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52 pages 1 hour read

Carl Deuker

Runner

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005

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Part 1, Chapters 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

On the anniversary of the September 11 attack, Chance Taylor’s Seattle high school, Lincoln High, is a different place. The principal gives a speech, the marching band plays “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and in every class, teachers have “boring discussions” about Iraq, al-Qaida, terrorism, and Osama bin Laden. As he’s been doing since middle school, Chance keeps quiet.

Chance’s last class is World Issues, taught by Mr. Arnold. Like Chance’s dad, Mr. Arnold is tall and thin, but he doesn’t have Chance’s dad’s disheveled appearance—which Chance attributes to his dad’s alcohol addiction. Chance and his father live on a dilapidated sailboat. If Chance’s dad isn’t drinking, smoking, and rereading the sports section, he’s likely at a bar.

For September 11, Mr. Arnold welcomes Brent Miller, a soldier who recently graduated from Lincoln High.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

When Chance was a freshman, Miller was a senior. Both their dads fought in the First Gulf War, and, like Chance’s dad, Miller’s dad has alcoholism. While their dads drank, they hung out. One time, their dads got in a fight, putting Chance’s dad in jail and Miller’s dad in the hospital. Miller started bullying Chance at school, including dunking his head into a toilet filled with urine and feces. Miller claimed Chance’s dad got kicked out of the army for being a “coward.”

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

Miller discusses patriotism, dedication, and teamwork. He’s been in the army for nine months and wants to be a tank commander in Iraq. Chance thinks Miller is like a terrible actor in an awful war movie, but two students, Melody Turner and Heather Carp, flirt with him.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Melissa Watts has “WAR IS TERRORISM” and “WAR SUCKS” stickers on her binder. She asks Miller if he’s read about the Middle East, and Miller claims he has, but when Melissa presses him, he admits that he hasn’t had time to learn about the countries the United States is invading. Heather calls Melissa a “bitch,” but Chance sticks up for her as Mr. Arnold tries to regain control of the class. Before Chance’s parents divorced, he ran cross-country like Melissa. Chance was the only person who could beat her.

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

Walking with Chance, Melissa expresses her anger over Mr. Arnold’s hypocrisy: In her view, he lectures about free speech and the Constitution but doesn’t follow these principles in governing his own classroom. On their way to Java John’s, they run into Melody, Heather, and Miller. Heather calls Melissa a “bitch” again, and Miller threatens Chance and calls him a “coward” again.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

At Java John’s, Melissa orders a latte and a pastry, but Chance can only afford a small coffee. Melissa doesn’t think Chance is a coward—he’s brave, and fighting doesn’t equal bravery. She tells him about the Lincoln Light—the newspaper she’s editing. She wants to cover “controversial” issues and invites Chance to a meeting: They’re every other Friday night at the Blue Note Cafe. Chance promises to consider the offer.

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

Alone, Chance visits the house where he lived with his mom and dad. He remembers his Star Wars poster, dartboard, and the holes in the walls his dad never fixed. He walks down the driveway and looks into the backyard, where his mom told him her heart and soul were “dying” as a result of her unhappy marriage. She had to start over without Chance’s dad, but she promised she wouldn’t abandon Chance.

A smiley red-haired girl and her unamused mom interrupt Chance’s memories. Chance tells the mom he used to live there, then quickly walks away.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary

Chance’s dad keeps his sailboat in Pier B of the Shilshole Bay Marina. The boat, the Tiny Dancer, isn’t like “a floating mansion” or the kind of houseboats in movies. It’s tiny, and there’s barely enough room for their things or for Chance and his dad to move around.

During the summer, Chance’s dad got a janitorial job at a waterfront apartment complex for retired people. He’s home because he got fired, so Chance and his dad are in financial trouble again. They’ll need money to pay the moorage fee, the electric bill, the heating bill, the sewage fee, and for necessities like food and toothpaste.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary

Based on the divorce settlement, Chance should live with his mom. For a while, he did live with her in an apartment above the art store where she worked. After work hours, he would watch her paint. She called her art “crap,” but Chance thought it was good.

Chance spent weekends with his dad on the boat. One Sunday, his mom didn’t arrive to pick him up as expected. Chance and his dad went to the apartment, and a neighbor told them she had moved to a coastal town in Oregon. A week later, Chance’s mom sent a letter saying she’d only be gone for a “little while,” but that was years ago. His dad mentioned sailing the world, but after Chance yelled at him, he stopped talking about sailing the world together.

Part 1, Chapters 1-9 Analysis

The anniversary of the September 11 attacks establishes the theme of Paranoia and the Loss of Security. Chance lives in a violent, unstable place, and the emphasis on terrorism foreshadows his job as a smuggler and his role in a terrorist plot. From the get-go, Chance is suspicious of people and their motives. He describes Miller as a “really bad actor in some really bad war movie” (10). Melissa exposes Miller’s superficiality when she gets him to admit he doesn’t know much about the countries he’ll help invade. Miller’s combination of pride and ignorance is emblematic of the US approach to foreign policy in this era, as neoconservative policy-makers launched a full-scale invasion of a country whose underlying political and cultural dynamics they scarcely understood.

Melissa’s “War is Terrorism” sticker makes a clear statement about the power of language in the context of the War on Terror. The invasion of Iraq is in itself an act of large-scale political violence resulting in mass civilian casualties. What separates this violence from that of Al-Qaida, in Melissa’s view, is language: The US is a powerful state actor and thus has the authority to designate its own violence as legitimate and that of its enemies as “terrorism.” This critique relates to Judith Butler’s argument in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2014). Though they’re known for their gender theory, Butler is also a political theorist, and, in Precarious Life, they argue that “terrorism” is a self-serving label used to purify the violence of powerful countries like America and to cast the violence of less powerful nations and groups as uniquely evil. As Chance sticks up for Melissa’s views in class, Deuker creates a bond between the two characters. Both are wary of the War on Terror narrative, while most of the people around them seem to accept it without question, and this shared perspective leads her to become his friend and eventual romantic interest.

The theme of Escape From Hopelessness arrives with Chance’s mom, who told Chance, “I’m dying here [...]. My heart. My soul. [...] I’ve got to start my life over. Away from your father” (22). With Chance’s dad, his mom has no hope. To recover her future and a reason to live, she must leave him. Chance’s mom’s situation mirrors her son’s. Life on Tiny Dancer makes Chance feel trapped, and the physically cramped conditions aboard the little boat mirror Chance’s sense that life with his father is inhibiting his emotional freedom.

Chance’s dad suggests sailing around the world can help him and his son escape hopelessness, but Chance doesn’t believe his dad, angrily telling him, “We’re never going anywhere […]. You’re a drunk and that’s all you are” (30). The situation is immensely difficult, but it’s not without hope. While Chance’s father has alcoholism, he isn’t abusive, and he can work to earn a living. Over the summer, he worked as a janitor in an apartment complex.

As the dad loses his job, the theme of The Intense Pressure of Money is foregrounded. Though his dad owns the sailboat, Chance realizes there’s still “the monthly moorage fee and the sewage fee and the electricity bill and the heat bill and food and soap and toilet paper and toothpaste and a hundred other things” (27). The long list of items reflects the need for income. The bills don’t stop, and things don’t stop costing money. The lack of reliable financial resources makes Chance vulnerable to the already dangerous world and foreshadows his role in the drug/plastic explosive racket.

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