83 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah Weeks , Gita VaradarajanSave Me a Seat
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A 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.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: "Wednesday: Chili"
Chapter 17 Summary: “Ravi”
In the morning, Ravi’s mother brings chiles and salt to take away the curse that she thinks is plaguing him at school. The previous day, frustrated by his mother and grandmother’s constant questions, he asked them to leave him alone, which only increased their concern: “Perimma even threatened to email Mrs. Beam if I didn’t tell her what was bothering me […] so I faked a stomachache and went to bed early” (94).
Ravi’s mother throws the chiles on a hot skillet, and when they sizzle, Perimma yells that America is terrible because people are jealous of Ravi’s intelligence. Ravi worries that they will find out that everyone at school thinks he is stupid. Amma gives Ravi medicine for his stomachache and naan khatais—Ravi’s favorite cookie—to win over his teacher. Perimma criticizes Amma’s baking, but Appa tells Ravi to listen to Amma because she has prophetic powers, courtesy of the black birthmark on her tongue. Amma goes to walk Ravi to the bus stop, but Appa stops her, saying that Ravi can walk himself. Amma calls out advice as Ravi leaves.
Ravi rides the bus to school, thinking about whether the cookies and the curse removal will work. Ravi sees the American flag at school and thinks of his own flag with its twenty-four symbolic virtues, remembering Perimma’s advice to be true to his roots. Ravi avoids Joe’s feet and presents the cookies to an excited Mrs. Beam, believing his luck is looking up already.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Joe”
Joe reflects on how he no longer believes in the magic of his mom kissing a scraped knee to make it feel better, although he allows her to drive him to school. Joe’s mom tells him that his dad is coming in late tonight, which does not bother Joe because his relationship with his father mostly involves watching sports. Joe dreads the imminent family meeting in which his father will tell him to man up but nothing else will change. Dillon makes his Pud, Not Puddy joke and Lucy laughs. Joe thinks about how he and Lucy used to be friends in nursery school; at a sleepover, she wet the bed and Joe never told anyone. Dillon sees Ravi, who Joe thinks looks too clean-cut, and asks what is in the box. Joe doesn’t think Ravi realizes that Dillon is going to use the cookies to mock him. Ravi presents the cookies to Mrs. Beam, who thanks him, and Dillon makes a gagging face, causing Lucy to laugh. Ravi doesn’t notice: “Ravi turns and starts walking back to his desk. He looks happy, but I notice he’s staring at my feet. He probably thinks I’m going to try to trip him” (102). Joe is close to finishing the book when Dillon drops a cruel drawing on his desk that labels Joe as unintelligent. Joe thinks the day has started off poorly.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Ravi”
Ravi is excited about the rest of the day, which he thinks is getting progressively better. Mrs. Beam compliments him on how far ahead he has read and then it is time for gym, which Ravi always excelled at in India. Ravi looks down at his blindingly white shoes, which Amma always polishes, and thinks his old gym coach would be proud. Ravi remembers another kid, Ramaswami, who his gym coach picked on because he was bad at sports, to the laughter of Ravi and his friends. Ravi looks forward to impressing everyone with his athletic abilities. He is a little nervous because he has never played American baseball before and is confused when the girls play along with them. Ravi is upset when he gets picked for a girls’ team, believing this bad luck to be Miss Frost’s fault. If he had been able to talk to Dillon and tell him about his cricket abilities, he is confident their team would have won: “Dillon will be surprised when he sees how well I play. I predict he will regret not picking me first” (107). Ravi picks up the bat to practice swinging, and the coach starts yelling at him, which exasperates Ravi because he does not know what he has done wrong.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Joe”
Joe thinks that the gym teacher looks like a penguin, reflecting on how uncoordinated he is, which makes baseball difficult. Joe, a Red Sox fan, watches baseball with his father, a Phillies fan. He thinks about how good some of his other classmates are at baseball. Joe watches Ravi trying to get Dillon’s attention when they are picking teams, only to be picked by the girl team captain. Joe and another kid, Henry, a violinist whose mother writes him notes to get out of gym class, are the last two picked. Henry gets picked by the girl, so Joe has to go on Dillon’s team. Dillon growls that Joe better not make them lose. The gym teacher yells at Ravi for not having special goggles, saying he has to choose between sitting out or taking off his glasses if he doesn’t have safety goggles. Ravi is confused because he never had to have safety goggles in India, but decides he’ll play without his glasses.
