53 pages • 1 hour read
Torrey MaldonadoTight
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Ms. Pac-Man
The maze gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man, the “old school” video game that Bryan and his friends play at the arcade next to the bodega, symbolizes the confusing and often treacherous terrain of middle-school life and the hazards of the protagonist’s tough neighborhood. In the game, the title character (Ms. Pac-Man) must navigate increasingly complex mazes while avoiding “ghosts” that pursue her and threaten her life. Bryan, who has just entered sixth grade and is allowed to have friends for the first time, faces an equally expanded labyrinth of choices, many of which are exciting but can also be misleading and even dangerous to his physical safety and emotional well-being. For instance, his new friend Mike represents taking the wrong path in the maze, for following Mike brings Bryan to places he never wanted to go. The two-faced Mike is therefore like one of the ghosts in Ms. Pac-Man that change color throughout the game; sometimes Mike is friendly and beneficial, but mostly he is a hazard to be avoided. Significantly, Mike resents Bryan’s skill at Ms. Pac-Man just as he derides Bryan for avoiding him and resisting his pressure to engage in risky, illegal behavior.
On the other hand, Big Will, an expert at navigating the mazes of middle school and their Brooklyn neighborhood, bonds with Bryan over the game and praises his progress. Bryan’s physical surroundings therefore mirror the image of the treacherous maze that Ms. Pac-Man must navigate, for Bryan too must find his way through the overt threats of dangerous streets and locales (such as “Crazy Corner,” where the “wild guys” hang out), and he compares his need to dodge the speeding cars on the highway to Ms. Pac-Man’s challenge of dodging the “ghosts in the game” (78).
Eyes
In Tight, a novel with very sparse descriptions of people and things, eyes are among the few physical attributes of its characters that the author describes in any detail. As the most expressive aspect of the human face, eyes serve as windows into the true feelings and personalities of the characters, who often are unaware how profoundly their eyes reflect their thoughts and emotions. For example, whenever Bryan has been in an altercation or has been playing video games for a long time, his family notices the “hyped, wild” look in his eyes, which reminds them of his father’s habitual loss of emotional control just before he resorts to violence. This comparison disturbs Bryan, who hates “feeling like Pa can get” (50). Later, when his father is arrested for assault, Bryan is somewhat pleased when neighbors tell him that he has his father’s eyes, since it makes him feel tough, like he can “handle anything” while his Pa is in jail.
Eyes and their expressiveness are also associated with Mike, who tries with mixed success to hide his true personality from those he attempts to manipulate. For example, upon beating Mike in a game of Ms. Pac-Man, Bryan notices Mike “staring” at him in a “weird, jealous” way that reveals his true envy of Bryan’s skill at the game. In this moment, Mike’s friendly mask has fallen away, and he inadvertently reveals some of his true feelings about Bryan. Likewise, when Bryan and Mike are watching a UFC fight on TV, Mike tells him to look at the fighters’ eyes, claiming that the one who avoids his opponent’s gaze is “shook” and will lose the fight. Later, when he is actively obeying his mother’s orders to avoid Mike, Bryan repeatedly sees Mike staring at him with “boiling” rage in the halls; from this behavior, Bryan says, he “should’ve known something was coming” (148). As it happens, Bryan wins the fight with Mike that follows, after “exploding” on him in the same manner that has repeatedly landed his father in jail. Later, his father “eyes” him a few times and winks: He jokes, proudly, that Bryan has inherited his “temper.” Bryan’s eyes, so like his father’s, are the novel’s main foreshadowing of his potential for violence, and the same holds true for other characters as well.
Superheroes
The younger male characters in Tight are all well-versed in superhero lore, especially that of Batman, Black Panther, the Flash, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Superman, and Daredevil, which they know from reading DC and Marvel comic books and watching superhero-themed TV shows. These imaginary beings hold a surprisingly prominent place in their lives, mainly because of the clear-cut guidelines they seem to superimpose over life’s many complexities, as well as the power fantasies they provide for young boys who often feel powerless in their own situations.
Although Bryan rarely has money to buy comics, he reads them in the store and bonds with other boys like Mike, Big Will, and Kamau over his knowledge of the characters. A favorite debate among these boys is which of their powers they would like to have, and thus the fictional superheroes take on the status of invisible role models for the boys. For example, Bryan sometimes wishes that he had Luke Cage’s indestructability, the Flash’s speed, or Black Panther’s superhuman intelligence. Ever since their debut in the 1930s, superhero comics have held a special allure for children and young adults, who often feel a lack of power over their own lives; likewise, Bryan and Mike, who live in a rough neighborhood and must navigate unreliable family dynamics, use the concepts represented by comic-book superheroes to navigate their own wishes and fears. However, hard experience soon teaches them that life is not a comic book. Upon winning a fistfight with Mike, Bryan feels at first like Luke Cage: “unbreakable” and physically invincible. Only later does he realize that his anger and violence have made things worse, not better. By the novel’s conclusion, he finally understands that, unlike Luke Cage, he can be hurt, and he therefore comes to value the far-seeing intelligence of Batman or Black Panther instead of Luke Cage’s innate violence. Providing a counter to Bryan’s daydreams of superpowers, his older sister Ava watches a TV show that realistically portrays people like the ones in their neighborhood, and whose message is that people are more complex than “heroes” or “villains,” and that problems should be talked out, not fought about.
