44 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan LethemMotherless Brooklyn
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Motherless Brooklyn”
Lionel now shares the story of how he came to be one of the Minna Men. In 1979, when Lionel was 13, he was living at St. Vincent’s Home for Boys in Brooklyn. Although he did not know what Tourette’s syndrome was, he knew that he had an assortment of verbal tics and chaotic body movements that isolated him from the other boys. He spent long afternoons reading his way through the orphanage’s modest library. One day, for reasons Lionel never understands, Frank Minna, known then as a neighborhood entrepreneur who ran a moving company, picked Lionel and three other boys to work for him: Tony Vermonte, a brooding Italian with an unsettling sense of self-confidence and a perpetual sneer; Danny Fantl, a jock with a penchant for funk music and a lack of interest in school; and Gilbert, a bully in-the-making always looking to push a weaker kid into a risky prank (he once made Lionel break into a display case full of stuffed penguins at the Museum of Natural History).
The four orphans quickly become a sort of street gang. Frank picks them up in his moving van, and the boys move crates in and out of buildings. Although Frank’s business card lists two owners—Gerard and Frank Minna—the boys know only Frank. Frank dubs the four orphans “Motherless Brooklyn.” As an outcast, Lionel struggles to squelch his body’s erratic movements, such as his uncontrollable urges to compulsively touch people and even kiss them, incessantly tap the floor, or wink crazily. He learns to say little while on the job. Frank and the Minna Men accept Lionel’s behaviors—they nickname him “Freakshow.”
After two years of working for Frank, Lionel, one day while moving guitars and drums, is taken to a brownstone in Brooklyn where he meets Alphonso Matricardi and Leonardo Rockaforte, two elderly Italians introduced only as Frank’s “clients.” The two old men query the boys about their relationship with Frank and before the boys leave give them each a $100 bill. On the way out, Frank cautions the boys never tell anyone they met the two men.
After three years, Lionel finally meets Lionel’s brother Gerard when the boys are invited to have Christmas dinner with Frank’s mother. Gerard surprises his family; he has been away upstate. Within a few months, Frank’s van is vandalized, and the boys suspect their mentor is into some shady business. A few weeks later, Frank informs the boys he must leave Brooklyn but offers no explanation. Before he leaves, however, he gifts Lionel with a book called Understanding Tourette’s Syndrome—marking the first time Lionel hears what he has is a disability.
Frank is gone for two years. When he returns, he is married. He recruits the boys, now high school graduates, to work for him, retooling L&L into a car service that will be a front for what Frank wants to operate: an unlicensed, amateur detective agency.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Chapter 2 again plays with and violates the conventions and expectations of the classic crime novel. Chapter 1 closes with Lionel in the emergency room, his friend dead, and the police on the way. Although the reader may expect to begin the traditional investigation into evidence and motivation, the narrative flashes back to Lionel’s early adolescence and his years in an orphanage.
Like the hard-boiled detective, the orphan, of course, is a fixture in novels. From Oliver Twist to Edward Cullen, from Jane Eyre to Huck Finn, the orphan has long been used to trace a character’s evolution into defining their own identity, to finding a place in a social order that has exiled them to the margins. Traditionally in literature, orphans do not fit in and struggle to define themselves. Indeed, in this chapter, Lionel himself struggles in a Tourettic maelstrom just to say his name. The cascade of variations on his name suggests a character in search of identity, foregrounding an unconventional coming of age theme.
In this chapter, Lethem pauses the ensuing murder mystery to fill in the character of Lionel Essrog. The narration reveals Lionel’s socially-isolated upbringing and his hunger for the simple escape of books. He is awkward around others because he does not understand his disability. The opportunity to work for Frank Minna is introduced here as a welcome chance for the isolated misfit boy to find a niche. Freed from the confines of the Catholic orphanage, Lionel creates for himself an awkward yet hip street persona—“Freakshow.” Although he is not entirely sure what sort of enterprise Frank is involved in, he welcomes the chance to be part of the “Minna Men,” aware that he now has an neighborhood identity and is part of a jerry-rigged family. The Minna Christmas dinner gives Lionel a new sense of belonging and a promising sense of family. He is no longer “Motherless Brooklyn.”
In contrast to Lionel’s new make-shift family with Frank and the boys, Lethem introduces the concept of a crime family. Lionel meets the two mysterious and vaguely menacing older Italian men who speak in riddles, dole out $100 bills, and appear to tell Frank what to do. Although young Lionel does not entirely comprehend the men’s nature, Lethem signifies that these two gangster-types must surely be part of Frank’s bloody execution years later.
When Frank leaves suddenly, without reason or explanation, Lionel is in a sense, orphaned again. He is thrown back on his own resources; he is aware again of his own lack of identity: “Me, I became a walking joke, preposterous, improbable, unseeable. My outbursts, utterances and tappings were white noise or static, irritating but tolerated, and finally boring” (83). He loses his fragile street identity and becomes easily ignored. Frank’s return two years later, however, reestablishes Lionel’s family and, in turn, jump starts his quest for identity.
Related Titles
By Jonathan Lethem
