurphy there. Leo’s mental separation between himself and McMurphy is both a way to cope with the knowledge that he is not his dad’s biological child and to avoid taking full responsibility for instances of misbehavior.
However, McMurphy is also a source of backbone for Leo. When Leo is accused of cheating on a test and must take a black mark on his record, in his discussion with Vice Principal Borman, Leo acknowledges that he’d always spoken about character with the Young Republicans, “But this, McMurphy seemed to be telling me, was the true meaning of character” (24). Leo realizes character means standing up for what’s right in the face of injustice, a trait he associates with McMurphy more than Republicanism. Leo allows McMurphy to take control as he challenges Borman’s threats, unwilling to let Borman take Owen down unfairly. This moment not only shows the way Leo pits his two identities, McMurphy and Young Republican, against each other, but also how Leo associates McMurphy with righteous rage, foreshadowing McMurphy’s true origin.
Chapter 1 establishes the dynamic between Leo and his long-time friend, Melinda. Leo and Melinda have a complicated relationship as high schoolers, despite having been friends since they were young. While Leo doesn’t understand Melinda’s liberal ideology, anger, and gothic attire, Melinda doesn’t accept Leo’s new path as a Republican. Still, Leo and Melinda remain friends, and Leo struggles to stand up to Melinda because he still feels bad that her father died in fifth grade. Leo and Melinda’s dynamic often motivates the novel’s plot. In Chapter 2, Leo’s inability to say no to Melinda comes into play when Melinda asks Leo to tutor her friend Owen, setting off the chain of events that leads to Leo’s conflict for the rest of the novel. Melinda uses their political differences to push Leo into doing what she wants; in this case, she accuses him of discriminating against gay people for not wanting to tutor Owen, who is gay. Leo agrees to help Owen with math partly to prove Melinda wrong. Melinda and Leo’s contentious dichotomy is a microcosm of larger social trends: The novel is set in 2006, the same year it was published, a time when Republicanism was waning from its post-9/11 power and gaining criticism for foreign and domestic policy alike. At the same time, counterculture styles like goth, punk, and the beginnings of emo were on the rise in teens.
Leo’s mom’s unwillingness to tell Leo anything about his biological father develops the theme of The Ethics of Lying by Omission. Leo goes his entire life believing his dad is his biological father only to discover at ten that there’s another factor in his lineage that he was unaware of. Leo is shaken by this realization, and this results in the division of his identity between Leo and McMurphy. By lying by omission about Leo’s biological origins, Leo’s mom causes to resent a part of himself. Leo’s mom aids her lying by omission by dragging out puzzles, which symbolize her avoidance of the subject. Leo explains that she does this every time the topic has come up since he was ten years old.
Chapter 2 also introduces the theme of Music and Self-Expression through Melinda’s taste for punk and metal music. Melinda “wasn’t just a music fan. She lived and breathed music” (13). Melinda closely ties her identity to the entertainment she consumes, and the music she chooses to engage with is heavy and dark like her gothic attire. Leo’s discovery that Marion X. McMurphy is actually Purge front man King Maggot allows Leo to start bridging the two parts of his identity. Despite his chosen identity as a Republican, Leo shows flexibility when he chooses to pick up a Purge album in Chapter 6. Although he doesn’t like the music, he explores it anyway to learn about the McMurphy part of himself. He also consults with Melinda and Owen about Purge. Melinda explains that the appeal of Purge is the release of rage: “We think and feel it, and there’s King screaming it over a hundred thousand watts of raw power” (47). Melinda’s description of the cathartic nature of angry music gives Leo a cautious appreciation for the fact that Purge’s music means something, even though he still thinks it’s noise.
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