Since Devon is an all-boys boarding school, Finny’s environment is bound to be highly competitive, especially when it comes to sports. Despite the numerous athletes at the school, Finny appears to shine above them all with seemingly no effort at all. One such example is when Finny unofficially breaks the school’s 100 meter freestyle swimming record, much to the amazement of Gene. “The sports Finny played officially—football, hockey, baseball, lacrosse—didn’t have school records. To switch to a new sport suddenly, just for a day, and immediately break a record in it—that was about as neat a trick, as dazzling a reversal as I could, to be perfectly honest, possibly imagine”(Knowles p.45).
For Daniel James Brown it was important to stay true to the actual events but it was just as important to make it influential and thoughtful to the reader. These flashbacks also made it possible to tie in the reality of how the novel was written, through the eyes of Joe Rantz as an old man who died part of the way through the creation of The Boys in the Boat. His personal contributions gave the book a more realistic and human approach to the story. He wanted it to be more about the team rather than himself personally. This want to balance both Joe’s personal story and the historical event of the 1936 win, is what influenced Daniel James Brown to write The Boys in the Boat the way it was written.
Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat demonstrates that success in a team comes when it learn to work as one and sacrifice for the team. He also recognizes that one’s background or wealth doesn’t necessarily determine one’s success. Brown supports his stance proficiently by illustrating the team's struggles because of their background and the Great Depression and the team's successes in races. The book tells the story of the U.W. rowing team and its journey to winning the gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story features Joe Rantz, who as an adolescent was abandoned by his parents, forced to fend for himself.
“The path Joe Rantz followed across the quad and down to the shell house that afternoon in 1933 was only the last few hundred yards of a much longer, harder, and at times darker path he had traveled for much of his young life” explains Daniel James Brown in his novel, The Boys in the Boat (Brown 31). The reader follows Joe through his early trials, errors, successes, and failures, all of which molded him into a persevering character. Through disappointments and abandonment, Brown’s The Boys in the Boat illustrates Joe Rantz, son of mechanical pioneer Harry Rantz, as a cunning, intelligent, and hardworking individual determined to succeed in his endeavors. Although Harry Rantz, Joe’s father, began adulthood with a “most satisfactory life —
In this book by Steve Watkins, Juvie, Sadie Windas was stuck in a situation where she had to decide if she was willing to go to juvie for her sister after being involved, unintentionally, with drug trafficking with two guys that she met at a party. After having the perfect life for a very long time, it all went to waste. Sadie never let family issues get in the way, but her sister Carla had ruined that for her. Sadie decides to go to juvie was a bittersweet situation. It was a bad thing that she had gone to juvie for her sister because she now had a criminal record that would complicate her life whenever she would try to apply to a college or any job.
The 1936 Olympics was a big thing going on during this time period. In the book The Boys in The Boat, the coach Al Ulbrickson wanted to win the 1936 Olympic gold. He wanted a team that could take him there. Some felt that he was too hard on the boys, because he made them practice 6-7 days of the week. He made them practice in brutal weather, and do brutal work.
Many coaches do odd things to teach, such odd things that it is now a trend on social media to post videos titled "Hitting coaches in 2024," making fun of the fact that they make clients do pointless things. In many cases, rowing fans and avid readers of today wonder if the "legendary" Coach Al Ulbrickson, the head coach from Washington as told in The Boys in the Boat by the author, Daniel James Brown, was a harsh and inefficient coach. That statement is clearly and blatantly false. First of all, from a recruiting standpoint, Ulbrickson was a mastermind. He would find strong, athletic kids with the right build he needed from other sports.
Throughout a person’s lifetime, he or she will undoubtedly encounter many challenges, and each person can choose to overcome each challenge or let it defeat him or her. For Joe Rantz, the main character in The Boys In The Boat and one of the eight boys who won the 1936 Olympics in rowing, his underlying challenge that arose was living through the Great Depression. In response to this, Joe and Washington’s crew, along with many other people throughout America, made an effort to confront these challenges. This exertion resulted in helping them to grow into stronger people, who could then set the example for the many people around them to follow suit and face their own trials. Although the challenges life presents can be difficult to overcome,
Rocket Boys is a memoir by Homer Hickam Jr. (Sonny), and it’s about his journey to become a rocket engineer for NASA, and how he fought against the norms his town of Coalwood had. He fights the discouragement of his dad and cycles through many different types of motivations. The main theme of this book, Rockets, is the perfect theme for Rocket Boys for many different reasons. Rockets are a perfect theme for Rocket Boys because they are a symbol of aspiration and escape, they act as the embodiment of learning and innovation, and they represent community transformation. Rockets in Rocket Boys symbolize many things, but especially the aspiration of the main characters, Sonny and his rocket launching agency (the BCMA), and their escape from the norms of the town of Coalwood.
I read the historical fiction book Woods Runner written by Gary Paulsen,which takes place during the Revolutionary War Era. The main character, Samuel, is thirteen years old. He lives in a colony with a forest west of it. One day he is out in the forest and he sees smoke rising from where the colony is located. The colony where he and his parents lived,had been attacked.
His hard work and dedication paid off as he eventually made it to the Olympics, and brought home a gold medal. Throughout Joe's life in The Boys and the Boat, the theme of perseverance is shown through his experience of struggles such as his childhood
Rashad from All American Boys by Jason Reynolds was falsely accused of stealing and put into custody while trying to buy chips for a party. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a pyramid that shows the needs and goals of people. When you have one need already, you move on, and vice versa. The first need is air, water, and food. The second need is personal security and health.
His “sharply split opinions” signaled to the audience that his essay could go either way. By starting off with his primary research, he gained the reader’s attention enough that he or she would continue reading, despite their own opinions on the topic. His purpose for writing was driven by his numerous ordinary, but detrimental, experiences with college athletes as a student and as an educator. One sentence that reveals his purpose is, “It’s sad to see bright young athletes knowingly compromise their potential and settle for much less education than they deserve.”
The impact on U.S. wages was to be expected. The majority of workers who lost their jobs lost a permanent source of income in the process. It also gave employers the ability to force workers to accept lower wages. As soon as NAFTA was put into effect, U.S. employers began to tell workers that the company will move to Mexico unless they lowered the cost of their wages. These same threats were used against labor unions.
For example by working in the fields with members form his team and meeting their families in their homes he was able to show warmth and empathy. In order to do this he had to learn to be sensitive to cultural differences and learn first-hand why a lot of the parents needed their children to work in the fields, how important family and community is, and how to enable some of his team members to make time for both their job and cross country. By the end of the movie, Coach White was a leader who led by example. When he forgot his daughter’s birthday, he looked to his community for guidance and gave her a birthday she would not forget. He was not afraid to go out in the fields and work as hard as the boys he coached and helped them believe that they could do anything the set their minds
