54 pages • 1 hour read
Acceleration
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Acceleration and Imprisonment
In Chapter 14, Duncan checks out a library book called Death: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer by Mason Lucas. Lucas defines acceleration as a burgeoning killer’s “escalation of increasingly destructive aberrant behavior” (88). The term literally refers to Roach’s progression from killing animals, to burning buildings, to stalking women, to planning to kill said women.
Much of Acceleration depicts characters struggling with the consequences of their decisions. Characters set events into motion that then influence the remainder of their lives. Duncan’s description of the Jungle introduces the metaphor of gravity into their situation: “Most of the people who live there have the doomed look of lifers. They move in slow motion, never picking up enough speed to escape its gravity” (126). Once someone reaches the point where they have to live in the Jungle, they are doomed to battle the pitiless force of gravity as it shapes their trajectory.
Duncan’s decision to help Wayne with a toilet heist set him on a path with criminal activity on the periphery. His decision to read the lost and found journal accelerates into a full-blown obsession with Roach. As for Wayne, his crimes make it difficult for him to live a more normal life; his attempts often clash with temptations. Duncan’s father had dreams of being a hero, but he finds himself resigned to the purgatory of an unfulfilling job that affects his senses and requires that he work graveyard shifts.
Roach is, at least in part, the product of an abusive childhood. His journal reveals that he suffers the consequences of his grandmother’s abuse and mother’s choice of work. His potential victims would also suffer because of another’s choices.
Jacob finds comfort in the predictability of the morgue. His own choices led him there, and he feels content with life simply not accelerating toward misfortune. He finds the inertia more satisfying than the sensation of being acted upon by other forces. As the novel ends, Duncan is primed to start making better choices that will accelerate his life toward optimism (and wishes to extend this sentiment to Jacob). He has a chance to stop his self-destructive spiral and take control of his future.
Second Chances and Cycles of Poverty and Violence
Duncan equates life in the Jungle to that of a prison camp: “Most of the people who live there have the doomed look of lifers” (126). The word “doomed” is most relevant when discussing the cycles of poverty and violence that are often found in low-income cities and neighborhoods (due to a number of factors).
Duncan’s father makes no secret of his wanting to be more than he is: “It doesn’t go away—that thing, the belief or whatever, that one day you’re going to be a hero” (79). Ultimately, he wants Duncan to have a better life than his. In telling Duncan he should focus on the future, Duncan’s father reveals his resignation: “They used to have this program for rotten kids, where they’d take them straight into prisons to meet the real hard-core bad guys—to scare them straight. Think of your job that way” (146). He sees his own job as a life sentence and doesn’t talk about changing it. Jacob speaks similarly about his time in the morgue, though he gets more comfort out of his job than Duncan’s father does from his.
Duncan treats the hunt for Roach as a second chance to make up for Maya’s death—despite the death not being his fault. His friend Wayne vacillates between wanting to leave crime behind for a second chance at a normal life and returning to the thrill of illegal activities.
Aside from his hunt, Duncan hopes for a second chance with Kim—the latter’s appearance at the end of the novel being a welcome one. Duncan’s final conversation with Jacob shows another optimistic development: Instead of thinking of himself and Jacob as “lifers” (204), imprisoned in dead-end jobs, he decides to convince Jacob to aspire to more than certainty and comfort. Someone has to change to break cycles of poverty and violence. Duncan wants to use his new lease on life (post-making peace with Maya) to improve himself and look to the future.
Guilt, Forgiveness, and Absolution
Duncan’s inability to forgive himself for “failing” Maya is a clear depiction of guilt’s toll. He alludes to failed psychiatric care and medication—as well as the loss of Kim in his life—as casualties of Maya’s death. He loses sleep and long lost the comfort he used to take in swimming. In Roach’s journal, Duncan sees a chance for redemption, something that will set him free from guilt.
Upon teaching Duncan how to pick locks, Wayne asks, “So, do you absolve me of my sins?” (143) as if the former is a priest taking confessions. When Duncan fails to call his mother after following Cherry, he asks her for forgiveness. While talking to his father about his mood, Duncan apologizes; his father retorts with “Sorry does nothing” (78) and tells him about one of John F. Kennedy’s Secret Service guards. Over 10 years after Kennedy’s assassination, the guard is still consumed with remorse over his perceived failure to protect him. Apologies can do nothing to relieve his burden.
In Duncan’s dream about a subway car stuck underwater, he tries to apologize to a stand-in for Maya. She doesn’t acknowledge him, so she cannot relieve him of guilt. Instead, he watches a killer enter the car and kill her all over again. After Roach’s death, Duncan returns to the public pool. He swims to the bottom and holds his breath to the point of struggling. One final time, he apologizes: “I whisper a silent Sorry. Then I kick off for the surface. Her screams have faded away to nothing. I guess even echoes have to die sometime” (209). At long last, an apology takes. But it’s not Duncan’s apologies that absolve him, but rather the actions he took to try to make up for Maya’s death.
Duncan’s final conversation with Kim is also amicable. She makes it clear that she does not hate him, does not blame him for their breakup, and wants him to have peace. She can’t take him back as her boyfriend, but she does convince him that she bears no ill will. Duncan realizes that if he clings to the fact that he drove her away as the most important facet of their history, he will never be free of this guilt (nor does it do their once relationship justice). Kim’s forgiveness shows him that if he continues to punish himself for losing her, it would be mere self-flagellation, not something deserved.
Unlock all 54 pages of this Study Guide
Plus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
