The GIVE and TAKE Knuckle Tattoos in Second First Impressions: Symbol Analysis

What the Tattoos Are and Where They Appear

Teddy Prescott's knuckle tattoos spell GIVE across one hand and TAKE across the other. They are first called out in Chapter 5, during his job interview with the Parloni sisters, when Renata spots them and immediately turns them into a diagnostic question: “Are you left- or right-handed?” When Teddy answers that he is left-handed, Renata pounces: “So you admit you take more than you give.”

The tattoos recur at key emotional moments throughout the novel:

• Chapter 5: Renata's interview interrogation, where she reads them as a confession of selfishness.

• Chapter 6: Ruthie's private reflection after Teddy declines her offer of dinner and a toothbrush: “What kind of person tattoos TAKE on their own hand, anyway? Apparently, someone who's acutely aware that that's what he does.”

• Chapter 8: Ruthie traces the letters with a pen lid while Teddy sleeps facedown on her desk, moving from G to I to V as she confesses her loneliness to his unconscious form.

• Chapter 11: Ruthie's internal refrain “Give, give, give” as she imagines what it would feel like to hold his hand.

Each recurrence shifts the tattoos' meaning slightly. Renata reads them as a confession. Ruthie reads them as self-awareness. The physical tracing in Chapter 8 transforms them from a label into something intimate—a text Ruthie wants to read closely.

How the Meaning Shifts

The tattoos begin as a provocation. Renata uses them to test Teddy's self-perception, and his answer—“Depends on who I'm with”—reframes them as situational rather than fixed. He is not saying he is always a taker; he is saying the balance shifts depending on the relationship.

But Ruthie's reading in Chapter 6 is darker. After Teddy refuses her help, she concludes that the TAKE tattoo marks someone “acutely aware that that's what he does.” The tattoo becomes a confession of a feared pattern—the worry that he takes more than he gives, that he is like his mother, who “liked having a rich-guy secret boyfriend who dropped in twice a week with some cash” (Chapter 23). Teddy explicitly worries, “I worry all the time that I'm like that. I have been like that.”

By the end of the novel, the tattoos' meaning has shifted again. Teddy's arc—working twelve-hour days for the Parlonis, earning his studio buy-in, drawing Ruthie's temporary angel tattoo—shows him becoming a giver. The tattoos remain on his hands, but they read less like a confession and more like a reminder of the balance he is trying to strike.

Character Connections

Teddy: The tattoos are his public admission of a private fear. He has spent his life taking—from his father's money (which he refuses), from Ruthie's kindness (the $20 gas payment, the offered dinner), from the people who love him. The tattoos are a way of owning that pattern, of putting it on display so no one can accuse him of hiding it. But they also become a goal: the balance he is trying to achieve.

Ruthie: She is the giver in the novel's central relationship. She pays for Teddy's gas, offers him dinner, helps him navigate the Parlonis, and defends him to Alistair. Her question in Chapter 8—“And what happens to me, when I get you through this? Ever think that maybe I need help too?”—is the novel's central challenge to the give/take dynamic. Ruthie has built her life around giving (to Providence, to the residents, to the Parlonis), and Teddy's arrival forces her to ask what she receives in return.

Renata: She reads the tattoos as a diagnostic tool, a way to assess Teddy's character in seconds. Her interpretation—that a left-handed man with TAKE on his dominant hand is confessing to being a taker—is both reductive and revealing. She is testing whether Teddy will own the label or push back.

The Parlonis: Their salary scheme—doubling weekly to a capped amount—is a giving structure that requires Teddy to earn it. They give him a path to his studio buy-in, but only if he gives them his labor, his charm, and his patience.

Theme Connections

The tattoos are the novel's most direct symbol of its central theme: reciprocity. The question the novel keeps asking is not whether people give or take, but how the balance shifts across a relationship. Teddy's tattoos literalize that question on his body.

The tattoos also connect to the theme of self-worth and personal transformation. Teddy's journey is from someone who takes (his mother's pattern, his father's money, Ruthie's kindness) to someone who gives (his labor, his art, his temporary tattoo for Ruthie). The tattoos mark the starting point of that transformation.

They connect to trust and vulnerability after past trauma as well. Ruthie's fear—that she will give everything and receive nothing—is the novel's central anxiety. The tattoos make that fear visible: what if the person you are giving to is, by his own admission, a taker?

The tattoos also touch on family expectations and parental influence. Teddy's fear of being a taker is rooted in his mother's pattern and his father's wealth. The tattoos are a way of owning that inheritance—and, eventually, of rejecting it.

Study Questions

1. Why does Renata immediately interpret the tattoos as a confession of Teddy's character? What does her reading reveal about how first impressions work?

Renata reads the tattoos as a diagnostic tool, assuming that a left-handed man with TAKE on his dominant hand is confessing to being a taker. Her interpretation is reductive—it treats a permanent label as a fixed identity rather than a complex self-assessment. But it also reveals how first impressions operate in the novel: people project meaning onto visible markers (tattoos, age, appearance) and use those projections to make quick judgments. Renata's reading is wrong in its simplicity, but it is not entirely wrong—Teddy does worry that he is a taker. The tattoos are both a confession and a challenge.

2. How does Ruthie's physical tracing of the letters in Chapter 8 change the tattoos' meaning?

When Ruthie traces the G, I, and V with her pen lid while Teddy sleeps, the tattoos shift from a public label to an intimate text. She is reading him closely, literally following the lines of the ink. The tracing is also an act of giving—she is offering her attention, her care, her confession of loneliness (“Sometimes, at night, I feel like the last person on Earth”) to someone who cannot hear her. The moment transforms the tattoos from a statement about Teddy into a site of connection between them.

3. What does Teddy's answer “Depends on who I'm with” suggest about his self-concept?

Teddy's answer reframes the tattoos as situational rather than fixed. He is not saying he is always a taker; he is saying the balance shifts depending on the relationship. This suggests a self-concept that is relational—he defines himself in context, not in isolation. It also hints at his fear: he worries he is like his mother, who took from his father without giving back. The answer is both a deflection (he will not own the label Renata wants to assign) and a confession (he knows the pattern exists).

4. How do the tattoos connect to the novel's larger argument about reciprocity in relationships?

The tattoos literalize the novel's central question: what does it mean to give and take in a relationship? Ruthie gives constantly—to Providence, to the residents, to Teddy—and her question “And what happens to me?” is the novel's challenge to one-sided giving. Teddy's tattoos mark his fear that he is a taker, but his arc shows him learning to give. The novel's argument is not that people should stop taking; it is that healthy relationships require a balance—a mutual give and take that both partners consciously choose.

For more on how this symbol plays out across the story, see the main book page, the character analysis of Teddy Prescott, and the character analysis of Ruthie Midona.