Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Becky Albertalli

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Chapters 20-24

Chapters 25-29

Chapters 30-35

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Theater

Simon’s participation in the school musical, Oliver!, is a motif throughout the novel. Rehearsals for the musical are the impetus for bringing Simon together regularly with characters like Abby, Martin, Cal, and Taylor, as well as the backdrop for many scenes. While characters like Nick, Bram, and Garrett are associated with their participation on the soccer team, Simon identifies himself as one of the drama kids. He chooses to sit with them at the homecoming football game, for instance. While rehearsing the musical is hard work, it is a playful, fun-loving, supportive community. This group identity is a powerful safety net for Simon, as when he is feeling vulnerable as the victim of anti-gay bullying, and members of the theater community (Abby, Taylor, and Ms. Albright) stand up for him. When the cast is performing the musical at school, Simon also enjoys wearing his stage make-up at lunch, not only because he likes how it looks, but because “it’s just kind of awesome to be marked as part of the ensemble” (217).

The theater has symbolic layers in the narrative as well. Being in the closet is a performance Simon is forced to do, a presentation of the external that hides his internal life. Coming out publicly, before he is ready, also requires him to act in certain ways for an audience. He feels anxiety about being asked to perform his masculinity, ironically through cross-dressing, on Gender Bender Day. These involuntary performances Simon finds himself participating in contrast to the tolerant backstage world of the drama kids and play rehearsal. The difference between Simon’s onstage and backstage life relates to the theme that people are vast houses with little windows, that they have mysterious interior lives.

Tilt-A-Whirl

The Tilt-A-Whirl, a spinning ride at a carnival or amusement park, is a symbol in the novel that represents disorienting change. The symbol is especially relevant to Bram’s character arc of his transition from a shy boy who is afraid to take bold steps to a more confident character who comes out to everyone in his life.

The ride is first referenced when Blue mentions riding one once and getting sick, since “people who get nauseated easily have no business riding the Tilt-A-Whirl” (79). He establishes then that he doesn’t like the Tilt-A-Whirl, and that he thinks it’s not ever a good idea for him to ride one. When Simon goes to meet Blue at the carnival, hoping to learn who Blue’s identity is at last, he avoids the Tilt-A-Whirl for this reason, expecting that Blue wouldn’t choose to ride it based on his history.

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However, at the end of the evening, once he’s ridden all the other rides, Simon sits down in the Tilt-A-Whirl pod, and he is joined by Bram, who is nervous about revealing his identity to Simon. Just as Simon realizes Bram is Blue, the Tilt-A-Whirl makes a “grinding noise and jolt,” and “the ride spins to life” (267). Bram’s revelation sets unsettling effects of change, symbolized by the beginning of the Tilt-A-Whirl into motion. Simon tries to keep the pod from spinning to avoid making Bram feel nauseated, but he can’t—“[i]t’s like the ride wants to spin” (267). Afterwards, Bram feels sick and goes to sit on the curb. But when Simon asks him if he is okay, Bram tells him he will be, suggesting that for Bram, the worst effects of taking this terrifying step are temporary. He tells Simon he rode the Tilt-a-Whirl because he really liked him. This is also why he was motivated to reveal his identity and, ultimately, why he is motivated to come out at school.

Holidays and Traditions

The calendar plays an important role in the novel, grounding the events of the plots within the time frame of Simon’s junior year of high school. Holidays and traditions represent continuity with community, family and past, and characters notably celebrate birthdays, homecoming, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s.

For Leah, the traditional way to celebrate homecoming with her friends is to go to Waffle House, so when Nick and Simon break this tradition to attend the game, it feels like a rupture in their friend group. For Blue and his father, the traditional way to celebrate Hanukkah is all eight days at once in a hotel, an “awkward” practice that Blue terms “Hotel Hanukkah” (116). This tradition is one that Blue feels complicated about, as it calls attention to how little he sees his father, but it also involves effort and planning on his father’s part. Blue plans to come out to his father at Hotel Hanukkah, but is deterred by one of his father’s gifts, which assumes heterosexuality. The awkwardness of Hotel Hanukkah as a tradition is reflected in the ambivalence Blue feels about communicating with his father.

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Simon’s continued attention to holidays and annual traditions are a motif that show how important family and community is to him, as well as how anxious he is about the idea of change and growing up. When Halloween is on a Friday, Simon loves the “charged feeling” at school, the way that people interact with one another in the halls, the communal feeling of excitement (39). However, when he gets to the Halloween party at Garrett’s house, he feels a pang wishing he was celebrating more like a kid, with board games and junk food. Christmas, too, feels different to him. He appreciates being with his family and refers lovingly to their family traditions, but it doesn’t feel quite right to him. When he finds himself worrying about Blue, he says, “all I want is for things to feel like Christmas again. I want it to feel how it used to feel” (157). The holidays represent his connection to parts of his life he loves, but they also are a way of observing how much he has changed.