Everything was going to change when we got out West. My mother had been a girl in Beverly Hills, and the life we saw ahead of us was conjured from her memories of California in the days before the Crash.
The book opens at a critical point in the lives of two of its most important character, Rosemary and her son Toby. Toby will grow up to become known as the author of the book being read, but in 1955 he is a very boy accompanying his mother in a cross-country trip with a desperate purpose: to escape a toxic domestic situation. The optimistic tone characterizing the journey will prove painfully ironic, however, as merely conjuring dreams of wholesale change from memories whose sharp edges have been dulled by the erosion of time is never enough.
I wanted to call myself Jack, after Jack London. I believed that having his name would charge me with some of the strength and competence inherent in my idea of him.
This line explains why the narrator is referred to Toby by his mother in the opening paragraph, but is called Jack for almost the entire rest of the narrative. The quote is also significant for setting up early on one of its thematic obsessions: creating facades of truth through the illusion of performance. If Toby acts like a Jack instead of a Toby, his personality will become that of a Jack rather than the personality of Toby. Notice that his reasoning does not extend to changing himself, but just taking on a new name, like an actor assuming a role. The stimulus for this name change is directly connected to the arrival of a new student in his old school back in Florida who was also named Toby. No problem normally, of course, since many classes contain two or more students sharing the same first name. The other Toby, however, happened to be a girl. And, as he observes, it was quite unlikely that he would ever have to share a classroom with a girl named Jack. The implicit driving force here is associating the personality of a Toby with femininity and this creates a double layer of thematic purpose since the novel also pursues conceptions about what it means to be masculine.
I didn’t worry about him. He was too short. He was a mechanic. His clothes were wrong. I didn’t know why they were wrong, but they were. We hadn’t come all the way out here to end up with him.
This is another quote that ties directly to the book’s themes about facades hiding reality as well as issues about masculinity. The “him” being described here is Dwight, the new man in his mother’s romantic life. At first, Dwight is all façade, his relationship to Rosemary is described as obsequious and his behavior is compared to that of a puppy. Toby confidently predicts that he is too much of a loser for his mother to ever get serious about. But that Dwight is not the real one, it is his performance. Behind the façade lies a cruel alcoholic with low self-esteem who confuses violence with masculinity.
I had my heart set on that rifle. A weapon was the first condition of self-sufficiency, and of being a real Westerner, and of all acceptable employment—trapping, riding herd, soldiering, law enforcement, and outlawry. I needed that rifle, for itself and for the way it completed me when I held it.
On a certain level, a big chunk of the narrative reads like a very dark version of A Christmas Story in which all the comedic aspects have been transformed into the chilling drama of a thriller. Just like Ralphie longs for his Red Ryder rifle, so does young Toby (Jack) lust for the Winchester .22. And just like Ralphie’s mom, Rosemary is dead set against the idea before finally giving in. And lastly, just as it is Ralphie’s old man who buys him his rifle, it is Rosemary’s lover Roy—the man they are fleeing from in the opening scene who has since then managed to stalk his way back into the lives—who gives him the rifle despite a mother’s natural concern. But that’s where the similarity end: Roy is an abusive man who buys the rifle for Toby (Jack) over Rosemary’s objections not as an act love and bonding, but as a way to exploit and manipulate both mother and son for his own devious purposes.
