Theme Of The Eighty Yard Run

The theme of Irwin Shaw’s short story “The Eighty Yard Run” is don’t live in the past. In the beginning, Christian Darling remembers when he made an eighty-yard run during a football practice in college. In the middle, Shaw shows us that, fifteen years later, Darling is in a failing marriage with the female lead, Louise. In the end, Darling returns to the football field on which he made the run, clinging to his memories even more so after losing everything. This essay will prove that the beginning, middle and end events reflect the theme of the story.
The beginning of the story sets the stage for future events. It starts off with a memory. Darling reminisces over the eighty-yard run he made when he was on his college’s football team in 1925.

Darling thinks of how good his life was after the practice. He became the star of the football team and Louise always showed him off and spoiled him. We see that women were throwing themselves at Darling, and he wasn’t entirely loyal to Louise. This may be because the excitement of being so popular and cool went to his head. This part of the story seems to represent where Darling and Louise’s relationship became strained, as Louise seemed to know about the affairs but kept quiet out of love. Her knowing of Darling’s cheating is hinted at in the line “…Louise never took her eyes off him when they were in the same room together, watching him with a secret, miser's smile, with a trick of coming over to him in the middle of a crowded room and saying gravely, in a low voice, "You're the handsomest man I've ever seen in my whole life. Want a drink?” The idea that Louise only stays with Darling because she loves him is repeated throughout the story and suggests that she, too, may be living in the

Darling is envious, insecure, and terrified of losing Louise, the one thing he still has from his happier days in on the football team. Louise, in contrast, is confident and seems to only stay with Darling because a small part of her still loves the man she met in college. This, again, suggests that Louise is a large part of why Darling is stuck in the past.
The end of the story starts with a description of Darling’s failure in keeping pace with Louise. Their relationship is distant, and Louise seems to treat Darling in a condescending way, as if he’s a child or a chore to be around, perhaps due to the fact that they can’t communicate as well as they used to.
Darling soon gets a job offer of being a tailor’s representative, and the tension in their marriage shows again. When he tells Louise about the offer he speaks nervously. She, on the other hand, acts very artificially towards him (“He looked at her face, lovelier now at thirty-five than it had ever been before, but fogged over now as it had been for five years with a kind of patient, kindly, remote boredom.) Telling him to take the job was essentially her way of letting him go. Not because she is tired of him, but because she wants what’s best for both of them. She knows that the offer is Darling’s opportunity to finally move forward, and she still cares enough about him to make sure that he takes