Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Spoken and unspoken rules are a frequent theme that the author revisits as the characters adapt and change. Every character must change the rules they live by to be happy. The rules they create help them avoid troubling feelings that they don’t want to confront. In the case of Ari and his family, they create many barriers between themselves and others to avoid shame.

The boys must rebel against society’s rules in order to accept the love they have for each other. Dante writes to Ari in his third letter from Chicago, “I suppose everyone has rules for things. Maybe we get that from our parents. Parents are rule givers. Maybe they gave us too many rules, Ari. Did you ever think of that?” (186).

Dante flouts societal conventions while Ari plays by society’s rules. Dante invents a shoe-throwing game similar to javelin to rebel against his mother’s rules, but also to rebel against the conventions of society. This is another example of Dante’s rebellious and mischievous personality. He tells Ari, “I’m real. You’re real. The tennis shoes are real. The street is real. And the rules we establish—they’re real too” (47). Dante lets Ari know that for him, the game is much more than simple entertainment; it represents a deeper desire in himself to create new rules.

When Ari tells his mother she can’t hover when he returns home from the hospital, she asks him: “What is this about making all these rules, Ari?” (138).

After the accident, Ari lays down rules with Dante, the first being that they “won’t talk about the accident” (128). Ari tells Dante that he likes to make his own rules: “so long as rules are yours, you like them” (128). Ari is comfortable repressing himself and constructing rules that will help him survive, while Dante’s idealism and inability to follow rules make him less eager to follow society’s conventions. He does not want to accept society as it is; he wants “to change the world” (43). Dante’s idealism inspires Ari to believe that he can change and live authentically without shame.

Shame silences people and alienates them from themselves and each other. The family’s shame about Aristotle’s older brother leads Ari to struggle more by himself. Ari feels guilty for telling Dante about his brother because he is so accustomed to suffering in silence. Ari’s shame over his sexual identity leads him to deny his love for Dante, with tough emotional consequences that the boys struggle with throughout the story.

The concept of shame emerges for the first time when Ari and Dante are in Ari’s room and Dante says he is “trying not to be ashamed” of who he is (35). Ari is familiar with the feeling of shame, but has yet to locate the source of this inherent sense of shame he feels about himself.

Finally, the repercussions of shame echo through generations. Ari’s father struggles with shame and trauma over his time as a Marine in the Vietnam War, creating more distance between himself and his son. Ari’s mother struggles with shame over her eldest son Bernardo murdering two people and being imprisoned. His mother describes these sources of shame and guilt as “private wars” that each person is fighting (359).