Loyalty Theme Analysis

While people often think of loyalty as a virtue, Restart suggests that loyalty can lead people to behave badly and distort their judgment. For example, when middle-school football star and popular bully Chase Ambrose develops amnesia after an accident, he loses his memory of all his football friends and thus his loyalty to them. Thus, when he sees his team’s quarterback Joey pushing around geeky video-club president Brendan Espinoza, he gets between them physically and puts a stop to the bullying. Afterwards, fellow football player Aaron Hakimian criticizes Chase’s disloyalty to Joey despite their long-term friendship—a criticism hinting that loyalty to the football team and to each other prevents the football players from intervening in one another’s bad behavior. In the same vein, Shoshanna Weber, twin sister to Chase’s former bullying victim Joel, refuses for a long time to believe that Chase’s amnesia has altered his behavior and personality, even though it clearly has, because she feels that altering her negative opinion of Chase would constitute disloyalty to her brother. It is only when Chase realizes that his loyalty to the football team encouraged his bad behavior, and when Shoshanna realizes that her loyalty to her family is distorting her judgment, that each character is able to choose the right path and clearheadedly decide what they should believe. Thus, Restart suggests that loyalty, unless it’s governed by moral judgment and responsive to new evidence, can actually be a vice.