37 pages • 1 hour read
Gary PaulsenLawn Boy
Fiction | Novella | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Foreword-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Foreword Summary
The narrator is a 12-year-old boy who comes from a low-income family—Mom is an experimental school teacher and Dad is a freelance inventor. The family cares deeply for one another and they cultivate a light atmosphere: “My mom and I have learned not to ask too many questions about what [Dad’s] doing because if we do, he wants to use us a guinea pigs and we learned our lesson during what we now refer to as the Voice-Activated Door Incident” (2). The boy implies he recently came into money, and that his wild story begins with an old riding lawn mower.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Principles of Economic Expansion”
The boy’s grandmother speaks as though “maybe a screw came loose” somewhere (4), but her roundabout logic always has a purpose. Grandma gives the boy her late husband’s riding lawn mower as a gift for his twelfth birthday, then promptly leaves.
The boy doesn’t have much experience operating machines, so he studies the mower, toying with the levers and pull-rope to make it start. As he stares perplexed at the machine, it suddenly feels as if the mower is speaking to him. The boy mocks the absurdity of the sensation, claiming that he’s “not one of those woo-woo people or a wack job” (7), but the machine compels him to climb aboard and trim his yard’s patchy grass with considerable skill. A neighbor notices and asks about his mowing rates.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Growth of Capitalism”
By the end of the first day, the boy has mowed his neighbor’s lawn and two others, and obtained contact information for six more customers. Though unfamiliar with the term “capitalism,” the boy intuitively calculates his profits by subtracting his expenses, like the cost of gas, from his income. A lawn mowing service existed previously in the neighborhood, but it collapsed after the owner ran away with a customer’s wife. The boy has unwittingly entered an “expanding market economy” (11).
Over dinner that evening, the boy’s father mentions he would like to see the new astronomy movie playing in theaters. The boy’s pockets bulge with newly-earned bills, but he remains silent because he feels uncomfortable having more money than his parents. The boy is exhausted after a long day of work, though his lawn-mowing adventure is only beginning.
Foreword-Chapter 2 Analysis
The exposition establishes key elements of setting, character, and plot foreshadowing, which synthesize the comedic and ironic tone. Extraordinary accidents happen to ordinary characters, and the world as the boy knows it flips.
The story takes place in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The town’s name sounds stereotypically quiet and rural, which matches the boy’s personality and his family’s modest lifestyle. The country setting establishes situational irony, a literary effect that occurs when a reader expects one event, but the opposite happens. Rural Minnesota is not typically associated with mansions or wealthy investors, and the boy’s family lives in a “fixer-upper” that “[has] a yard the size of a postage stamp” with grass too measly to necessitate mowing (4). Ironically, the boy’s business provides a service that his own family doesn’t need—but the Foreword implies the boy will find himself suddenly rich.
The family’s socio-economic background provides important character context. Even though Dad’s income doesn’t always provide abundantly for his family, the boy and Mom don’t shame him. Regardless of their financial circumstances, they’re content with the life they have and people within it. Their lifestyle is not without struggle or mishaps; the cryptic “Voice-Activated Door Incident” doesn’t offer explicit details (2), but likely readers can still accurately imagine how that event transpired. In Chapter 2, when the boy starts earning money, he finds himself reluctant to share his newfound earnings out of consideration for his parents’ sacrifices, even though “it felt good to have all that money in [his] pockets” (11). Despite lacking money-savvy, his parents are smart and hard-working, and few people want salaries comparable to a 12-year-old’s. The boy recognizes that boasting is impolite and applies this moral through secrecy.
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By Gary Paulsen
