55 pages • 1 hour read
Chris WilsonThe Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue: “One Shot” - Part 1: “The Cave”
Prologue Summary: “November 6, 2006”
Nearly 10 years into a life sentence for murder, Chris Wilson appears at a sentence reduction hearing in front of Judge Cathy Serrette. The Prologue describes Wilson’s day: awake, dressed, and out of his cell by four o’clock in the morning, shackled and transported nearly an hour to the courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, placed in a holding cell with five Spanish-speaking gang members (Wilson speaks fluent Spanish, so he knows they think he might be a snitch), and finally taken to the courtroom. After the state’s attorney recounts his crime, Wilson addresses Judge Serrette: “Your honor, I want to tell you the truth” (6).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Division Avenue”
As an elementary school student in the 1980s, young Chris Wilson lives part of the time with his maternal grandparents, Grandma and Big Daddy, in their duplex on Division Avenue, part of a poor neighborhood in Northeast Washington, DC. Wilson attends Richardson Elementary School, where his sister Leslie persuades him to join the track team. Although he struggles with grades due to stress and fear, Wilson nonetheless reads books, spends time at the Capitol View Library, and learns about the ancient library at Alexandria, Egypt. He also discovers Plato’s allegory of the cave and comes to believe that the allegory refers to him and the violent world around him.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “My Mona Lisa Mom”
Wilson spends weekends with his mother, Charlene, whom he calls Mom in the book but Big Daddy calls Mona Lisa. She has a home in Temple Hills, a racially mixed neighborhood in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Wilson’s parents are divorced; he is the youngest of four children. Mom works long hours as a paramedic. She teaches him the value of money and encourages him to dream. It is safer than Division Avenue. Mom has a boyfriend named Ronald, a Vietnam veteran who begins drinking heavily. She breaks up with Ronald and then falls in love with the “wrong man” (20).
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Cop”
Mom falls for a police officer, whom Wilson refers to as “the cop.” The cop begins to abuse Mom. She begins consuming alcohol and eventually drugs. Wilson finds refuge with his cousin Eric. Mom calls the police, but the cop simply flashes his badge, and the police do nothing. 13-year-old Wilson threatens the cop with a curling iron, but the cop is not intimidated and Wilson flees for his grandparents’ home on Division Avenue, where his older brother Derrick regularly beats him. Eric continues to take Wilson under his wing. Back in Temple Hills, Wilson steals the cop’s bulletproof vest and tries to sell it but instead is expelled from school. Eric gives Wilson his first gun, and Wilson witnesses multiple murders. On December 28, 1992, Wilson’s 14th birthday, the cop arrives home drunk and beats Mom so violently that he breaks the orbital bone in her right eye.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Broken”
Mom returns from the hospital unable to work. Wilson blames himself for not helping his mother. At a Little Caesar’s restaurant in Temple Hills, Wilson pulls his gun on a group of football players who are harassing him and his friends. He chases them and fires his gun into the air. Police arrive with a search warrant and take Wilson into custody, but they do not find the weapon. The next day, Wilson learns that Eric is dead. Two men ambushed Eric and Derrick outside Grandma’s house on Division Avenue. The state’s attorney shows Wilson the crime scene photos.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Gladiator School”
Wilson begins cutting himself and thinking about suicide. He is transferred to the Hickey School, a private correctional institution for juveniles. Guards regularly assault inmates, for Hickey operates under “the philosophy that violence built men” (40). Mom visits and appears disoriented. After less than a year at Hickey, Wilson is released. Derrick gives him a gun and promises retaliation for Eric’s murder.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “The House Becomes the Cave”
Back in Temple Hills, Mom is taking several medications and being stalked by the cop. Determined to protect his mother, Wilson amasses illegal weapons and is arrested for it. The court sends Wilson to his father, who does not believe that Wilson is his biological son. Big Daddy takes Wilson to live with him and Grandma on Division Avenue. Wilson becomes addicted to PCP. His friends—Tyrone, Muhammad, Little Anthony, and Jay Jah—are either imprisoned, killed, or victims of violence. Big Daddy develops cancer. At 16, Wilson becomes a father when his son Darico is born. His sister Leslie, a high school student, takes care of the family. Leslie “had a plan” to graduate and escape her situation (49). Leslie’s boyfriend, Erick Wright, attends night school. Both Leslie and Erick encourage Wilson to turn his life around, but Wilson continues taking drugs, carrying guns, and committing crimes. Mom tells Wilson that he was a mistake and that she wishes he had never been born.
