54 pages • 1-hour read
Chances Are . . .
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence, child abuse, addiction, illness or death, bullying, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, and suicidal ideation.
The Unknowable Past and the Fallibility of Memory
In Chances Are…, Russo creates a vision of the past as a subjective and flawed reconstruction, suggesting that recovering a definitive version of events is often an unrealistic and unattainable goal. Through the conflicting recollections of three old friends and the unresolved mystery of Jacy’s disappearance, the narrative repeatedly shows that memory itself is a “porous,” inaccurate personal archive distorted by guilt, desire, and the simple erosion of time. Confronted with the question of which aspects of their memories are based upon facts, fears, or wishful thinking, the three protagonists must ultimately find an imperfect form peace by accepting their uncertainties.
The reunion on Martha’s Vineyard therefore serves as a catalyst for the men’s individual decisions to confront the past. Lincoln, acting as the group’s reluctant historian, struggles to piece together key events from their college years, and his efforts soon reveal the full extent of the gaps and inaccuracies involved. When recalling the night of the 1969 draft lottery, for example he remembers vivid details about his friends’ reactions but cannot recall his own, and he admits that his memory is “increasingly porous these days” (23). Similarly, his recollection of an altercation at a fraternity house is a jumble of partial scenes and secondhand accounts, making it clear that even dramatic shared experiences can degrade into a collage of individual impressions. This inherent fallibility underscores the idea that the past is not a singular narrative but a collection of divergent stories, each altered by the perspective of the teller.
The novel further complicates the idea of a stable past by revealing long-held secrets that retroactively alter the characters’ understanding of their own lives. The first example comes when a teenage Lincoln discovers that the financial security of his youth was not provided by his domineering father but by his quiet mother, who secretly managed the income from the Chilmark house. This revelation dismantles his foundational belief in the patriarchal supremacy of his upbringing, recasting his parents as strangers and turning the “solid earth beneath his feet” (13) to sand. Likewise, Teddy’s adult perceptions are frequently distorted by his psychological “spells,” which are often rooted in his unresolved trauma. His powerful hallucination of Jacy on the ferry pier thus stands as a key a moment in which the past physically intrudes upon and reshapes the present. Ultimately, Russo suggests that the past is a story that people continuously rewrite, introducing new inaccuracies each time and therefore grappling with a present built on an increasingly unstable foundation.
Defining Masculinity Through Class and Character
At many different points, the novel examines competing models of American masculinity by filtering them through the dual lenses of class and character. Specifically, Russo invokes the disparate backgrounds of Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey, who each represent different approaches to navigating societal expectations of strength, labor, and success. By contrasting Teddy’s intellectualism and Mickey’s working-class stoicism with Lincoln’s conflicted ambition, Russo suggests that masculinity is not a monolithic ideal but a complex identity that is forged in response to (and often in defiance of) multiple social pressures.
As the three main characters either consciously reject or fail to meet society’s traditional masculine standards, Russo uses these different life paths to critique and indict many of American society’s patriarchal trends. A prime example occurs when Teddy’s aversion to physical confrontation earns him the contempt of his basketball coach, who publicly labels him a “damn sissy” (16) and encourages another player to bully him to the point that Teddy suffers an irrevocable spinal injury that reshapes the course of his life. Burdened by the perceived shame of erectile dysfunction, he must contend with his own sense of his physical shortcomings even as his intellectual pursuits are likewise coded as unmanly by the anti-intellectual tendencies of American society.
Ironically, although Mickey’s physical attributes align with the mainstream view of masculinity, he also rejects society’s stereotypes. At the Theta house, for example, he chooses to remain a “kitchen slave” (4) rather than becoming a “face man” (3) and serving the sorority members like Lincoln. This stance signals his refusal to cater to a higher social class, and he instead chooses to embrace an identity that is rooted in the dignity of unglamorous labor and a quiet self-possession that has no need for external validation.
Finally, Lincoln’s evolving character embodies the novel’s central examination of differing masculine ideals. He is caught between his mother’s more refined East Coast values and his gradual adoption of his father’s domineering, patriarchal worldview. Even his father’s nickname for the friends, the “Three Stooges,” is a deliberately lower-class reference that is designed to deride their self-proclaimed collective identity as the noble “Three Musketeers” (24) of French literature. Lincoln’s struggle to identify his stance on the issue follows him into adulthood, for although his success in commercial real estate aligns with his father’s aggressive capitalism, Lincoln himself remains emotionally tethered to his friends and the values they represent. Even as an older man, he struggles to reconcile the conflict between his working-class origins and the patriarchal pressures of wealth and power. Russo therefore portrays the loaded and largely subjective concept of “masculinity” as a spectrum of choices and compromises in which a man’s worth is defined not by adherence to a single code but by the integrity of his character.
The Collision of Chance, Fate, and Personal Choice
The novel uses the 1969 draft lottery as a central metaphor to question the extent to which individual lives are often governed by random chance versus personal agency. Presenting the draft lottery as a pivotal moment, the novel traces the lifelong consequences of this singular, arbitrary event and suggests that although external forces can alter someone’s trajectory, their character will ultimately be revealed in how they choose to navigate the paths they are given.
As the novel’s most potent symbol of arbitrary fate, the draft lottery instantly alters the destinies of the three friends based on the random drawing of their birthdays. Mickey’s low number guarantees that he will be called to serve, while Teddy’s high number makes his service highly unlikely, and Lincoln’s middle-of-the-road drawing leaves his fate uncertain at best. This moment renders the three men “people with singular destinies” (5), overriding factors like intellect, wealth, or ambition and establishing a world in which their paths are governed by factors that they did not choose.
Within this framework of chance, however, the characters’ own choices continue to champion the power of personal agency. Although Mickey’s destiny is seemingly sealed by the lottery, he ultimately subverts this eventuality by fleeing to Canada with Jacy. This act of defiance shows that he refuses to submit to an assigned fate and instead chooses a path aligned with personal loyalty and love. By contrast, Teddy, despite his high draft number, often views his life as fated by his physical and mental health struggles, which he perceives as fixed conditions that limit his choices. His fatalistic resignation proves to be just as restrictive as any external force, and it is only when he decides to take charge of his own life that he begins to find the first hints of genuine healing.
However, perhaps the most powerful avatar of the tension between fate and choice is Jacy, for although she is subjected to the cruelties of her mother and Donald Calloway, she exercises her own inner strength and finds creative ways to break free of both the trauma of her childhood and the restrictive expectations of her upper-class peers. Stolidly befriending the three “hashers” at her sorority house despite her classmates’ disapproval, she presents herself as a force of nature who refuses to be influenced by the desires of others, and she even goes as far as opting out of marrying the self-satisfied Vance and to escape to Canada with Mickey. However, she cannot outrun her genetic “destiny,” and her eventual death due to a fall precipitated by her cerebellar ataxia—an unfortunate legacy of her biological father—ultimately causes her demise. Thus, Jacy’s life choices represent her constant battle to reconcile the tension between fate, chance, and personal agency.
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