A Comparison Of Kamau's Finish And The Bunion Derby

508 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Sportsmanship in sports essay

In both “Kamau’s Finish” and “The Bunion Derby”, we learn that in life, it’s important to have hope in any and every situation. With these two stories, we learn about two boys who have a passion to foot race. They both have a need to win, whether it’s for themselves or everyone but them. At first glance, it may seem like these two stories share almost nothing in common, but when you read inbetween the lines, you will see that they actually do hold many thematic similarities. To start off, these themes and how they are executed in the stories have many topics in common. These similarities include the belief in hope. In “Kamau’s Finish”, Kamau has so much hope in winning the race for his family. Most specifically for his mother who thinks that he is simply a “dreamer”. The same incentive is used in “The Bunion Derby” too. The racer Andy runs for his family and community, including having lots of hope for winning the race. He had started running and practiced for a while, with this practice he had hope and determination expecting his win. The test states; “He ran five miles to grade school, practiced running in the fields and hills, and ran the mile at Foyil High School, …show more content…

By the end of Kamau’s race, it emphasises that even though he lost, it was not over. At the way end of the story the text shows; “So I wipe my nose with my wrist and laugh through the tears. It sounds like I’m crying. But Baba is beaming.” Kamau got back up again and ran to the end as his father cheered him on. In the long race that Andy was determined to win, it’s pushed that since Andy followed his dreams he was able to achieve them. These two important ending notes can even be contradicting themes. These two themes are obviously different because one is about dealing with and making the most out of a fail, and the other is about setting high expectations and following through to

Show More
Related

  • Comparing The American Dream In The Great Gatsby And The Boys In The Boat

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Boys in the Boat has a shared dream of winning gold in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but not just the gold, it is the overall satisfaction of achieving something greater than ever imagined. Many of these boys

    Read More

  • Boys In The Boat Sparknotes

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion, the boys in the Husky Clipper, the boys’ boat, turned into men when they started rowing. They became solemn and they realized that America was more than a bunch of people but one body of hard work. They embodied the American spirit and showed Berlin what America is. When the boys’ rowing career was up they helped in World War II. The boy’s never forgot the day they won gold, with a sick crew member. The boys had to overcome hardships, to work hard, and they never stopped being a team in order to win gold in

    Read More

  • Kiss Of The Fur Queen Tomson Highway Analysis

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the opening passage of Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, Abraham Okimasis, a caribou hunter participating in an intense race, strives to reach the finish line with his exhausted self and huskies. Although the chance of success is slim, he perpetuates. Through the use of literary devices, Highway captures Okimasis’ breathless experience during the race; notably, he emphasizes the significance of past promises in empowering one to overcome obstacles to reach his or her ultimate goal.

    Read More

  • Richard Cory and To an Athlete Dying Young

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    The speakers in A. E. Housman poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” and Edward Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory” serve different purposes but uses irony and rhyme to help convey their message. In “To an Athlete Dying Young” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience dying young with glory is more memorable than dying old with glory. In “Richard Cory” the speaker’s purpose is to show the audience “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

    Read More

  • The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson and A Good Man Is Hard To Find, by Flannery O'Connors

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...re the reader is not able to make any solid connection with any of these characters. It is arguably only through the stories foreshadowing where both authors prepare us with little details like the mileage of the car written down by the grandmother in O’Connor’s story likewise the boys preparation of the stones in Jackson’s Lottery that would inevitably help the reader to comprehend how both these author’s reached the horrifically shocking climatic endings in both short stories. I believe the authors similar use of these three variables help the reader to understand the message being delivered through these stories of the human condition and its effects on a society that only embraces its traditional moral beliefs and values.

    Read More

  • The Contrast of Two Great Short Stories: The Rocking Horse Winner and The Lottery

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    The setting in the stories The Lottery and The Rocking-Horse Winner create an atmosphere where the readers can be easily drawn in by the contrasting features of each short story. This short essay will tell of very important contrasting aspects of settings in that while both stories are different, both hold the same aspects.

    Read More

  • Compare & Contrast The Rocking Horse Winner and The Destructors

    1293 Words  | 3 Pages

    When comparing the themes of each story, surprising similarities arise.  First, both are developed around the lives of children.  In “The Destructors” a group of boys called the Wormsley Gang have the same view of the world around them.  They have grown up together and share stories about the bombs that destroyed their town.  They also challenge each other to accomplish various tasks.   The house that the boys ultimately destroy represents the greediness of Mr. Thomas, an architect who owns the tattered home.  The Wormsley Gang called him ‘Old Misery’.  In the Rocking Horse Winner”, the story’s plot is thickend by a a young boys obsessive desire to “become lucky”.  This young boy, Paul, believes that his house is continually whispering, “…there must be more money…there must be more money”.  Paul is able to relate the self-proclaimed dissatificatoin of his mothers life with the odd mood of his house.  Paul knows that although his mother appears to have everything together on the outside, she does not love him on the inside.  Paul believes that he can please his mother if he is able to find a way to give her more money.  In both stories, the houses were very symbolic.

