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 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Fly a Crooked Sky”
Abagnale continues to study airline protocol by walking around La Guardia Airport in his Pan Am copilot uniform. He specifically chooses this airport over New York’s Kennedy Airport because Pan Am is not based there. He hangs out with pilots, keeping track of the terms they use in a notebook Frank always carries with him. He also dates stewardesses in order to learn about airline operations.
After months of research, Abagnale deadheads a flight with Eastern Airlines to Miami. He performs convincingly throughout the flight, but feels nervous. He fumbles a bit through his initial deadheads, including a flight to Dallas that garners suspicion because Pan Am doesn’t fly out of Dallas. His confidence increases with experience, however, and he continues traveling in this manner, passing bad checks and deadheading from city to city.
Abagnale muses that his scams were facilitated, in large part, by the culture of 1960s hotels and airlines, one based around an implicit trust of men in uniform. He reflects that his crimes could never have been carried out in the present day, that airline security was much laxer before terrorist attacks. Even the detectives attempting to track him down could do little beyond follow protocol, as he was constantly flying beyond their jurisdiction.
Chapter 4 Summary: “If I’m a Kid Doctor, Where’s My Jar of Lollipops?”
Chapter Four brings the reader back to the moment in the cockpit described in Chapter One. The flight to Miami continues as normal, though Abagnale notices the pilots’ conversation is mostly one-sided. They listen to air traffic on their headphones without offering a pair to Abagnale. In New Orleans, the tower operator phones in, asking the captain to check Abagnale’s ID and license. When the plane lands in Miami, Abagnale is greeted by two sheriffs, who escort him to their car and take him downtown.
The sheriffs seem unsure of their role in the situation. At the office, they politely explain that there is a question of whether or not he works for Pan Am. Frank reacts with performative outrage, but eases his posture after an hour of sandwiches, coffee, and conversation. One of the sheriffs is a private pilot on the side, and he queries Abagnale about his copilot job. Abagnale’s knowledge is so convincing that the sheriff proclaims someone has made a mistake.
An FBI agent then takes Frank to an adjoining room. However, the agent is unsure if he is on firm ground because while a federal agency made a complaint in New Orleans, the complaint didn’t come from the FBI, and the officer didn’t take down the name of the person who called. Because the employee records office for Pan Am is closed for weekend, the agent asks if anyone can vouch for Abagnale’s copilot status. Frank gives him the names of various airline employees he’s encountered in his travels. After forty-five minutes, the agent says that Frank’s free to go.
After some shifting around, Abagnale moves to the upscale River Bend apartment complex in Atlanta, enticed by the beautiful women who live there. When signing his lease, he hesitates to list his profession as pilot, and instead notes that he’s a doctor. He becomes known as a doctor around the many wild parties held in the complex, and a new resident—the chief pediatrician at Smithers hospital—takes a great interest in him. The pediatrician escorts Abagnale around the hospital, and Frank begins to acquire medical knowledge through a combination of reading and dating an attractive nurse.
After a few weeks of hospital visits, the administrator pleads with Abagnale to take over for a resident supervisor who has experienced a death in the family. Assured that he won’t have to do much, Frank agrees. He survives his doctor performance by playing the role of a lazy, hands-off, happy-go-lucky rascal, and interns love him because he allows more freedom than other supervisors.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In these chapters, Abagnale’s interest in social performance extends to the airline industry. He remarks that in this industry, there is so much lingo and jargon it often feels like people are speaking in “airlinese.” Words often have a different connotation in “airlinese” than they do in regular English, as when the pilot asks Abagnale what kind of “equipment” he’s on, and is referring to airplanes. In order to speak this language convincingly as a fake pilot, Abagnale has to maintain a notebook of terms and significant names. This notebook serves as a kind of script for the role he is playing.
This quasi-script is crucial to Abagnale, and he is readily accepted as a copilot because he follows it to the letter. It is commonly assumed that an outsider of the industry could never speak “airlinese” so fluently (as per the policeman’s assessment—after talking to Abagnale—that someone must have made a mistake in regard to Abagnale not being a legitimate aviator). Abagnale recognizes this assumptive tendency, and it helps him to build confidence in his performative abilities. Likewise, he immediately recognizes the lack of confidence the police feel in their roles when they apprehend him in Miami.
It is important to note that most of Abagnale’s insider knowledge is obtained by dating stewardesses. In addition to being around attractive women (which is exciting to Abagnale, who has previously confessed his fixation with women), they are ideal educators, privy to many levels of airline operations. They are also more likely to be sympathetic to Abagnale and defer to his presumed copilot authority, as their professional status is beneath his status as a pilot. Though Abagnale represents all of these encounters as fun and consensual, the reader must take into account his position of implied power over these women. This position is further complicated by the fact that Abagnale is only pretending to be a copilot, raising a question of whether or not these women would be as forthcoming if they knew his true identity.
It is also important to note Abagnale’s habitual patterns in his descriptions of relationships. They are typically described in summary mode, rarely providing names, and only doing so when the female name in question is connected to a useful revelation for Abagnale’s scams. In Chapter Three, he notes that he “loved them for their minds” (51), which is true in the sense that he appreciates the industry knowledge, terminology, and protocol that stewardesses provide him with. The true extent of this “love” (as well as the meaning and genuineness of it) is left up to the reader’s critical imagination.
