82 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer EganA Visit from the Goon Squad
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2010A 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
Part A
Chapter 3 Summary: Ask Me If I Care
It is 1979. The teenager Rhea belongs to a group of kids who form a punk band, currently called The Flaming Dildos. Rhea is in love with Bennie, but Bennie is in love with Alice, who is in love with Scotty, and Scotty is most interested in Jocelyn, who is in love with a music executive named Lou Kline. Rhea feels that nobody loves her because her freckles make her undesirable. As Jocelyn—who is Rhea’s best friend—spends more time with Lou, Rhea tries to befriend Alice, but Alice distrusts her. Bennie arranges for the band to play at Mabuhay Gardens. Jocelyn convinces Lou to come and see the band. Lou takes Rhea and Jocelyn out for dinner before the gig; he gives them cocaine and puts an arm around each of them, and “like that, we’re Lou’s girls” (50). At the show, Lou takes a professional interest in Bennie. Rhea sees Jocelyn perform oral sex on Lou, “while Lou mashes Jocelyn’s head against himself again and again, so I don’t know how she can breathe, until it starts to seem like she’s not even Jocelyn, but some kind of animal or machine that can’t be broken” (53). Because he still has his arm around Rhea, she experiences Lou’s physical response to Jocelyn. After the show, the band members go to a party at Lou’s house. Lying on Lou’s bed, Rhea tries to tell Jocelyn how she’s feeling, but can’t find the words, then Lou comes into the room and Rhea leaves them alone. With the party still going on in the living room, Rhea goes out to the balcony, and eventually Lou joins her. When Rhea reminds him of his age and the fact that he has six children, Lou says, “I’ll never get old,” to which Rhea replies, “You’re already old” (56). Lou begins to speak to her as a father would, telling her not to change, promising her that someday someone will fall in love with her.
Two weeks later, Bennie and Scotty aren’t speaking to each other. When Jocelyn runs away from home, Rhea and Bennie help to find her. Lou assures Jocelyn’s family that she is fine and that he will bring her home when he comes to San Francisco in two weeks. Rhea and Alice start spending more time together.
Chapter 4 Summary: Safari
Lou Kline is on a safari vacation in Kenya with his two adolescent children, Rolph and Charlie, and his girlfriend Mindy, among others. His daughter Charlie resents his relationship with Mindy and “has begun to act like a different sort of girl—the sort that intimidates her back home” (61). Lou confides his concerns about Charlie to his son Rolph, telling him that all women are crazy. Mindy, an anthropology student, views her position in the group in terms of the theorists she’s been studying: Charlie is jealous of her relationship with Lou, Rolph wants to please his father and so is fond of her, Lou can only love her temporarily, and she is attracted to Albert because he “disdains her mate’s power” (65). Observing a group of lions devouring a zebra, the tourists stand up in the vehicle to get a better view from the sunroof. Mindy and Albert stay seated and have a discreet conversation in which they confess to a mutual attraction. A lion attacks Chronos when he jumps out to take a photo. Albert shoots the lion, saving Chronos. Rolph worries about what will happen to the lion cubs. That night, while Mindy takes Rolph back to his room, they meet Albert. Thinking Mindy is being rude to Albert, Rolph remembers his father’s words, “Women are crazy” (74).
Some days later, Charlie and Rolph have a conversation about their father. Rolph tells Charlie that their father doesn’t love their mother anymore, and Charlie tells Rolph that Lou is tired of Mindy. Later, Rolph tells Lou about how Mindy treated Albert. Lou, who has found Mindy to be much more amorous in the past few days, says, “Women are cunts” (78). Rolph rejects his father’s outburst. That night, Charlie and Rolph talk about Mindy and realize that now Rolph dislikes her and Charlie doesn’t mind her.
The narrator reveals what will happen to the characters in the future: Mindy will go on to marry Lou and have two children with him and work as a travel agent to support them. Later in life, she will resume her academic career. Charlie will, for a time, be a member of a cult in Mexico. Rolph will become estranged from his father and commit suicide at the age of twenty-eight.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In Chapters 3 and 4, the novel’s timeline extends further into the past, connecting Bennie Salazar—and Sasha by association—with Lou Kline, the man who discovered Bennie’s talent when he was sixteen years old. When Lou, who is in his mid-forties in “Ask Me If I Care,” insists to Rhea, “I am your age” (56), he demonstrates the kind of anxiety Bennie is experiencing at the same age in “The Gold Cure.” The scene in which Lou shares cocaine with Rhea and Jocelyn can be read as a mirror of the scene in which Lou shares gold flakes with Sasha and Chris. In fact, the comparison between the gold and the narcotic is made explicit, as Bennie considers that “a coke habit would have cost him less” (26).
Chronos, whose name is Greek for time, serves to reinforce the novel’s interest in time. Chronos is reckless and the tattoo of Medusa on his chest has thematic implications. Medusa is a character in Greek mythology most famous for her ability to turn creatures into stone with her gaze. It is also noteworthy that the Medusa character starts life as a beautiful girl and is later transformed into a terrifying monster. .
The tattoo creates a juxtaposition between an uncontrollable character named Time and a monster who threatens stillness or lack of change. This pairing of Chronos and Medusa acknowledges both the threat of change and the specter of eternal stasis.
In Chapters 3 and 4, we see the pairing of characters emerge as a narrative technique. In “Ask Me If I Care,” Rhea and Jocelyn appear as flip sides of one coin. Together, they are Lou’s girls, but each in her individual way reveals opposing facets of his character; Jocelyn reveals Lou to be the predatory male obsessed with youth, while Rhea experiences Lou as a protective father figure. In “Safari,” the conversations between Charlie and Rolph reveal varying perspectives on the relationship between Lou and Mindy. As the novel progresses, we see that the story of any given character is told from a number of different perspectives, complicating our sense of them.
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By Jennifer Egan
