43 pages • 1 hour read
Jerry SpinelliA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Suds is the protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. Through his perspective, the novel explores common themes of growing up, redefining identity, integrity, and coping with peer pressure. As he works on Navigating the Path to Preadolescence, his inner conflicts drive the events and structure of the novel. From the very first page of the book, Suds struggles with the transition from third grade to fourth grade and buckles under the new social pressures that this transition brings to his life. Unlike Joey, Suds is not eager to become a rat; his sensitive and socially conscious nature conflict with the rebellious and oftentimes cruel rat persona that he is pressured to adopt, creating cognitive dissonance as Suds tries to balance social acceptance with personal integrity and temporarily loses the battle.
Throughout the novel, Joey pressures Suds to become a rat, and this external pressure leads to Suds’s internal conflict as the protagonist struggles with his changing identity and the unkind things he does to others in his quest to become a rat. The narrative immediately establishes Suds’s dissimilarity to Joey in Chapter 1; whereas Joey expresses excitement at being a rat, Suds is initially reluctant. Suds begins the novel yearning wistfully for the past and struggling with the idea of growing beyond his childhood. He resists the thought of losing things from his childhood, such as his lunchbox or his teddy bear, Winky. His difficulty in letting go of these objects represents his reluctance to embrace the transition into preadolescence. This emotional reaction makes him susceptible to adopting Joey’s unhealthy approach to this important social transition.
Even in his worst moments, Suds’s gentle nature contradicts the rat persona he tries to adopt. Suds is most uncomfortable with situations that require him to hurt others, such as when Joey encourages him to kick the kids off the swings. As Suds states, “I kept seeing the girl’s eyes as she ran. It was the first time anyone had ever been afraid of me. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it” (23). Similarly, in Chapter 8, Suds cannot bring himself to take a Twinkie from a child during his “training camp” (84) to become a rat. However, the negative forces of peer pressure ultimately motivate Suds to fully embrace the persona of a rat. Suds is also motivated by the thought of winning Judy Billings’s affection, and this goal drives him to overcome his qualms and engage in deeply disruptive and hurtful behavior.
Suds finally achieves clarity on his identity and the process of growing up during the novel’s climax. As he balances high on a tree limb, Suds reflects on his recent actions and backs away from his false identity, realizing that for all his posturing, he is no more than “a scared kid up a tree” (119). In this moment, Suds casts off the persona he has temporarily adopted and honestly acknowledges his own emotions and fears, demonstrating a shift to a more authentic perspective. The novel’s conclusion reinforces this growth, for Suds’s reflection that he didn’t like himself when he was a rat demonstrates his ability to renounce peer pressure and connect with his true self. In the end, Suds achieves a new measure of maturity by demonstrating an evolved perspective of himself and his social responsibility. Suds’s character arc therefore demonstrates that one does not need to abandon the trappings of childhood in order to become an adult. Instead, honest internal growth is what propels a young person onto a constructive path toward adulthood.
Joey is Suds’s best friend, and his character is a clear foil to Suds for the majority of the novel. In contrast to Suds’s reluctance, Joey embraces the ideal becoming a rat. Joey’s actions also highlight the central issue of The Costs of Succumbing to Peer Pressure. Similarly, his shallow beliefs about adulthood provide a contrast against which Jerry Spinelli begins to establish The True Meaning of Maturity. Joey’s disruptive presence is therefore a necessary component that allows the author to deliver the primary message of the novel. Joey’s chief motivation is the need to assert himself in the school social hierarchy, and this leads him to reject all former aspects of his identity in favor of becoming a true rat.
Joey’s dissimilarity to Suds is established from the very beginning. While Suds laments the loss of their third grade “angel” status, Joey has “waited three years to be a rat” (3). To Joey, being a rat means displaying power and asserting dominance over others. He has no qualms about pushing younger kids off swings or openly defying his mother. This impulse, however, stems from a prior lack of power that Joey felt as a younger bullied student. Spinelli inserts a hint into Joey’s motivations during a scene in which Suds remembers an incident of fourth grade bullying with laughter, while Joey remembers it with bitterness. Thus, Joey uses his behavior to regain a sense of justice for the unfair treatment he received at the hands of older children several years ago.
