Angie Abdou’s novel The Bone Cage coveries a variety of messages. The main message is how the athlete’s body can be a trap even as the medium in which they excel. In this essay, I will be analyzing this message and then determining how it shapes society’s perception on athletic achievement. An athlete’s body can only be pushed to certain limits and pushing beyond those limits will reveal the body’s pitfalls. For example, Fly’s body can only handle a maximal exhersion and then should be replenished with water, not sugars. As Fly drinks his Coke, his body was too dehydrated to handle the sugars and his body has a seziure (Abdou, 15). The physical body is not the only part that can be pushed beyond the breaking points. The mental body can also …show more content…
Once an amateur athlete becomes an elite athlete, their only focused on one thing: winning. Athletes cannot let anything become an obstacle, they must push through and win the next event. For this reason, Sadie is twenty-six years old and is still competing, pursuing her dream at competing in the Olympics. She completed a degree in English Literature from the University of Calgary, but has not pursued a career in this field. She must also ignore the muscle pain in her shoulder and continue to swim. Her coach tells her “to ignore the body’s daily fatigue” and to ask whether her shoulder aches are just a feeling or pain; if it’s a feeling you must continue on, if it’s pain only then you can stop (118). She must continue to train with any ache or even thrown at her. The biggest evidence of this is when her grandmother is committed into the hospital. Her coach only lets her leave practice once it is over (32). In addition, next practice her coach says that her “grandmother’s illness is unfortnuate” and that “there will always be something [and] to focus on what you can control (70).” Finally, when her grandmother passes away, her father is more concerned about her Olympics and how her grieving would effect it than her actual grieving