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.
PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “Go Forward”
At the beginning of his autobiography, Gardner reflects on two events that helped him not only survive but thrive, even in the darkest circumstances.
The first was in the early 1980s, when, at age twenty-seven, outside San Francisco General Hospital, he saw a man in a “gorgeous, red convertible Ferrari 308” in search of a parking spot(1).Enamored by the “freedom, escape, [and] options” that the car represents, Gardner decided to offer the space where his own car was parked in exchange for information (3). Gardner asks the man about what he does and how he does it. The Ferrari driver replies that he is a stockbroker and will organize a few introductions for Gardner, who is “crazy enough to think I could do what he and others like him do, if only I can find an opening” (4).
The second event that formed his attitude happened in Milwaukee in 1970, shortly after his sixteenth birthday. Gardner was watching college basketball with his mother, Bettye Jean, and reflecting that two players, Artis Gilmore and Pembrook Burrows, would make a million dollars, his mother turns to him and vouches that, “If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars” (10). This is revelatory for Gardner, who has only seen other black men gain eminence through athletics or music, neither of which he is gifted at.
While Gardner is grateful to his mother’s confidence in him, the end of the Prologue is bittersweet, as he reflects that his mother’s dreams for herself had not come true. Nevertheless, he realizes that their stories are interwoven.
Prologue Analysis
Prior to beginning the autobiography’s narrative in full, Gardner highlights two events that shaped his optimistic attitude to life, which he was able to return to no matter how difficult his circumstances. Written in the first person, the autobiography addresses the reader directly, as it responds to the question often put to him of how he managed “not only to survive” his darkest days, but to “attain a level of success and fulfilment that once sounded impossible” (1). This premise goes to the heart of the book, the pursuit of happiness, referred to in the title.
The first incident of spotting the Ferrari driver who had the wealth and status Gardner aspired to, and asking him the secrets of his success, highlights the author’s signature inquisitiveness, which opens up opportunities for him.
The second incident of Gardner’s mother telling him that he could make a million dollars highlights the instrumental role that she plays in his life. The book is dedicated to her and in part acts as a fulfilment of the dreams that eluded her.
In the Prologue, and throughout the book, Gardner’s use of language is varied. There are conversational elements, profuse in colloquialisms that resemble spoken dialect: “For a kid like me” (1); “hood”(1); and “way high-tech” (7) are some examples. These lend the text an earthy immediacy, giving the impression that Gardner is present and directly addressing the reader.
There are also sensory elements to Gardner’s writing. He elaborates on the promised riches of the “gorgeous red convertible Ferrari 308 […] slowly circling the lot,” and San Francisco’s “city lights like rare jewels sparkling down from Nob Hill and Pacific Heights” (2). This technique makes Gardner’s aspirations concrete by demonstrating how he visualizes desired objects such as the Ferrari.
However, countering this immediacy are more reflective passages, where Gardner assesses important moments from the past retrospectively, and in terms of their impact. An important example of this relates to his mother’s belief in his capacity to make a million dollars: “Only after looking as deeply as I could into my mother’s life was I able to fully understand why she said those words to me at the time that she did” (11).