Joe strikes out and Dillon yells at Joe as he goes up to the pitcher’s mound. Ravi comes up to the bases loaded and squinting, and misses twice, before hitting a foul, making the coach and his team yell screams of encouragement: “Even from far away, [Joe] can tell Dillon is up to something” (111). Dillon throws at Ravi’s head and Joe yells at Ravi to duck, but it’s too late.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Ravi”
Coach screams for a first-aid kit while Ravi checks to find nothing wrong except a painful spot on his shoulder where the ball hit. Coach reprimands Dillon, who claims the ball slipped. Ravi asks to bat again, but Coach tells Dillon to take Ravi to the nurse. On the way there, Ravi talks the whole time, laughing that Mrs. Beam thinks he needs special help and about how weird Joe is. Dillon stresses that it was an accident, and Ravi invites Dillon over to his house so they can play sports together: “When we arrive at the nurse’s office, Dillon reminds me once more to explain that he didn’t hit me with the ball on purpose. Then he leaves and goes back to class” (115). The nurse makes Ravi lie down with an icepack, and one of his classmates—a Girl Scout—brings his things in case he has to go home early. Ravi begs the nurse to let him go to lunch, and when she finally acquiesces, Dillon is already sitting surrounded by his friends. Wanting to fit in, Ravi grabs a plastic tray, walking past Joe to sit at Dillon’s table. At Ravi’s prodding, Dillon tells one of the other kids to move over, and Ravi sits down, opening his tiffin box and putting his food in the tray’s individual sections, happy that he is finally where he thinks he belongs.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Joe”
In Mrs. Beam’s class, Dillon claims hitting Ravi was an accident, which Joe does not believe. Their Girl Scout classmate offers to take Ravi’s stuff to him, and Dillon manages to steal the last of Ravi’s mechanical pencils. The girl finds Dillon’s cruel drawing and puts it in Ravi’s backpack, thinking it is his; Joe wishes he had thrown the cartoon away. At lunch, Joe admits that the chili isn’t as good as his mom’s, and his mom looks in the opposite direction of Joe, which pleases him. Before Joe can take his seat, Dillon confronts him, saying that if they had lost, he would have made Joe pay. Joe acknowledges this, and Dillon steals a piece of Joe’s cornbread. Joe tries to remember Mr. Barnes’s advice, closing his eyes, and Dillon yells in Joe’s ears, startling him. Joe remembers one day in fourth grade, he and Mr. Barnes had both caught Dillon checking out his reflection in the window and had to stifle their laughter. Joe imagines Dillon as a chipmunk with his cheeks stuffed full of cornbread, and he starts laughing, completely losing his composure when he realizes that Dillon is wearing peanut boxers. Dillon is furious and kids start to gather around them, with Joe still laughing hysterically, thinking he’s figured out a way to end Dillon’s bullying. But his mom blows her whistle and breaks up the kids, leading Dillon to make a rude comment about Joe being a baby: “So much for being on top of the world. I should have known it wouldn’t last. Once a zebra, always a zebra” (122). Joe’s mom tries to explain, but Joe is furious, replying that she should not be in school at all. Joe is so angry he can’t eat, but watches as Ravi comes in and sits next to Dillon, thinking that Ravi has lost his mind.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Ravi”
Dillon pretends to be interested in Ravi, asking him questions but really poking fun at him. Ravi does not understand and corrects Dillon on the pronunciation of his name. Dillon asks about Ravi’s lunch, and Ravi offers him some. Dillon winks, and then offers Ravi some of the chili. Ravi takes a bite but can’t swallow it because it tastes so bad. Dillon tells him there’s hamburger meat in it and Ravi spits the chili on the table, horrified that he has eaten cow. Ravi protests that he is vegetarian, and Dillon laughs, prompting all the other boys to laugh as well: “I don’t think it’s funny. Amma would cry if she knew […] I am Hindu, and eating beef is a sin” (126). Dillon keeps laughing, and then mocks Ravi for how he looked when Dillon hit Ravi with the baseball and when he did Vedic math on the board.