Throughout the novel, Joey is determined to leave anything childish behind. He latches onto stereotypical expressions of masculinity as an external validation of what he believes to be his new maturity. For example, he criticizes Suds’s lunch in Chapter 2 and pushes him to eat meat instead of peanut butter and jelly. Similarly, when faced with Suds’s display of emotion, he insists that rats don’t cry. This false “tough-guy” demeanor is designed to emphasize toxic aggression, and Spinelli’s humorous approach to writing shines through as Joey takes this trend to ridiculous extremes by adorning himself with fake tattoos and a sweatband asserting himself to be “Number 1.” Joey’s immature obsession with becoming a man establishes his own difficulties in Navigating the Path to Preadolescence, thereby evoking the novel’s exploration of the confusion over self-identity that characterizes this stage of life.
At the end of the novel, however, Joey learns that his behavior is unacceptable and tries to make amends. Yet because his apology is made at his mother’s behest, it remains unclear just how much internal growth he has undergone. When he apologizes to Suds, Joey’s awkward body language suggests that the apology may be somewhat disingenuous. Because Joey does not appear in the novel after this point, Spinelli leaves the extent of this character’s development unclear. In the end, Joey’s ambiguous growth highlights Suds’s definite progression toward greater maturity. While Joey may still be coping with navigating his new social identity, Suds has achieved a new understanding of himself and his place in the world.
Judy is a minor, static character who reinforces the role that even indirect peer pressure can play in motivating identity changes during the transition to preadolescence. Judy is superficial and inconsiderate of others and is driven by the need to achieve her own popularity. To this end, she displays interest in Joey after he impresses everyone by withstanding a bee sting, and she shows no interest in Suds until others admire him for a similar feat later in the novel. After Suds reveals his fear of heights, however, Judy loses interest in him and abandons him. Her cruel indifference teaches Suds a valuable lesson about popularity and authenticity, showing him that changing one’s identity to win the approval of others is ultimately a fruitless goal.
At the beginning of the novel, Judy is characterized only through Suds’s biased eyes, for he states, “[T]here was no such thing as pain when Judy Billings was around. I loved her. I was sure that any day she would start to love me back. In the meantime, she mostly ignored me” (4). He idealizes her and doesn’t acknowledge that her habit of ignoring him implies that she is not worth his energy or his effort, for she is essentially a shallow person, even if Suds can’t yet see it. Judy’s first direct interaction with Suds and Joey in Chapter 6 reinforces this characterization, for she only becomes interested in Joey because of his feat in withstanding the bumblebee sting. She is attracted not to him, but to the attention he receives. The same is true of her later warmth toward Suds, for she only reverses her indifference to him when he sheds his bullied status to become someone who bullies others. Her abandonment of him when he later admits his fear of heights reinforces the suggestion that she is only attracted to popularity and attention. Recognizing Judy’s superficiality spurs Suds’s realization that he has changed himself into someone he doesn’t like, and it has won him nothing but grief. Ultimately, Judy’s behavior reinforces the impact that peer pressure plays in inciting identity changes, for her superficial characterization demonstrates the ultimate emptiness of pursuing social approval rather than fostering an authentic personal identity.
While Suds’s mother is a minor character in the novel, her role as a stable figure in Suds’s life becomes increasingly crucial as he navigates the chaos of growing up. She is humorous and kind, often acting as a confidante and a sounding board for Suds. She is introduced in Chapter 4, and her actions toward Suds characterize her as loving and kind; for example, she listens to his concerns about being a rat and tries to cheer him up. She is the first to suggest that perhaps he doesn’t have to be a rat and that there is “more than one way to become a man” (44). At the novel’s climax, Mom validates Suds’s character growth and the true maturity that he has achieved when she states, “As soon as you stopped trying to be a man, you became one. [..] Your confession there. Taking blame on yourself. Admitting you were wrong. That’s grown-up stuff” (131). As a character, Mom functions as a witness and a source of support during Suds’s internal growth.
By Jerry Spinelli