Summary
"Summer" opens with Anthony enjoying the effects of his call for string-length transparency during the presidential debate, such as the president inviting him into the elite emergency task force, or STAR Initiative, because several members in their political party favored his side in the debate. One of the measures of the STAR Initiative is a requirement of string disclosure for high-security-clearance personnel. Due to this measure, military cadets, including Javier and Jack, have two weeks to present their boxes to their regional officer. Jack and Javier open their boxes together, and Javier has a very short string while Jack has a long string. After this unveiling, Jack offers to switch strings with Javier so Javi can fulfill his desire to go to combat and Jack can avoid combat. Jack plans to work behind a desk (the only option for short-stringers), and then disappear once his supposed string is up. Javier struggles with the decision because he fears bringing shame onto his family.
Jack's grandpa Cal also lied to the military. Grandpa Cal, who passed away before the introduction of the strings, lied to enlist in the army before he was the minimum age. He was taken in by the older guys, only to be split off from everyone else for military service. When Cal returned home, he decided not to look for them so he could imagine they all shared the same happy fate. Javier decides to switch strings with Jack, and they agree only Jack's father will know about the switch. They don't have plans beyond this. Jack hopes that the strings will no longer be as big of a deal in the future, because they're committing perjury which will be revealed when Javi dies and Jack lives far beyond what he told the army. Jack tells his aunt Katherine about his short string and is surprised by her emotional response. Katherine's original idea that the lengths of the strings are an indication of God's favor shatters when she learns her nephew's fate. Katherine tries to talk Anthony out of continuing in the election with his targeting short-stringers strategy and reveals to him the length of Jack's string. Anthony is ambivalent about Jack's string and convinces Katherine to stay the course.
The enactment of the military's string disclosure requirement causes a stir in the short-stringer support group. Maura and Hank are the most impassioned of the group about this, and Maura sees this as short-stringers becoming second-class citizens. They both agree that short-stringers must start getting mad before things snowball out of control. Sean asks the group who hasn't yet told their families about their string, and we learn that Nihal has just told his parents. He isn't comforted by the religious idea of life after death and amplifies the idea of the gift of life feeling tied to having done everything right. After the support group, Hank invites Maura and Ben to play golf at a sporting facility along the Hudson River to release their frustrations. At this time, we learn that Claire, Ben's ex-girlfriend, opened her box without him. She then proceeded to open his box, ignoring his wish to keep both boxes closed. She tells him his calculation for when he'd die, in approximately 14-15 years, and then she breaks up with him because her string is long and she can no longer handle being with him. We now know what the ultimate betrayal Ben has experienced from Claire is, and this behavior sharply contrasts with the support Nina and Anika have shown the short-stringers they're romantically involved with.
Nina and Amie go to the restaurant that was mentioned in an article that Nina read on the website String Theory about a short-stringer who couldn't get a loan to open a restaurant. Amie tells Nina about a massive Google spreadsheet tracking the string lengths of everyone in New York; it currently has 60,000 names and is rapidly growing. As of now, no one Amie knows is on the list. Nina and Amie forget about the strings for a bit and have a nice meal out together like old times, and Nina feels grateful that even though the old times are gone and so much has changed with the arrival of the strings, at least moments with her sister remain. We learn how Nina approached Maura at a karaoke bar at her friend's urging and her relationship with Maura marks the first time Nina began feeling open to being the pursuer. In Amie's letter to Ben, we learn why she hasn't opened her box. Amie feels dissatisfied, which is why spends so much time in fantasies. She can't look at her string because as long as she doesn't know her fate, she can imagine that one of her daydreams may still come true.
Following Anthony's call for string disclosure during the presidential debate, he holds a rally in Manhattan. Katherine urges Jack to come, but Jack makes an excuse to avoid going. Hank and some fellow short-stringers from his support group, including Maura and Ben, attend the protest happening at the rally. When Hank notices an auburn-haired woman cutting her way through the crowd holding something under her jacket, Hank has a similar feeling to the one he had at the hospital during the gunman's attack. He follows her and then sees her pull out a gun. In her two-second hesitation, Hank jumps in front of the gun. The woman is fiercely apologetic because she intended to shoot Anthony Rollins. The crowd is in shambles, and a member of the support group tells the crowd Hank will be okay because according to his string he still has a few years of his life left. Ben makes eye contact with Hank, who knows it isn't true. The EMTs rush Hank into the ambulance. Ben runs behind them, telling Hank that he was never obsolete, that all his patients lived and were fated to live because he saved them. Hank passes away in the ambulance, and we later learn that Anika delivers the eulogy at Hank's funeral and shares that he inspired her to join Doctors Without Borders.
After Hank's death, things begin spiraling for short-stringers. The media paints Hank as a Rollins supporter who spared his life for Anthony, rather than a short-stringer there to protest the Rollins campaign. Anthony sees this media circus as positive for his campaign because it paints him as a hero. Further, he realizes he can use Jack's 'short string' to strengthen his position in the election to appeal to short-stringers. Meanwhile, in the support group people are upset Hank didn't tell them the truth about how short his string was. Maura begins getting worse anxiety because Hank is the first short-stringer she knows who has reached the end of their string. She believes a long string like Nina's tells the story of someone who death catches up with slowly when they're old, tired, and ready, but her short string denotes a less peaceful ending. She's heard stories of short-stringers approaching the end of their string riddled with anxiety that affects their everyday life, from how they cross the street to how far away they stand from the tracks on the train platform. Some short-stringers are forming a network to receive euthanasia pills to die on their terms while surrounded by loved ones rather than facing a painful death.
