51 pages • 1 hour read
John Elder RobisonLook Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2007A 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 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Dogs Begin to Fear Me”
Chapter 8 illuminates the dark side of Robison’s sense of humor. He confesses that, as he gets older, the years of torment he suffers at the hands of other children metastasize. His pain turns to anger and is reflected in his increasingly deceitful pranks. After a minor accident with his grandmother’s car that necessitates fixing her mailbox, Robison becomes fixated on his Uncle Bob’s (and later his father’s) posthole digger. He begins to dig holes all over his yard and in the mulch pile at the side of the house. He lures his brother outside and dumps him in a deep hole headfirst. He leaves him there for 10 to 15 minutes, impassive despite Christopher’s fury. As far as Robison is concerned, the prank is successful because “this was a fine hole, able to trap a big kid” (75).
The pranks continue. On Halloween he fills the holes in the yard with flash powder wired to detonators in his room. As trick-or-treaters pass the holes, he ignites the powder, causing small explosions of dirt and rock, terrifying the neighborhood kids. He ignores his school counselor who warns him that his pranks border on “evil,” and he saves the most elaborate for last. He draws a pentagram in the woods near some high-tension power lines. He places cans of paint (stolen from a nearby construction site) at each corner of the pentagram, dangles a rope from the transmission tower, and hangs a “body” from a noose at the other end. He then lights the paint on fire. Using a linesman’s telephone (also stolen), he taps into a neighbor’s phone line and calls the police. He meticulously covers his tracks, and if the police trace the call, it will lead to his neighbor. He then climbs a tree and watches. The police are horrified, thinking they’ve discovered a real dead body. The fire department and the power company also arrive. They extinguish the fire, shut off the power, and cut down the body, which turns out to be a department store mannequin. Satisfied with his prank, Robison climbs down from the tree, sneaks home, and falls asleep.
Chapter 9 Summary: “I Drop Out of High School”
Chapter 9 recounts Robison’s burgeoning independence and his parents’ deteriorating physical and mental conditions. Because they are “focusing their energy on attacking each other” (85), they leave their sons largely unattended; as a result, Robison’s grades plummet. His mother’s mental illness increases her dependence on Dr. Finch, and she sometimes brings John Elder and Christopher to stay with him and his extended family for days at a time. Robison fears his mother’s mental condition is hereditary. Although Finch’s family—especially his daughter Hope—treat Robison with kindness, he cannot ignore the doctor’s “increasingly bizarre behavior” (86). A few months after one of their extended “vacations” with Finch, Robison’s mother is committed to the state mental hospital. She persists in her delusion that her husband is trying to murder the entire family.
In addition to his family troubles, Robison also suffers from uncontrolled physical movements—head bobbing, rocking back and forth—that irritate and confound his teachers. He suspects that school is not the right place for him. At 15, he wants to drop out of school, but state law forbids it before the age of 16. As a compromise, the school offers to let him take the GED exam, and if he scores 75% or higher, they will allow him to graduate. He scores 96% but refuses the diploma because of the “processing fee.” He is officially a high school dropout.
Robison spends his free time wandering through the woods near his home, sometimes spending several days away from home. There he meets Paul, a Vietnam veteran who lives in a makeshift camp. Robison befriends him, and they spend almost every day together. Paul teaches Robison how to survive in the wild—how to forage from dumpsters, how to kill fish with a BB gun, and how to avoid hidden trip wires. Although he enjoys his time with Paul, Robison realizes that he doesn’t want to lead a solitary lifestyle. He craves social interaction, and he tries to figure out how to “make people interact with” him (94). He sees music as the most viable option. One day Paul disappears without a trace. Many years later Robison discovers that Paul is a highly decorated war hero.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Collecting the Trash”
Robison buys a motorcycle, hoping to escape from the turmoil at home. He takes the motorcycle to a faculty party with his parents. Despite his mother’s assurance that the hosts genuinely like him, he is dubious. He thinks they find him “weird,” and he finds them “pompous.” He sees them as condescending and, therefore, deserving of one of his pranks. When some of the faculty ask him about potential careers, he tells them he’s working for the Sanitation Department. He spins tales of dead babies left in the trash, feral children roaming the streets with knives, and extortion against private citizens. He relishes the looks of horror on their faces. The hostess of the party overhears his lies and pulls him away from her guests. He tells her one final, tasteless joke and then climbs on his motorcycle and rides away.
