The Silver Linings Playbook

Pat reads The Scarlet Letter, hoping that it will impress Nikki whenever he sees her. He admires Hester, who kept trying to do good things even though the town was against her. Pat wishes the novel had a happy ending, and he hopes that one day he will be able to stand with Nikki and apologize to her publicly, as Dimmesdale did with Hester.

Cliff asks Pat to tell him about Tiffany. Pat describes her as “sort of a whore” (61) and tells Cliff about her invitation to have sex. They talk about why Pat refused and about Tiffany and him crying together. Since the dinner party, every time Pat goes out to run, Tiffany is waiting outside her house in a running outfit. The first time, Pat told her he preferred to run alone. She follows him on his run every day, keeping pace. 

Cliff asks Pat how long it has been since he has seen Nikki. When Pat says it has only been a couple of months, Cliff asks, “Do you really believe that?” (64). Pat gets angry but calms himself down when he sees that Cliff is afraid. Cliff tells Pat that if he starts inviting Tiffany to run with him, she might lose interest. Cliff’s wife used to pester him to go to foreign films with her. After a year of pretending to enjoy the movies, they stopped going because “she stopped asking” (65). Pat wonders if the same tactic will work on Tiffany.

The next day, after Tiffany follows Pat on his run, he invites her to dinner that evening at a diner. Tiffany jogs away, and Pat “cannot believe [he] finally got her to leave [him] alone” (67). 

That evening, Pat’s mother gives him $40. She helps him choose a nice outfit, and then he walks to Tiffany’s house. At dinner, Pat is worried that he doesn’t have enough money to cover their meals and a generous tip. Because Nikki once worked as a waitress, Pat always tries to over-tip. He orders Raisin Bran cereal and milk. Tiffany orders a tea and shares the cereal with him. Pat gives the waitress the remaining $35 as a tip, and he and Tiffany walk to her house. She tells him that she does not want to have sex with him, and he leaves after shaking her hand. At home, he tells Nikki’s picture about his date and then cries into his pillow.

Pat gets up in the morning earlier than usual and is surprised to find Tiffany waiting in front of her house, ready to run. After 10 miles they separate without speaking. When he gets home, Ronnie is there with Jake and Pat’s father, ready to watch the Eagles play. Together, they sing the Eagles’ fight song, and Pat’s father looks at him the entire time. When Pat’s mother brings beers in for them, his father says he should have one. Pat still believes that his father hates him, but it feels good for Pat to be in the same room with him. 

When the Houston Texans score first, Pat’s father begins screaming and cursing at the TV. He shouts things about the quarterback, Donovan McNabb, “that would make [Pat’s] friend Danny go wild, because Danny says only black people can use the n-word” (75). At halftime, the four of them go outside and throw a football. After the Eagles win, Pat’s father puts his arm around Pat’s shoulders. 

Ronnie tells Pat to walk home with him and asks him about Tiffany on the way. Pat learns that Tiffany is seeing a therapist and grows angry because Ronnie is hinting that this makes Tiffany abnormal, even though he knows Pat is also seeing a therapist. Ronnie tells Pat the story of how Tiffany was fired from her job a couple of months earlier, but Pat does not give the details to the reader, as he does not believe that Ronnie is being objective. 

Pat goes to Tiffany’s parents’ house and knocks on the door, which her mother answers. He says he just wants to play catch with Tiffany and to be her friend. When Tiffany comes out, she reminds him that she hates football. Pat wants to know why she follows him when he runs, and she says, “I’m […] scouting your work ethic, your endurance, the way you deal with mental strain, your ability to persevere” (80). However, she won’t tell him the real reason she is scouting him.

The next morning, Pat’s father comes to the basement for the first time since Pat’s return. He leaves Pat the sports pages from the newspaper because Pat did not know all the players during the game. His father does the same thing for the next five mornings. At night, his father locks himself in his office and reads, never speaking to Pat. 

