54 pages • 1 hour read
Ernesto CisnerosFalling Short
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of Friendship in Overcoming Challenges
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of bullying and substance use disorder.
Isaac and Marco’s friendship illustrates how supportive friendships can be instrumental in overcoming life’s challenges and reaching one’s goals. The two boys are very close. Marco comments,
I’m not sure if everyone has a best friend like I do…I’m talking best friends who know you inside out…friends so close that they feel more like a brother or sister. That’s what I’ve got in Isaac. And I would do anything for him. Just like he’d do for me (181).
Marco repeatedly takes time to hear Isaac’s feelings about his parents fighting and struggles with school; in fact, Marco is the only person who Isaac trusts with his innermost thoughts and fears. Isaac, in turn, offers Marco a sympathetic ear when Marco needs to talk about his relationship with his father and his feelings of inadequacy.
The two boys provide one another with practical support in addition to emotional support. Isaac is a crucial part of Marco’s progress in basketball. He takes the time to explain the game and coach Marco for hours and hours. He talks Marco up to Coach Chavez and gets Marco through team tryouts. In this regard, Marco sees that Isaac is in some ways performing the role that he wishes his father would perform. During one practice in Isaac’s driveway, Marco comments, “After a few falls, Isaac holds me by the shoulders and guides me through the drill…all I can think about is how lucky I am to have him in my life…filling in” (153). Marco returns the favor by mentoring Isaac academically. He makes sure that Isaac is up early on their first day of school and helps Isaac become better organized that evening. He points out that Isaac is better at math than he thinks after Isaac completes Marco’s difficult math problem, and then he skips the first period to make sure that Isaac’s homework is done. He sits and does homework with Isaac on the night after tryouts, even though Isaac distracts him from his academic work.
In Chapter 46, after Marco’s inspirational speech about basketball being about tireless effort and teamwork, Marco credits Isaac with teaching him this. He then offers to teach the team some of the plays that Isaac has taught him. It is clear in this scene both how much Marco admires Isaac and how Isaac’s tutelage has shaped Marco. Marco has learned something important about basketball, and by extension, about challenges in life more generally. He now has the confidence to pass this wisdom on to others. Marco and Isaac demonstrate that while personal effort matters, it also helps to have and maintain strong friendships that make life’s challenges easier to overcome.
The Importance of Resilience and Perseverance
In Falling Short, Marco and Isaac face significant challenges: As they begin a new year at a new school, both boys are struggling with feelings of inadequacy, missing their fathers, and dealing with stress at home. By the end of the book, the boys have adjusted to their new school, managed to accomplish significant goals, and feel more confident in their abilities—despite the pressures they are under. The road to this happy ending is not a smooth one, however, and Isaac and Marco must demonstrate resilience and perseverance along the way to achieve their goals.
Marco’s journey to become a basketball player demonstrates his grit and determination. He does many hours of research, taking notes, diagramming plays, and practicing for countless hours. Even though he is terrible at first, not even able to consistently get the ball near the rim of the basket and completely unable to sink a shot, he keeps trying, demonstrating his resilience and dedication to achieving his goals, however difficult. When his mother comes out and makes a basket on her very first try, he does not give up. When he injures his finger, he does not give up. When he finally puts together the moves to make a layup, he is ecstatic, even though the ball does not go through the net. He “jump[s] up and down, rejoicing,” and starts to imagine himself “fighting off college recruiters by eighth grade” (139). His constant practice pays off when he makes the school basketball team. Marco also shows resilience when he goes back into the final tournament game, risking further embarrassment; he is rewarded with the glory of tying up the big game, earning both the crowd’s and his father’s approval.
Similarly, Isaac’s journey toward academic success shows how determination and hard work pays off. Although he almost failed fifth grade, by Chapter 47, he is maintaining a B average and has no missing assignments. Along the way, he has had to overcome distractions from his family life, including serious events like his father’s car accident and the ongoing stress of his parents’ dissolving marriage. He does not lose heart at the repeated failures of his organizational ability and memory; each time, he resolves to learn from his mistakes and improve, demonstrating his resilience and ability to overcome setbacks. Isaac explicitly credits perseverance for his academic improvements: He compares life to a game of basketball, saying, “[I]t pretty much comes down to the hustle we put in. Win or lose, you gotta keep shooting the ball—because eventually, it will go in” (285).
Feeling Inadequate Versus Being Enough
The book’s title alludes to the fact that both Marco and Isaac feel that they are “falling short” in some way. Isaac feels that his talents at basketball are not enough and that he needs to also excel at academics to make his parents proud of him and be proud of himself. Marco has the opposite problem: Although he is an academic standout, he feels that he must also demonstrate a talent for athletics. In both cases, the boys’ feelings are a response to pressures put on them by a parent, and in both cases, the boys must learn that feeling “enough” comes from inside, not from satisfying other people’s expectations of them.
Marco’s father neglects and ignores him, and when he does spend time with Marco, he makes it clear that he would like Marco better if he was an athlete. Marco recalls his father signing him up for soccer in kindergarten and then being disappointed as Marco fumbled his way through games. He and his father struggle to find anything to talk about on the few occasions when they are together because all his father cares about is athletics. Mr. Honeyman is unimpressed by Marco’s many academic honors and would rather see athletic trophies piling up. Marco works extremely hard to improve at basketball and does succeed in impressing his father with his performance in the tournament final. What Marco learns in the process, however, is that it is more important to do the things he does because they satisfy him and make him feel proud of himself. In this moment, he realizes that doing things simply to impress other people is not fulfilling. When Marco turns down his father’s invitation to dinner after the basketball tournament and suggests instead that he and his father might have dinner together after the robotics team championship, he makes it clear that in the future, his father will have to accept him exactly as he is if their relationship is to continue.
Although Isaac’s mother is more present and loving than Marco’s father, Isaac still feels pressured to please her and make her proud of him by improving his grades. Precisely because she is such a nurturing mother, Isaac is terrified of disappointing her. After his poor academic performance in fifth grade, he was devastated to see her “alone on the couch, crying” (18). He worries about the stress she is under and vows “no more tears for Amá—at least not because of me” (10). Vero reminds Isaac frequently that he needs to do better in school and scolds Isaac’s father for not doing more to help Isaac succeed academically; she even expresses a concern that basketball—the one thing Isaac feels truly good at—is too much of a distraction from academics. Just as Marco works very hard to get better at basketball, Isaac works very hard to improve his grades. He becomes more organized and prioritizes schoolwork and little by little, he starts to feel more in control of his academic life. By the end of the story, however, he realizes that his mother will love him unconditionally no matter what kind of grades he gets. He realizes that he is lucky to have a wonderful, supportive family and now understands the most important person to make proud is not his mother but himself.