The science is out, and the estimation of how many years someone has left is more precise. Now the range of the estimate for someone's death has gone from a few years to a single month. Some people are re-calculating to find out the exact month they will die, including Chelsea, while Maura decides she doesn't want to know. Short-stringer anxiety is increasing after the shooting at Anthony Rollins's rally, and this mounting anxiety is feeding the unconscious bias in the nation. Maura is afraid that people will question the trustworthiness of short-stringers they meet due to all the pain they're going through and the baggage they're carrying.
Analysis
In "Summer" we see the theme of fate vs fortune come up through the contrast in perspective between a short-stringer, Nihal, and long-stringers Anthony and Katherine. Nihal recently told his parents about his short string, and as religious people, they tried comforting him with the idea of strings only applying to this life, and that maybe he'll have a longer string in the next life. This doesn't comfort Nihal as he is not religious and also has difficulty coming to terms with his string because he thinks he's done everything right. He worked hard and got into Princeton, he stayed diligent and hard-working even when those around him weren't—but still, he has a short string. While he doesn't project this idea of deserving your string length onto his fellow members in the short-stringer support group, he does judge himself in this way (p. 142). This understanding of the relationship between fortune and string length is twofold because both he and his parents are equating an individual's fate with their good deeds. For his parents, reincarnation means that your fate in your next life is related to what you do in this life. Similarly, when Katherine and Anthony open their boxes and see their substantial string lengths they see it as proof of God's favor and believe that they are shoo-ins for salvation (p. 73).
The theme of fate throughout this section further develops the picture of the new world order. In this section, Erlick presents a familiar concept, in this case, faith, and illustrates how it looks different in this new world. From Hank's point of view, we hear from a mother of a girl waiting for a lung transplant at the hospital. He initially admires the mother's faith because she is calm and optimistic during this stressful situation. However, he learns that she is calm because, against her daughter's wishes, she secretly looked at her daughter's string to brace herself for what happens next. And as it turns out, her daughter's string is long, so she has 'faith' that her daughter will make it through and get an organ replacement. As presented in the chapter, the presence of the strings paints faith in a different light. Hank describes it as the strings providing hope and "the grace in knowing that prayers would be answered" (p. 151), and even after he learns the donation fell through, he knows there is no need to despair. Faith is belief in the absence of proof; this begs the question of what faith looks like in a world where there is physical proof that things will be alright.
Faith in the new world order opens the motif of the strings. After Hank's death, Maura experiences anxiety about the strings and what the strings symbolize. Maura believes a long string connotates a slow, peaceful journey toward death when someone is ready. However, short-stringers don't experience a similar peace of mind. The motif of the strings also yields the theme of control as it's a symbol of the limited control we humans have. We have no control over fate, the string, or death. Some short-stringers decide to go through euthanasia around the end of their string to avoid a painful death and die on their terms. Of course, as humans, we want to prevent unnecessary suffering and avoid pain, but we could argue that their choosing that way to die is already fated. For example, in this section of The Measure, science can now predict the month someone will die. So how can someone know they're avoiding a car crash tomorrow by taking a euthanasia pill today? Similarly, Maura speaks about the awful powerless feeling many short-stringers have in their everyday lives while approaching the end of their string. Hence, the strings paint a broader picture of the unending need of humans to exert control and how we will do what it takes to feel that we are exercising control over fate.
Contrastingly, the responses of different countries to the boxes represent the theme of perspective and varying presentations of control. China has instated a requirement for every resident to open their box and report the length of their string to the government. The U.S. doesn't want to instate comparable restrictions for fear of being similar to such societies. However, America instates a requirement that effectively bans short-stringers from high-security clearance positions in the military. Contrastingly, at this time, the midsummer bonfires in Europe happen and thousands of young Europeans use this celebration to burn their boxes as a symbolic rejection of the strings. These events juxtapose each other in "Summer" and thus support the theme of perspective in The Measure.
We have further characterization and insight into Amie and Anthony in "Summer." In Amie's letters to Ben, we learn the reason Amie is not opening her box and is instead choosing to see the strings' arrival as an adventure. Amie explains that the real reason is that she feels dissatisfied with her life. There are things she desires, such as living at the Van Woosley, traveling, and having a family of her own. And as long as she doesn't know the length of her string, she can imagine one of her daydreams coming true. This also provides insight into the other characters as everyone's perspective is informed by how they see themselves and what they desire. For Anthony, we learn that his motivation has always been to be president. This motivates everything from his reframing an attempted assassination into a story that Americans will eat up and that will boost his ratings (p.172), to choosing to marry Katherine because of her necessary pedigree and support of his ambitions (183), to figuring out a way to use Jack's 'short string' to his benefit (p.184). Anthony is a power-hungry presidential candidate who will not hesitate or consider the effect of using the fear of the nation to realize his ambitions.