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Flaming Washtub”
One of Robison’s most reliable sanctuaries from his domestic troubles is his friend Jim Boughton, who is two years his senior. The two boys have similar interests: “Rocketry. High-powered electricity. Explosives. Motorcycles. Fast cars” (101). In the shed behind his house Boughton builds a “nonferrous foundry for casting aluminum and bronze,” or as Robison calls it, “a blast furnace” (102). Together they melt auto parts and cast aluminum molds of human appendages. A few months later, Robison, Boughton, and two friends are rebuilding a Volkswagen engine, the engine parts soaking in a tub of gasoline. A spark flares in the garage, igniting the gasoline and turning the washtub into a roaring blaze. Everyone flees the garage except Boughton, who has the presence of mind to don a pair of heavy gloves and push the flaming tub out of the garage, preventing the house from catching fire. Shortly after, the fire department arrives. Boughton warns them to use foam rather than water since it’s a chemical fire, but they ignore him and spray the flames with their fire hoses. The fire explodes, raining molten metal all over the yard and house. The fire department eventually extinguishes the fires, but Boughton is now subject to periodic inspections by the fire chief.
The inferno in Boughton’s yard is actually “the calm before the storm” (108) for Robison. His personal life deteriorates rapidly afterward. Mary Trompke (Little Bear) breaks up with him but doesn’t tell him why. His parents finally separate, and his mother begins dating women, one of whom is younger than Robison, which he finds “weird.” His father, living alone now, unsuccessfully attempts suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. His mother continues to seek therapy from Dr. Finch, dragging Christopher along in the process. Both Robison and his father have serious doubts about Finch’s credibility after rumors about him circulate around town. He was fired from the state mental hospital, and Robison’s grandfather thinks he’s “crazy.” Six years later, in 1983, Robison’s mother finally breaks free of Finch’s control. She accuses him of excessively medicating her and of sexual assault. The district attorney also files charges of insurance fraud. Finch tries to have her committed to a mental hospital so she can’t testify against him. His license is finally revoked in 1986.
Chapters 8-11 Analysis
As Robison enters his teen years, the combined trauma of his Asperger’s syndrome, his abusive father, and his mentally unstable mother takes its toll. His macabre pranks, his antisocial behavior, and his passion for destruction all show an undeniably dark side to his personality. He also exhibits a justifiable degree of paranoia, assuming the worst in others’ motivations. When he attends the faculty party with his parents, he finds the guests condescending even though they seem genuinely interested in his life. These assumptions allow him to justify his own behavior, telling lies and enjoying his listeners’ stunned reactions. Whether due to his emotional disconnection or his internalized anger (or both), he cannot appreciate the consequences of his actions. He cannot see that his behavior is not clever or funny regardless of how much it amuses him. When he hangs a store mannequin from a noose above a flaming pentagram, involving the police, the fire department, and the power company, he sees it only as a successful prank, as “one that trumped all the others” (76). Even when his guidance counselor tells him that his jokes are “sick” and “evil,” he does not or cannot stop. The title of Chapter 8, “The Dogs Begin to Fear Me,” speaks to Robison’s increased aggression. He notes how he feared dogs as a child, but now dogs begin to fear him. He goes from victim to victimizer. He becomes exactly what he hated and feared as a child, evidence (although anecdotal) of the effect of physical and emotional abuse on children.
These chapters also demonstrate how parenting styles have changed drastically since the 1960s. While some bemoan today’s overprotective “helicopter” parents, feeling it leads to overly dependent young adults, the parenting ethic Robison details in these chapters is the polar opposite. When Robison’s friend Jim Boughton nearly burns down his garage, his parents stand by calmly, his father drinking a cocktail and his mother smoking a cigar. They never intervene, discipline, or even check on their son’s well-being. Likewise, Robison describes his own parents as uninterested in his daily life, devoting more time and energy to fighting with each other than spending time with him and Christopher. These are extreme examples, but social norms do seem to have shifted from a hands-off to a hands-on approach. It’s hard to imagine parents today allowing their children to roam freely in the woods for days and nights at a time, to hang out with anonymous war veterans, or to attend clubs before the age of consent. In Robison’s case, he turns these experiences into self-reliance and a broad base of useful knowledge, but the emotional toll of living without parental guidance is also undeniable.
