76 pages • 2 hours read
Harlan CobenNo Second Chance
Fiction | Novel | Adult | 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.
Themes
The Generational Effects of Parental Failure
A central theme of the novel is that most of the families portrayed have been damaged or are threatened in some manner. Marc’s family was severely disrupted by his father’s strokes. While Marc does not blame his father’s illness for Stacy’s addiction issues, her depression was likely left untreated for longer than it would have been without the focus on her father’s health, which may have contributed to self-medicating through drugs. Marc’s new nuclear family implodes in spectacular fashion when his wife attempts to kill him, and Tara disappears. Monica and Marc share a failure of communication that results in Monica’s insecurity overwhelming their family. It is a joint failure of their responsibility to Tara.
The Portmans have also irreparably damaged their family. Monica believed, before her death, that her brother committed suicide on purpose, and she blamed her father. While there is no concrete evidence that Edgar is at fault in the death of his son, Dina can vouch that Monica’s mother actually did physically and emotionally abuse her. This abuse primed her to believe she was unloved by everyone except Tara. Monica’s decision to attempt to kill Marc is a result of her mother’s prior actions. As the reader can see, not only are children damaged by their parents, but they can grow up to become adults who damage their own progeny as well.
The Levinskys are another example of a family damaged by a terrible parent, this time with Mr. Levinsky publicly beating his wife and privately sexually abusing his daughter. Dina grows up to be a severely impacted and unhappy adult, who has not been able to move past her abuse at the hands of her father. She repeatedly returns to the scene of the abuse to confront it, but the very fact that she needs to come back month after month indicates that this is only a temporary solution. She is unable to maintain healthy romantic relationships and remains averse to sex because of her father’s abuse.
While these families are damaged to the point of breaking, there are a few families that are threatened in the novel, but they survive relatively unscathed through different methods. This includes Verne’s family, Lenny’s family, and the Tansmore family. While Verne and Katarina’s son is kidnapped and Katarina is assaulted by her brother, their son is quickly returned, and their family remains whole. This is possibly because Verne decides to go on the offensive with Marc against the kidnappers. Lenny, on the other hand, believes that Marc’s situation threatens his family because it may expose his actions and send him to jail. However, Lenny is willing to do anything to save his family, including betraying Marc to Bacard and finally killing Bacard to silence him. The Tansmores, on the other hand, are moral people and offer to break up their own family in order to best serve Tara. This sparks something in Marc, who decides to add himself to their family instead of subtracting his daughter.
Loss of Control and Controlling One’s Emotions
Marc’s loss of control is a recurring theme throughout the book. Marc has the personality and tendencies of a cocky surgeon, at one point remarking, “Of course, I also knew that this was how they worked, how the police played the game, but I’m a doctor. Worse, a surgeon. We often make the mistake of thinking we’re smarter than everyone else” (31). This arrogance often collides with the fact that Marc has definitely lost control of his life. He cannot understand why he was shot, why his wife is dead, and why his daughter is missing. The people who claim to have his daughter keep her from him for a year and a half, which Marc is helpless to prevent. They are able to unilaterally end communication with him, and all he can do is wait.
Much like a noir gumshoe, Marc loses consciousness during his narrative: once when the novel begins with him in a coma and again when he falls from Pavel’s car after the second ransom drop. Marc attempts to maintain control when he is conscious through his technique of compartmentalizing his emotions, and is mostly successful, although his need to control himself makes him a difficult partner for Rachel to open up with. While he mostly keeps control of his emotions, he fails badly in Tatiana’s motel room and angrily shoots a lamp to intimidate a scared, pregnant teen.
The most obvious means through which the book communicates Marc’s loss of control is through the motif of switching away from Marc’s first-person narration to third-person omniscient narration that focuses on particular characters. The first instance of this, as discussed in the analysis for Chapters 8-14, takes place when Lydia steals the spotlight in a solo chapter that barely mentions Marc. Other characters, including Rachel, also take the spotlight as appropriate. This narrative switching illustrates that while Marc may not be in control, Lydia is not the only person to take that control from him. His allies are able to act with agency as well, which is different from Lydia taking the stage in his stead.
A larger thematic point is the national sense of loss of control after 9/11 that is mirrored in Marc’s struggle to regain control over his life. Like Marc, the nation had its illusion of existing in a safe space shattered. The novel does not go out of its way to suggest this connection, but the allusions to 9/11 while Marc is on his mission are hard to miss. Both Marc and the country are looking to regain normal footing, but only Marc finds solace in a new normal. For Marc, it is his new family with the Tansmores. For America, two wars were launched, and Osama Bin Laden was eventually found, but solace has been harder to come by.
The Corrosive Nature of Secrets
Secrecy is a big theme throughout the novel, along with their occasionally deeply corrosive nature. Lenny lies to Marc about Monica and Tara with the best of intentions, hoping to spare Marc pain and give him the closure of thinking Tara is dead after the failed first ransom drop. Until Bacard initiates the second ransom exchange, Lenny’s plan goes well. However, by the end of the novel, Lenny has committed murder and lied so much to his best friend that it has killed the friendship. Lenny is able to be with his family, but the cost is high, and Lenny must live with the knowledge of what he has done.
Marc has one large secret he believes he has kept from Monica, but as Dina reveals, Monica knew that Marc kept the picture with Rachel from college locked away. Marc’s inability to put his idealized past with Rachel away sours his relationship with his wife. While Marc is not physically cheating on his wife with Rachel, it is clear from his difficulty in clearly stating that he loved his wife that he was still emotionally pining for Rachel. This one secret is big enough that it destroys his family and nearly kills him.
Monica keeps secrets from Marc, but they are mostly in response to Marc’s large one. She has not been emotionally unfaithful, but Dina reveals that Monica had tried to get pregnant on purpose so that Marc would not leave her. It is also clear from Marc’s reaction to Dina that Monica never mentioned her mother’s abuse before. Likewise, Monica’s friendship with Dina was a secret, along with her visit to Dina’s psychiatrist. The fact that she heard Rachel’s voicemail, as well as the fact that she hired MVD and acquired photographs of Rachel outside Marc’s workplace, were all secrets. Even her contact with Marc’s sister, Stacy, was a secret from Marc. The tragedy of Marc and Monica is that a simple conversation would have stopped violence from breaking out. While they might have ended up divorced from each other, Monica would at least have learned that Marc had no plans to take Tara away from her.
Rachel’s secrets are more varied, with some becoming corrosive, despite coming from good intentions. For instance, her coverup of her husband’s suicide is so corrosive that she is forced out of the FBI. She is at least able to see this connection, however. Her call to Marc and subsequent aborted attempt to meet with him at his workplace results in repercussions Rachel could never have imagined. As a result of Marc’s secret, Monica is already on edge when Rachel starts trying to contact Marc after her husband commits suicide. These attempts from Rachel push Monica over the edge into assuming that Rachel and Marc are plotting against her.
Katarina’s secret, while tremendous, manages not to become corrosive because of how Verne reacts. She explains that she lied about her past so he would not know he was marrying a former sex worker and admits to selling a baby to alleviate her poverty. Someone who loves their wife less than Verne does might have some lingering issues with her prolonged dishonesty, but Verne forgives her instantly and adopts a protective stance with her. Some secrets clearly don’t do damage, but it depends upon which character is keeping secrets, who they’re being kept from, and the strength of the relationship between the two characters.
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By Harlan Coben