Not sure what to do, Ravi opens his lunchbox and is calmed by the smell of Amma’s curry. Dillon says it smells disgusting, then slaps the spoon out of Ravi’s hand when Ravi offers Dillon some. Dillon calls Ravi a “curryhead” and gets the other boys to pretend like Ravi stinks. Ravi is astonished and realizes that Dillon is making fun of him and does not want to be his friend. Dillon insults Ravi’s mother, which makes Ravi want to punch him and insult Dillon back, but instead Ravi picks up his things and runs away as fast as he can, with Dillon yelling “curryhead” behind him.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Joe”
Joe doesn’t really know what happened, but he sees Ravi running fast out of the cafeteria and hears Dillon call him curryhead. Joe thinks that he could have warned Ravi, even if Ravi did call Joe dumb and think that he tripped him. Regardless, Joe feels sorry for Ravi because he knows what being a zebra is like.
Chapter 25 Summary: “Ravi”
Ravi goes into the boy’s bathroom to rinse out his mouth, thinking about how he went from being the most popular boy at Vidya Mandir to the butt of a joke in America. He remembers the kid he used to tease at his old school and realizes that he is now that kid: “It seems I am getting a taste of my own medicine” (133).
Part 3 Analysis
In the third section, both of the first chapters from Ravi and Joe’s point of view begin with discussions of magic. This magic is associated with each character’s mother; however, whereas Ravi still seems to believe that his mother has power, Joe does not. Rather, Joe’s mother seems to be the source of some of his conflict, as it is his connection to her that Dillon uses in order to harass Joe. Whereas the first two sections attempted to delineate the similarities between the two characters, this section is where the audience begins to get a feel for their differences as well. Joe and Ravi are by no means the same person as further elucidation of their individual thoughts makes clear, even though the authors initially focused on their similarities in previous chapters. Ravi and Joe are clearly depicted as having completely different backgrounds and even relationships to the outside world, even though they share some of the same interests. This differentiation then leads to further bifurcation of the narrative. The audience begins to feel as though the authors are attempting to balance the positive and negative in terms of events that happen to Joe and Ravi. When something good happens to one character, it seems as though the other character suffers. For example, Ravi’s day starts out well as he believes that he has won Mrs. Beam over with the cookies he’s brought. By contrast, Joe’s day begins with a contemplation of his anxiety surrounding his family meeting as well as Dillon’s cruel drawing. However, by the end of the day, it is clear that Ravi has had a rougher go of it, as he has been physically attacked by Dillon and made to be the laughing stock of the fifth grade. Joe’s day seems to improve slightly, as he no longer becomes the focal point for Dillon’s bullying. Rather, Ravi and Joe almost trade places, and Ravi gets a crash course in walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Ravi believes that he deserves this treatment in some ways because he used to be a bully like Dillon at his previous school.
The audience also begins to see a lot of transition as far as characters go within this section of the novel. Most importantly, Ravi transitions from believing himself to be like Dillon to being the subject of ridicule; he essentially goes from being the predatory animal that Joe fears to being that which is hunted—a zebra, as Joe points out. This use of animal imagery aligns the feeling of school with being in a jungle, wherein there are clearly top predators and those kids who are unlucky enough to be prey. Those kids who are popular, then, can be seen as being at the top of the food chain, whereas any kids who are different seem to be relegated to being victims.
This bifurcation between the different categories of students demonstrates the harshness and violence that can accompany going to school. In school, the emphasis seems to be not on what is learned but rather on understanding one’s place within the social order, a lesson which, as Ravi demonstrates, can often be cruel especially when one is subject to Ravi’s complete transition in terms of social positionality. As far as transitions go, the audience also witnesses Dillon’s transition from Ravi’s point of view: Dillon goes from protagonist to villain in Ravi’s eyes. This transition indicates a shift in Ravi’s original perception to seeing more through Joe’s eyes, as their experiences with Dillon become similar in nature. Joe’s perception of Dillon briefly changes as Joe imagines him not as a crocodile but as a chipmunk, thereby eliminating some of Joe’s fear of Dillon. However, Dillon’s quick reaction to Joe demonstrates just how rigid these social categories are in the wilderness that is elementary school.
