34 pages • 1-hour read
Better Nate Than Ever
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Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 1-5 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 1: “Some Backstory,” Chapter 2: “Theories on Everything,” Chapter 3: “A Quick but Notable Conversation with Mom, a Week Ago,” Chapter 4: “This’ll Be Fast: “You Might as Well Meet Dad, Too,” Chapter 5: “Seventy-Seven Miles to Manhattan.”
13-year-old Nate Foster lives in the small town of Jankburg, Pennsylvania, with his parents (his mother being Sherrie Foster) and older brother Anthony. Anthony is a star athlete and the apple of his parents’ eyes. Nate, on the other hand, is short and plump and generally ignored:
Life hasn’t always been easy (my first word was “Mama,” and then “The other babies are teasing me”), but at least I’m singing my way through eighth grade, pretending my whole existence is underscored. There. There’s your backstory. I was always singing (2).
Nate dreams of making a name for himself on the stage. He and his best friend Libby have hatched a plan to get him to New York for an audition for E.T.: The Musical. Fortunately, Nate’s parents are away celebrating their 17th wedding anniversary, and Anthony is obsessed with an upcoming track meet. Nobody notices when Nate slips away to pursue his dream. As a parting gift, Libby hands him a large box of chocolate donuts to tide him over.
When Nate arrives at the Greyhound bus station, he notices that everything is dull: “Everything is the color of death, of a foggy day that promises another D-minus on your History homework. Everything is the color of a wilted flower from my mom’s shop” (16). He uses an impromptu monologue to get on the bus unaccompanied by an adult.
On the bus, Nate reflects on his parents. His mother runs a florist shop in town, and his father is a maintenance engineer at the local medical center. The couple is poor. Both parents are worried that Nate might be gay because he likes musicals, but he explains that he’s simply undecided yet. He recalls a conversation with his mother shortly before her anniversary trip. She tells him to stop singing “The Impossible Dream” in the neighbors’ woods and warns him not to run away.
As the bus travels eastward, Nate is excited by all the firsts he encounters (leading up to Halloween, no less): his first sight of the Empire State Building, entering the Lincoln Tunnel, and exiting at the Port Authority. Nate reminds himself that he needs to catch the one o’ clock bus back home so his parents won’t notice him missing. He gets out on the street near the New York Times building and asks for directions to the audition studio from a passerby. The man tells him it’s six blocks away. En route to his destination, Nate stops to buy three dollars’ worth of one-dollar pizza and gets caught in a downpour.
Chapters 6-8 Summary
This summary section includes Chapter 6: “One-Dollar Pizza/Priceless Stories for My Grandchildren,” Chapter 7: “Definitely Changed, ‘For the Better’ Undecide,” and Chapter 8: “Black and White to Color.”
The rainstorm drenches Nate’s audition costume, so he looks for dry clothes. He sees a flyer for a nearby discount clothing store and buys a new outfit—garish and oversized—at the salesman’s behest, thinking, “I know I’m going to arrive at my first audition literally changed for the better” (42). He thinks the new outfit is a vast improvement over showing up to his audition wet.
Nate believes this until he walks into the lobby of the audition studio’s office building and sees hundreds of children trying out for the role of Elliott. They’re all formally dressed, while Nate looks like a rap singer.
Once inside the waiting room, Nate comes across another boy from his town—Jordan Rylance. Jordan’s mother ignores Nate. Nate goes to the check-in desk, where he receives an application. He lies his way through most of the questions about prior experience and says he is 21 (as any child under 18 needs the written consent of an adult).
As Nate observes the other children and their mothers, he begins to feel out of place and self-conscious about his lack of theater experience, thinking, “Is anyone else here just a regular schlub from the back roads of Pennsylvania, dressed as a hip-hop artist, who not only doesn’t play a flute, or juggle [...]?” (56). When Nate submits his form, he believes the worst is over until the secretary notices his age discrepancy. She humiliates Nate in front of everyone and is about to kick him out when his Aunt Heidi suddenly appears and vouches for him.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
Better Nate Than Ever’s first eight chapters set the baseline for Nate’s future experiences in New York by describing his miserable life in Jankburg. Nate’s parents and brother are introduced as portraits of conventional “small town” behavior. The older Anthony is lauded for being interested in sports, while Nate is derided for being interested in the arts. Nate’s parents are gloomy and resigned to their lives as a florist and a janitor. Far from bemoaning their fate, they seem vaguely threatened by Nate’s singing and assume he is gay. Nate is harassed not only by his family but his schoolmates for the same reason. Their collective behavior relates to the theme of Standing Out in Context. As long as Nate stays in Jankburg, his uniqueness will be derided in the wrong context.
The one bright spot in Nate’s grim existence is his friendship with Libby. She inspires him with the Courage to Dream by helping him plan his escape to New York. Once Nate arrives at the Port Authority, he describes the city in stark contrast to Jankburg. At this point, the theme of Small Town Versus Big City takes center stage. This theme is reinforced by Nate’s attention to the exotic foods that New York offers compared to those of his dull town. Like at home, Nate’s eccentric behavior and frequent changes in wardrobe put him in danger of being perceived as an oddity at the audition studio. While he has demonstrated true courage in making it this far, his Broadway dream seems close to being dashed until Aunt Heidi arrives to offer some unexpected help.
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