    Read More

  • Chariots Of Fire And Next Goal Wins: Film Analysis

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    Soccer is inherently a team sport, and in contrast, Running is more or less a solitary sport. What this means in terms of the importance of winning or losing is ultimately that a team sport is able to take defeat as a group of people while in a sport like running, the defeat is endured by a single individual. In “Next Goal Wins”, American Samoa is able to come back from a history of consecutive losses with their first win against Tonga, whereas in “Chariots of Fire”, Abrahams at one point makes the assumption that he cannot win based on a couple of past races. With the help of the coach Thomas Rongen and each other, the players in American Samoa are able to share the consequences of defeat and move on. In particular, is the feeling of guilt that one has caused their own defeat and the hopelessness that comes with it. Because this guilt is held by the ‘team’, each player is able to recover quickly and improve themselves. Since this function of team sport is absent in “Chariots of Fire”, losing, in comparison, is portrayed as relatively inconsequential in “Next Goal

    Read More

  • History Of The Kentucky Derby

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Kentucky Derby has over 160,000 people come from around the world to attend the Kentucky Derby annually, and tens of millions watch on television.  The Kentucky Derby is our state’s signature event, filled with traditions, legends, and celebrities.  On May 2nd, of every year, is the Kentucky Derby and my birthday.  The Kentucky Derby is an athletic event, because you get to understand the roles of the jockey and thoroughbred as athletes, as well as the scientific basis for their performance, it helps provide insights and comparisons into human training, nutrition, and health.  “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” was hailed as a triumph and brought rabid attention to Scanlan’s. (McKeen 149)  The Kentucky Derby is a horse race that

    Read More

  • The Will to Succeed

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some forms of inspiration are driven from defeat. The Garden City’s football team’s catalyst before their football game was, “Having lost to the rival Red Devils in each of the past two seasons was motivation enough for Garden City, Which rolled to a 68-20 victory that ended by the 45-point mercy rule late in the fourth quarter”(Whitson 1). Having lost two seasons in a row by the same team, caused each player to exert themselves to their highest capability to vanquish the Red Devils. The Lubbock tennis team, just like Garden City, was defeated, but the Lubbock tennis team lost at regional finals. “’Last year we fell short and lost in the finals of the regionals to Wichita Falls Rider, and basically we started working for this very thing at that point last year,’ Dotson said”(“Finding Motivation No Problem” 1). Their melancholy was used as fuel to ignite triumph that upcoming year. In the book The Perfect Mile, Bannister embraced this concept when Neal Bascomb said, “Bannister had stepped up his training. His failure in Helsinki had left him with a need to redeem himself- to deal with ‘unfinished business’”(Bascomb 88). “But the sting from his devastating loss at the Olympics had driven him to continue running and to seek the four-minute mile as evidence that his approach to sport still had merit”(Bascomb 242). Bannister desired to have satisfaction with his achievements and wanted to close o...

    Read More

  • Bruce Lee, The Best In History

    1753 Words  | 4 Pages

    The poem, “Young Athletes Dying Young” written by A.E. Housman gives inspiration to those who are athletes but teaches them that anything can happen. According to Mark Ruby, “A. E. Housman's ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ was published in his first collection, A Shropshire Lad, in 1896 and is generally considered one of his best poems. Like much of the poet's work, its themes include the preciousness of youth and the nature of early death. It is a speaker's narrative, or dramatic monologue, that tells the story of an athlete, a runner, who has died at the peak of his youthful and abundant athleticism. The lyrically presented images contain the irony that the same crowd of townspeople who once carried the runner on their shoulders after he had won a race now carries him to his place of final rest” (Overview). Young Athletes around fear that one thing in their career is losing their stats and records. In sports as the years go by, better and stronger athletes are getting in these leagues and it is getting harder to even compete.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Brooks' First Fight.Then Fiddle

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    Gwendolyn Brooks' "First fight. Then Fiddle." initially seems to argue for the necessity of brutal war in order to create a space for the pursuit of beautiful art. The poem is more complex, however, because it also implies both that war cannot protect art and that art should not justify war. Yet if Brooks seems, paradoxically, to argue against art within a work of art, she does so in order create an artwork that by its very recognition of art's costs would justify itself.

    Read More

  • race in sports

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sports is what has molded us into the people we are today. The world of sports is so unique, and people have different interest and fascinations. From being a child I can remember watching the Red Sox and Celtics with my father and becoming a die hard fan for those teams due to my family being serious fans. Not only did watching those games turn me into a good New England fan but it also gave me some good quality time with my father and brothers.

    Read More

  • The Race Poem Analysis

    239 Words  | 1 Pages

    The poem "The Race" by Sharon Olds depicts a woman struggling to overcome the obstacles that are set before her so that she can spend her father's last moments with him. Through her use of repetition and alliteration she is able to convey the daughters anxiousness to her audience.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Wonder By Raquel Palacio

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    A theme is important in every story because it describes the message or the moral of the story. In the stories of August and Rocky, they were both born with a gene disorder which resulted in their face being deformed. They both went to school to gain socialization skills with other students. August was born

    Read More

More about A Comparison Of Kamau's Finish And The Bunion Derby

Open Document