Pat meets with Cliff, who asks if he is looking forward to going to the beach with Tiffany, her family, and Ronnie the next day. Pat feels angry at the question but knows that Cliff is “testing [his] morals again” (85). They perform the Eagles’ fight song together.

Pat rides to the beach with Ronnie, Tiffany, Veronica, and Emily. When they arrive, Emily starts crying because she gets sand in her eyes. The noise agitates Tiffany. Veronica tells Tiffany to “remember what Dr. Lily said” (89). Tiffany walks away, and Veronica follows her. Pat falls asleep. When he wakes up, Tiffany and Veronica are still gone, and Ronnie is asleep. Pat carries Emily to the water to play with her. He holds her over the waves and kisses her cheeks, thinking: “Something about Emily makes me want to float over waves with her for the rest of my life” (90). 

He hears Veronica screaming. She is running towards them. The noise wakes Ronnie up, and Veronica says, “Jesus Christ, Ronnie, you left Emily alone with him?” (92). Pat runs down the beach and starts crying as he sprints. Then Tiffany passes him. He catches up to her, and they run for a long time before turning around. Before they reach Veronica and Ronnie, Tiffany goes into the ocean, and Pat follows her. He watches her float with her head above the waves. They tell Ronnie that they both want to go home.

The next morning, Pat’s father wakes him up with the Eagles’ chant. He drives Pat to the stadium. His father can’t attend the games because he once got into a fight with a Dallas fan and beat the man so badly that he was arrested and incarcerated for three months. Pat’s father does not trust himself not to do it again. He drops Pat off 10 blocks from the parking lot and leaves. 

Pat finds Jake at a tailgate party in the parking lot with his friend, Scott. There is also a tent filled with Scott’s friends, a group of very fat men. Jake and Scott are already drunk. Scott tells Pat about the birth of his 3-year old daughters, and Pat is reminded again that he was in the “bad place” for nearly four years. Jake, Scott, and Pat begin throwing the football. 

Jake sees a man in a Giants jersey and begins walking towards him, chanting, “Ass-hole, Ass-hole” (103). They surround him, a ring of 20 Eagles’ fans. The man’s small son is terrified and grabs his father’s leg. When the boy begins crying, the mob disperses. The man, whose name is Steve, pushes Pat in the back and says, “You like making little kids cry?” (104). Jake steps between them, and the man throws him onto the ground. Pat hits the man twice. The man falls and does not move. Pat runs out of the crowd, away from the stadium. Blocks away, he vomits and sobs. 

When he is calmer, he walks back. Jake finds him a couple of blocks from the parking lot and says that Steve is looking for him and that he shouldn’t return to the tailgate party. Jakes tells Pat that he is a hero for defending him, but Pat feels the opposite of proud: “I feel guilty. I should be locked up again in the bad place” (108). They get in line and make their way to their seats, which are only 20 rows from the field. 

Pat tries to cheer during the game but is preoccupied with the fight. The Giants win the game in overtime. As Pat rides the subway back to Collingswood, he can’t stop thinking about Steve’s little boy and wondering if he cried harder when he saw Pat knock his father out. 

When he gets home, the TV is cracked. His father broke the screen with a lamp. Pat works out in the basement and imagines Nikki never loving him again because of the fight.

Tiffany and Pat are at the Crystal Lake Diner again, eating Raisin Bran. Pat tells her about the fight at the Eagles game and the crying boy. Tiffany doesn’t understand why he is upset. Pat says that he is worried that Nikki will be upset with him, and Tiffany says, “Fuck Nikki” (117). Tiffany says that Nikki left him when he was in a mental institution and is never coming back. When the waitress asks her to lower her voice, Tiffany leaves and runs to her parents’ house.

That night, Pat tries to read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath because he “wants to understand women so [he] can relate to Nikki’s feelings and whatnot” (120). He likes the way the book treats the mental health of Esther, the main character, but he is frustrated when the book ends without saying whether Esther is able to leave the mental hospital. When he reads that the author of the book killed herself, he tears the book in half and wonders why Nikki would read something so depressing. The next morning, he runs with Tiffany, but they do not discuss Nikki.