Chapters 9 and 10 Summary and Analysis

In Chapter 9: I Drop Out of High School, when John was sixteen, he was hanging around in bars with bands and failing every subject at school. His parents seemed oblivious to his problems. Dr. Finch was exhibiting increasingly strange behavior. He sometimes walked around town holding a dozen balloons in order to, he said, bring attention to his causes. His mother was more paranoid, warning John that his father was homicidal and going to kill them all. John felt conflicted about Dr. Finch. He had really helped him but he was very odd. And sometimes he seemed to calm his parents down while at other times he seemed to rile them up. Looking back on that time, John can see that his father was clinically depressed and that his mother was insane. At times, she would become manic and...