Wilson tries to borrow money from a drug dealer to get electricity restored in Mom’s home. An altercation ensues and Wilson is arrested. Released on bail, Wilson returns to Mom’s home and finds that a man named Rodney, whom Wilson calls “a crooked cop who had hired me a few years before to destroy his ex-girlfriend’s car but didn’t pay me”, in the home (52). Wilson, his brother Kenny, and a friend assault Rodney and take the money Wilson is owed. Rodney returns several days later and threatens Wilson with a gun. The next month, a group of men drive by the house and force Wilson into the car at gunpoint, demanding to know where their cocaine is. It is a case of mistaken identity, but 16-year-old Wilson returns home terrified and weeping after being tied up in a basement for several hours, convinced that he would be killed. Mom laughs and mocks him for allowing himself to be kidnapped even though he had a gun.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Six Shots”
The night of the kidnapping—Darico’s first birthday—Wilson smokes marijuana and goes for a walk around 11 o’clock at night. He notices that two men are following him. One of them confronts him and issues a vague threat by telling him that he knows where Wilson’s family lives. Wilson pulls a gun and fires six shots, striking and killing one of the men.
Prologue-Part 1 Analysis
Between Division Avenue and Temple Hills, young Chris Wilson lives in an environment that he compares to Plato’s “Cave.” In his work The Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato said that ordinary human life is like living in a cave where shadows are projected on the walls. People believe the shadows are reality and never step outside the cave to see things as they really are. Wilson uses Plato’s allegory to represent his experience as a child. His grandparents’ working-class, predominantly-Black neighborhood had been “nice back in the day,” he say, but a pair of government housing projects where heroin and guns proliferated, had transformed it into a dangerous place (9). Meanwhile, Mom’s house becomes part of the same cave. Although she lives in a nicer neighborhood, she falls for a police officer who starts to beat her. At 14, Wilson learns that the police often treat victims with disdain, especially when a fellow officer is the perpetrator. During an assault on Wilson’s mom, the cop beats Wilson to unconsciousness. When he awakens, Wilson drives Mom to the police station, where the officers act as if “they hated us for bothering them” (31).
Wilson says that he begins to feel “anger, but also distance, like I wasn’t there” (36). When counselors and authority figures ask him if he has a death wish, Wilson replies that he is “just trying to survive” (37). At the Hickey School, Wilson cuts himself and thinks about suicide. Reflecting on these years, Wilson notes his adolescent mental health challenges but does not dwell on them at length, in part because no one in a position of authority considered his mental state. Wilson has only one adult male role model: Big Daddy, his grandfather, who dies of cancer after Wilson is sent to prison. Wilson’s father abandons him—in fact, he does not even acknowledge Wilson as his biological son. By sharing these experiences, Wilson establishes the extent of violence, poverty and structural inequality that defined his understanding of reality in his youth.
Wilson uses the short prologue to frame his memoir as legally binding testimony, immediately establishing the theme of Perception Versus Reality. By declaring to the judge that what follows will be “the truth,” Wilson positions the reader as his witness (or jury), and declares his own objectivity and credibility as narrator. Telling the story chronologically requires Wilson to shift further into the past in Chapter 1, however this structural choice helps the reader understand Wilson’s portrayal of how Structural Oppression informs an individual’s experience of reality, and how his early life informed his choices and understanding of what opportunities were available to him. Wilson weaves in his third theme—The Importance of Setting Goals—early on by contrasting his experiences with Leslie and Erick’s determination to pursue education, safety, and financial stability. Wilson’s actions on his son’s first birthday echo his own father’s abandonment; though Wilson doesn’t actively choose not to be a part of Darico’s life, the consequences of this actions will prevent him from taking an active role in parenting. Through these father-son dynamics, Wilson suggests the difficulty of breaking cycles of violence within families and communities, and foreshadows his efforts to be a part of his son’s life once he leaves the prison system.
