93 pages • 3 hours read
Neal ShustermanFull Tilt
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2003A 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 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Blake approaches the next ride, which resembles the Kamikaze coaster in all ways but two: Each car only holds one rider, and the first hill reaches high into the clouds. He boards the front car of the ride, finding that his safety bar won’t latch. The coaster ascends the first hill, which takes Blake and the other riders high above the clouds. As it plummets down the hill, Blake’s car turns into a Japanese kamikaze aircraft. The others behind him do the same.
The squadron of planes nearly collides with an American battleship, but Blake takes control of his plane and pulls away. The other planes follow suit—Blake is the squadron leader. Though his plane constantly forces itself to dive into the ship, Blake learns to steer it. An American plane appears and shoots down one of the other rides. Cassandra pilots the plane. Blake and Cassandra engage in a dogfight, in which Blake’s plane is damaged. As he spirals toward the sea, Blake spots a console button with the spiral logo. He presses it, and the plane ejects him through a hole that opens in the sky above him.
Chapter 10 Summary
Blake lands in the carnival’s midway. Russ is already there. Blake convinces him to ride the final two rides together, but Russ attacks him with a steel pole. He made a deal with Cassandra: If he kills Blake, she’ll let him leave. Blake gets away and hides in a photo booth. He waits for the right opportunity and tackles Russ, taking the pole from him. Before he can hurt Russ, Russ begins to cry. He is desperate for a way out of the park.
Russ sees an exit sign over a revolving door on the midway. When he approaches, a trapdoor falls open beneath him; Russ falls into another room of gears and machinery. Blake cannot save him, and Cassandra appears again. Her confidence is fading, as is the integrity of the park. As they talk, Blake learns two things: He has made it further than anyone else in the park, and Cassandra was driving the car that caused his bus crash.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
Blake must face a literal fear in the form of the Kamikaze. The real-world coaster terrified Blake, but his memories of the ride are exaggerated in Cassandra’s park: “Nobody rode with a partner [and] the steep climb didn’t stop where it was supposed to; it just kept going up into a bright blue sky speckled with clouds” (110). When Blake rode the actual coaster, a second, empty line opened for him; here, the conductor removes another rider to give Blake a seat in the front car. The park strips away Blake’s excuses to put him face-to-face with his fears.
While the Kamikaze in Cassandra’s park is based on the plane models Blake keeps in his bedroom, the inclusion of airplanes points to another source of his anxiety—his flight to college: “I flashed on an image of my American Airlines ticket to New York” (113). Not only does the Kamikaze turn into a plane, but Blake must also pilot the uncooperative craft alone: “the control stick flew out of my grip […] The ride had taken control again” (116). The plane itself has a sense of destiny that could lead to its ruin. It takes action and decision-making to keep it intact.
Further, Blake’s actions do not affect him alone. He is the squadron leader. When he makes a decision, the people behind him follow. In the same way, Quinn, Maggie, and Russ rely on Blake to be their reliable constant. As the other planes in his squadron are destroyed, Blake must learn to fight alone. Without that skill, he cannot protect others. He reflects, “I hadn’t lived a real life—I’d had just a model of a life. Everything I did […] was suspended safely by strings […] Now those strings had been cut” (115). Rather than continue to ride, Blake chooses to eject himself from the plane; his journey is in his control. Despite his memories of the bus crash, he acts to save himself and others. In this sense, leaving his home life for college could save him from an unhappy adulthood.
Blake sees evidence of his progress when Cassandra reappears: “was I imagining it, or was something different about her now? […] Could it be apprehension? Uncertainty? It wasn’t just her […] The park seemed to be losing some of its integrity and coherence” (127). Blake is plagued by the illusion that his trauma dictates his destiny. As he gains inner strength, that illusion fades.
Blake and Cassandra’s connection deepens at the end of Chapter 10. Blake learns that he has survived more rides than any rider before him, which frustrates Cassandra. She brings up Blake’s trauma, and he acknowledges the truth under his larger fears: “I should be dead. I should have been dead a long, long time ago” (128). While the trauma of the crash often paralyzes him, he knows that he cheated destiny. For Cassandra, that’s personal: Blake realizes that she “pulled in front of our bus […] You made the bus crash!” (128). Blake’s survival stands in direct opposition to Cassandra, the root of his trauma.
Blake finally understands the key to his survival: “Maybe I was the one human being smack in the middle between [Cassandra’s] two extremes” (129). This correlates with the relationship between Blake and Quinn. Blake is overly cautious; Quinn is overly reckless. Their survival depends on finding commonality.
Related Titles
By Neal Shusterman
