43 pages • 1 hour read
Chris GardnerThe Pursuit of Happyness
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Turned Out (advanced)”
Gardner’s relationship with Jackie is becoming fraught, given “the need for more money”(192). Gardner tries to figure out how to advance from his $30,000 salary at Van Waters and Rogers; however, his “pen-wielding” manager, Patrick, humiliates him in front of buyers (197). A month later, Gardner has his pivotal meeting with the Ferrari 308 owner, which is mentioned in the Prologue. The man is Bob Bridges, a stockbroker with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, who commands $80,000 per month.
Although Gardner is inexperienced in all matters concerning Wall Street, he is confident he can apply his principle of on-the-job training and go on a “hot, relentless pursuit” of career in stockbroking, knowing with “every fiber of (his) being that this is IT” (195).
Bob Bridges offers to introduce Gardner to some branch managers at brokerage firms in San Francisco. When he goes for interviews with larger firms like Merrill Lynch, he gets a rush simply being in the environment, the experience being “exactly what I felt the first time I heard Miles Davis and saw how his music could totally change the mood of everyone hearing it” (197).
However, Gardner is rejected at interviews on grounds not so much of racism as “place-ism”; that is, his connection to the market is obscure. When Gardner finally meets a man at E.F. Hutton, who is willing to give him a chance, he leaves his sales job. However, when the man who hires Gardner is fired, he has no job to go to, which is crushing for his self-confidence and his relationship with Jackie, who doubts his abilities.
After an argument, Jackie tries to run off and Gardner pulls her by the wrists. When he lets go, she falls into some rosebushes. She goes off and returns with two police officers, who arrest Gardner on the grounds of domestic violence. He ends up in jail—not for domestic violence, but for unpaid parking tickets, because he cannot afford the $1200 fine. As he is in jail, he cannot attend his interview at the brokerage firm Dean Witter, though he manages to reschedule it for the next day.
Out of jail, Gardner realizes that relationship with Jackie is over but hopes for an amicable solution. However, when he comes home, he finds her, Christopher and his stuff gone.
Chapter 10 Summary: “California Dreamin’”
Gardner turns up to his interview at Dean Witter in jeans and paint-speckled sneakers because he cannot access his other clothing. He ends up revealing his domestic troubles to his interviewer, Mr. Albanese, who empathizes greatly and hires Gardner. Cash-strapped, Gardner crashes on friends’ couches and borrows their ill-fitting suits. He spends his time learning on the job, studying for the required exam, and trying to track down Christopher and reunite with him.
Eventually, Gardner manages to find a low-cost rooming house in Oakland and takes BART into the Financial district. He applies “OJT” to his work as a stockbroker and reinforces his self-belief that “[n]o matter what I had in my pocket, no matter what my suit cost, nobody could prevent me from acting as if I was a winner. Nobody could prevent me from acting as if my problems were all in the process of being solved” (222).
Gardner decides to carve out his own niche in stockbroking because he notices that “the major players were the few brokers who did their own thing—putting time into research and combining traditional and nontraditional ways of getting the biggest bang for their clients’ bucks and themselves”(222).
He passes his exam with a score of 88% and is soon set up as ‘Broker of the Day’ for walk-in clients, many of whom are surprised that their stockbroker is black. Incensed by their racism, Gardner returns to doing business on the phone, which becomes “his color shield” (227).
After much debate in court over Christopher, Jackie shows up at the rooming house one day and hands him over to Gardner. Gardner and his son are immediately homeless, because children are not permitted to stay at the rooming house.
In haste, Gardner finds an inexpensive daycare option for Christopher and they reside at a hotel frequented by prostitutes, who take pity on them and give them a share of their earnings. Sometimes father and son sleep at the office as well.
Eventually, they are able to stay at the homeless hotel founded by Glide Memorial Church’s pastor, the Reverend Cecil Williams. While life is still stressful, as the rules of the hostel dictate that they cannot stay there at night, Gardner maintains his positive focus: “As long as I could stay in the light, figuratively speaking, by keeping my focus on what I could control, worry and fear were kept at bay” (241).
Gardner feels fully the irony of his dual life, where by night, homeless with his young son, he experiences “the dark side of California dreaming,” and in daytime he lives “the great American dream, pursuing opportunity, pushing myself to the limits and loving every minute of it” (245).
When Gardner can afford an apartment, he finds a little house with a “rosebush in the ghetto,” owned by an old man who has been using the dwelling as a storage unit (248). Gardner and his son are no longer homeless.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
In these chapters, Gardner catches sight of the American Dream when he decides to become a stockbroker. To dramatize the contrast between his disadvantaged origins and lack of formal qualifications and his ambitions, Gardner breaks from the chronological scope of his narrative to directly address the reader with his philosophies for success: “Besides not having gone to college, I don’t know anybody and have no connections or special privileges to help me even get a foot in the door. That is, except for Bob Bridges, who I don’t know from Adam, other than the fact I gave him my parking space”(195). The repetition of negatives in this sentence enhances Gardner’s lack of privilege and makes his achievement seem all the more outstanding.
While Gardner’s self-belief is extraordinary, he still has to counter rejection, doubt and prejudice. His partner, Jackie, doubts in him and is a crucial factor in destroying their relationship. There is also the rejection of the brokerage firms, which will not give him a chance based on his lack of experience, and the racism he encounters as “Broker of the Day” by clients who refuse to do business with a black stockbroker. Most of all, in his struggle as a homeless single father, he has to do battle with the bullying, negative voice in his head, a voice that sounds remarkably like Freddie Triplett, telling him he is not good enough.
Underlying Gardner’s predicament as a homeless stockbroker is the sense of irony that someone in the most lucrative line of work can be so badly off; it exposes the failure of capitalism to provide housing that even working people can afford. While homeless, Gardner and Christopher are able to survive as a result of ordinary people, such as the Reverend Cecil Williams and the prostitutes they encounter while living at a motel.
