Rumble Fish

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1975

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary

Rusty-James goes to a free clinic on the pretense that he has bumped his head and needs aspirin. However, when the doctor insists that he should go to the hospital and get X-rays and tests done, Rusty-James refuses, despite his unusual physical symptoms such as ear-ringing and hearing loss. He leaves the doctor’s and steals a bottle of aspirin from the drugstore. He takes seven of them and feels a little better.

He goes by Steve’s house and sees that Steve’s father has beaten him up for returning home late with a girl’s makeup all over his shirt. He proposes to Steve that they go and follow the Motorcycle Boy around for a while. When Steve asks why, it catches Rusty-James off-guard: “I hadn’t really thought about why myself. It just seemed like something that needed doing” (70). When Steve refuses, Rusty-James is scared; the turbulent state of his mind, which is “seeing things through distorted glass” (70), unnerves him. Steve insists that he will not help Rusty-James, and that the Motorcycle Boy is “nuts” (71). Rusty-James gets angry and defensive, but Steve says that he has to look after his own future interests at the expense of looking after his friend. Rusty-James cannot bear Steve’s pitying looks and his implication that Rusty-James’s idolization of the Motorcycle Boy will be his downfall. Rusty-James only knows that he wants to be like his older brother—“to be tough like him, and stay calm and laughing when things got dangerous” (72). When Rusty-James leaves Steve’s house, that is the last time the two boys see each other until their meeting years later.

Chapter 10 Summary

Rusty-James goes to Benny’s and is telling people there an exaggerated version of last night’s escapade when Patty strides in on Smokey’s arm. Rusty-James learns that Smokey and Patty have begun dating. He insists on talking to Smokey outside and asks him if he orchestrated the trip to the lake hoping to break up Rusty-James and Patty. Smokey admits that this was his exact plan and says that if there were still gangs, Smokey would be president and not Rusty-James: “[Y]ou might make it a while on the Motorcycle Boy’s rep, but you ain’t got his brains. You have to be smart to run things” (76). Rusty-James admits that Smokey is “number one tough cat now” (76), and that the only way he could get his reputation back would be to fight him.

B.J. Jackson, Rusty-James’s other friend, reports that the Motorcycle Boy is in the pet store looking at the fish. He warns that the brothers should look out for Patterson, who is still on their trail.

At the pet store, the Motorcycle Boy is looking at some Siamese fighting fish that are in separate bowls in order to stop them from killing each other. These so-called rumble fish are so aggressive that were they to see their own reflection in a mirror, they would kill themselves fighting it. Although the Motorcycle Boy largely ignores Rusty-James, Rusty-James keeps following him because “it seem[s] like the only thing [he] ha[s] left to do” (79).

Chapter 11 Summary

Both Rusty-James and the Motorcycle Boy go home. Rusty-James remembers how on the night of the last rumble, he sustained knife injuries from a rival gang, whereas the Motorcycle Boy sent three people to the hospital while laughing out loud. When their father comes home, Rusty-James asks him if his mother left them because she was “nuts” (81). His father just laughs and says that his mother left when she thought their marriage had stopped being fun. The father adds that the Motorcycle Boy is no more “crazy” than his mother; rather, it is as though he is “miscast in a play” (82), not fitting into either his time or circumstances. When Rusty-James wishes aloud that he will grow to look more like the Motorcycle Boy, the father implies that Rusty-James is wishing for something that will damage him.

That night, the Motorcycle Boy breaks into the pet store and liberates the animals from their cages, including the Siamese fighter fish, which he intends to put into the river. Rusty-James, who followed his brother, is terrified and crying; the Motorcycle Boy was at the store there earlier, so the police are likely to catch him.

The police soon catch up with the brothers; they fatally shoot the Motorcycle Boy and arrest Rusty-James. With horror, Rusty-James realizes that he seems to have inherited the Motorcycle Boy’s color blindness and hearing loss. He knows that he has also inherited his loneliness—the sensation that he is “in a glass bubble and everyone else [is] outside it” (85). Patterson is on the scene, refuting another cop’s claim that Rusty-James is in shock, but Rusty-James slashes his own hands on the car window so that they have to take him to hospital.

Chapter 12 Summary

This chapter jumps forward to Rusty-James’s reunion with Steve. The two men are on the beach. Steve says it’s good they aren’t in their hometown; Rusty-James looks so much like the Motorcycle Boy that he would give people a shock. Steve, who is proud of having worked hard to get out of the neighborhood, wants to resume their friendship and reminisce. Rusty-James is adamant that he will not meet with Steve again, because he wants to forget everything that happened in the neighborhood. He acknowledges to himself, however, that forgetting is difficult.

Chapters 9-12 Analysis

Hinton’s novel concludes with the Motorcycle Boy’s destruction and death. His fighting has already gained him the most fearsome reputation in the neighborhood, and he can find nothing new of substance to channel his initiative into. As a result, he sets the scene for his own destruction by breaking into the pet store that he visited earlier that same afternoon. It is all too easy for his nemesis, the cop Patterson, to catch up with him and kill him while pretending that he fired a warning shot. The Motorcycle Boy’s obsession with the Siamese fighting fish, which are so belligerent that a mirror can cause them to kill “themselves fighting their own reflection” (79), is a portent of his own plan self-annihilation. Having gained the status of supreme fighter, the Motorcycle Boy’s only rival is his “reflection”—that is, his reputation—and in the manner of the fish, he determines to destroy it.

Meanwhile, although Rusty-James clings to his old dream of resembling his brother and keeps pointing out the likeness to anyone who will listen, Steve’s warning that the Motorcycle Boy is mentally unstable begins to penetrate his thoughts. However, even as he is starting to realize that his brother is no simple hero, circumstances and his own insecurities conspire to ensure Rusty-James keeps following him. First, Smokey succeeds Rusty-James as Patty’s boyfriend and “number one tough cat” (76), damaging the latter’s reputation with his peers (76). Smokey cruelly adds that Rusty-James’s vulnerability to his scheme proves that he is not like his smart brother and can no longer ride on his reputation. Smokey’s comment hurts Rusty-James, because it hits him where he is already weak. Next, Steve abandons Rusty-James in order to focus on his future prospects. Thus, a depressed Rusty-James resorts to literally and figuratively following his brother’s footsteps more out of despair than desire. Hinton builds a claustrophobic sense of fatalism when she describes Rusty-James following the Motorcycle Boy to the pet shop and entering the setup that will see him sent to the reformatory for five years. Like his brother, he is another rumble fish, fighting his own best interests. In a supernatural touch, Rusty-James takes on the physical symbols of his now deceased brother’s disconnection from others, such as color blindness and hearing loss, both of which contribute to the sensation that he is alone in a glass bubble.

The father’s prophecy thus proves true, as Rusty-James’s naive wish to be like his brother becomes a nightmarish curse. Although his stint in the reformatory sees Rusty-James giving up destructive behaviors such as drinking, he emerges resembling the Motorcycle Boy more than ever, both physically and in his wish to be numb to the past by forgetting it. Ironically, in forgetting the Motorcycle Boy and his destruction, Rusty-James gains his brother’s veneer of a cool, indifferent street fighter. However, when his meeting with Steve causes him to remember the Motorcycle Boy, Rusty-James stands a chance of rediscovering the human side that makes him fundamentally different from his brother.