79 pages • 2 hours read
Frank Abagnale, Stan ReddingCatch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1980A 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.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Fledgling”
The first chapter (along with all subsequent chapters of Catch Me If You Can) is narrated from the first person, past tense perspective of Frank W. Abagnale. Abagnale is a former conman looking back in time to recount and reflect upon his criminal exploits.
The book begins with a scene wherein Abagnale observes his image in a Windsor Hotel mirror. He wears a pilot’s uniform and muses, “A man’s alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself” (1). In the lobby, he charms a female cashier and cashes a large check with the ease of a habitual conman. At the airport, he notes that the inspector waves him through without asking to see his ID. Abagnale enters the cockpit of a plane, where he plans to ride in the role of a deadheading pilot. The captain introduces himself and suggests that Abagnale “fly this bird for awhile” (3) as a courtesy gesture. Abagnale promptly puts the plane on autopilot, confessing to the reader that he “couldn’t fly a kite” (4).
Here, Abagnale reveals to the reader that he is not a copilot, but rather a multi-millionaire, international con-artist. Abagnale relates that even through his many disguises and alter egos, he never deluded himself into thinking that he was anyone other than Frank Abagnale. He recalls his experience with a University of Virginia psychological study performed after he was finally caught. At the end of the study, the psychologist ironically concluded that Abagnale had a low criminal threshold, and that his psychological profile did not fit that of a conman.
Abagnale reflects back to his childhood as one of three siblings in a middle-class, Bronxville, New York family. He contemplates the separation of his mother—a young, attractive French-Algerian woman seeking her independence—from his father, a stationary store manager often drawn away from home by his activities as a local Republican politician. Tired of his father’s long absences, Abagnale’s mother leaves with his two siblings, allowing Frank to stay with his father.
Abagnale’s father then enlists Frank as an accomplice in attempts to woo back his mother. He coaches Abagnale in the art of delivering speeches and gifts to his mother, unwittingly teaching Frank how to be a con man.
His father’s political connections include cops, union bosses, stockbrokers, and cabbies, whose behaviors Abagnale observes for future reference. He matures quickly, both in attitude and physical appearance. He turns to crime, hoping the money will finance dates with women, whose charms have begun to ensnare him. Abagnale’s first scam revolves around the car purchased by his father to celebrate his first job. In cooperation with a young gas station attendant, he charges a set of tires to the gas card his father pays, allowing the attendant to keep the tires while he pockets $100 in cash. He repeats this scam several times over the next few weeks until a Mobil investigator shows up at his father’s store. Abagnale’s father empathizes with Frank and defends him. His mother, however, sends him to a Catholic Charities private school for troubled boys.
When Abagnale returns from school on a break, he is disturbed to learn that his father has lost the business and now works as a postal clerk. With the business, his father has also lost his fine suits and illustrious acquaintances. He advises, “You’ll learn, Frank, that when you’re up there’re hundreds of people who’ll claim you as a friend. When you’re down, you’re lucky if one of them will buy you a cup of coffee” (19).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Pilot”
At age sixteen, Abagnale runs away to New York City. Dissatisfied by his low wages, he begins to write bad checks from his New York bank account, cashing $10 or $20 checks at hotels and department stores. He notes that no one seems to notice these small amounts, rationalizing that if people are stupid enough to be swindled, they deserve it.
The bad checks add up, and Abagnale searches for a way to skip town. Noticing a flight crew emerging from the Commodore Hotel, he decides to become a fake pilot. He procures a copilot suit by calling Pan Am’s purchasing department and claiming his uniform was stolen. The operator directs him to the Well-Built Uniform Company, where Abagnale is measured, suited, and instructed to bill his employee account. He fills out form with the first five numbers that come to mind.
Abagnale calls Pan Am’s switchboard and gets directions to their store at the Kennedy Airport. At the Pan Am hangar, he conceals his lack of an ID badge by casually flipping his raincoat over his uniform. He obtains wings and a hat emblem, lying to the store clerk that his two-year-old took them. He makes note of the Pan Am ID cards worn by other workers.
He studies Pan Am’s operations at the public library. He also gains intel by calling a Pan Am captain and pretending to be a reporter for his high school paper. He learns that pilots can fly in the cockpit between different employment destinations free of charge, and that this practice is called deadheading. The captain explains the protocol for numerous procedures that will benefit Abagnale’s future travel plans.
Abagnale gains an ID by approaching a sales representative at an ID company and pretending to be a representative from Carib Air. He claims the company wants to move from paper IDs to a more formal quality card. Eager to gain his business, the ID representative shows Abagnale a variety of samples, including one that is a duplicate of Pan Am’s. Abagnale requests a prototype ID with his own information. Abagnale then finalizes this ersatz ID with a Pan Am logo sticker taken off a toy plane from a hobby shop. He creates a fake FAA license by ordering a plaque with his details, then reducing the plaque to ID size in a print shop.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The first two chapters of Catch Me If You Can detail Frank Abagnale’s origin story. Herein, he explains how his apprenticeship as a con man begins with his father, who coaches him in the art of speeches designed to woo back Frank’s mother. His first scam, significantly, begins with his father’s gift of a car and gas card. Abagnale uses the car to pick up women and the scam funds from his gas card to finance dates. When Abagnale’s scam is revealed by a Mobile investigator, his father is sympathetic, in part because Frank was using the scam to pick up girls. In short, Abagnale’s father recognizes that he and his son share the same obsession with beautiful women.
These initial chapters also introduce the reader to Abagnale’s vested interests in identity and social performance. He examines societal expectations for how a criminal looks and behaves, noting the Virginia psychiatrist who proclaimed his low criminal threshold. While Frank can arguably claim some common attributes of a socialized criminal—coming from a “broken home”—Abagnale readily admits that he does not fit the stereotype of a law-breaking individual.
Abagnale professes that beneath his co-pilot disguise, he always remains “aware that [he is] Frank Abagnale” (5). However, when Abagnale’s father asserts “as long as a man knows what he is and who he is, he’ll do all right” (19), Frank responds with internal uncertainty about what he is and who he is. Furthermore, Abagnale’s reflection that opens the book—“a man’s alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself” (1)—seems to suggest that his varied, uniformed roles function as a means of exploring his identity.
Abagnale creates numerous fake identifications using clever strategies and improvised materials (such as the Pan Am logo sticker taken from a toy airplane in a hobby shop). Abagnale’s ingenious construction raises questions of the many social arenas which require formal identification: do IDs really tell us anything about a person’s identity?
