A person can never be too far beyond forgiveness. Everybody makes mistakes in life and deserves another chance to do what is right. When Rake’s players were with him on the team, they hated him at some point and were miserable with him coaching. He treated his players like dirt to make them the best that they could be. The players did not realize it then and hated him for it. After their glory days were long gone, Rake’s drive and cruelty had a reason that they could finally see. Many times Rake crossed the line with his practicing techniques and pushed his athletes to the edge. In John Grisham’s Bleachers, Rake’s players all forgave him at the funeral when they had their sense of closure. Forgiveness is the hardest thing that one may face …show more content…
but it will prove to be the key to a full, fulfilling life. The morning after a bad scrimmage, Rake had his players attend a Sunday practice session.
All the players knew “the assault on the bleachers” was about to happen (Grisham 74). It was a miserable morning while rake “growled along the track, whistle hanging around his neck, yelling at the stragglers” (Grisham 75). One player, Scotty Reardon, was running the bleachers and went unconscious and died that day on the bleachers. Scotty passed away on the bleachers that Sunday morning. Scotty’s uncle was the superintendent of the school and had the power to fire Eddie Rake. The town split because of people’s view whether or not Eddie Rake should be fired. The Reardon’s did not forgive Rake for a long time and Rake practically went into hiding. The town took a long time to recover from this loss of their coach. When Rake finally passed away he had his own personal closure with Scotty and his family. Rake had requested to be buried next to Scotty and said he would greet him in heaven. The Reardon’s said it would be okay for Rake to be buried next to Scotty. This was their way of forgiving Rake for what he did to their …show more content…
son. The 1987 championship game led to a lot of problems. The Spartans were down thirty-one to zero at half-time and Rake was more than upset when they returned to the locker room. Neely and Rake got into an argument and Rake back-handed Neely across the face, breaking his nose. Without thinking, Neely punched Rake in the face and knocked him out cold. Neely Crenshaw’s hand was broken with the second half. Silo and the others told the coaches to stay away from the sideline for the rest of the game. Rake and the assistant coaches listened to them and stayed away until the last part of the game. The Spartans won the football game in an unbelievable comeback against East Pike. It took a long time for Neely to forgive Rake and it may have never happened if Rake did not force Neely to speak at his funeral. In the note that Rake wrote before he died, he apologized for what he did to Neely to finally resolve what they had between each other. Forgiveness can be seen between Cameron and Neely.
During his glory days in high school Neely dated Cameron. Cameron was not a girl who would put out and Neely, being the quarterback of the football team, could get any girl he wanted. When Neely decided to hook up with Screamer, Cameron was heartbroken and did not get over it for a very long time. Neely was always too scared to confront Cameron about it. He ended up leaving Messina for fifteen years so he would not have to confront his glory day’s everyday of his life. It was not until Rake’s funeral that Neely talked to Cameron about how he abandoned her in high school. Cameron had a hard time forgetting Neely and was not going to accept his apology. She never truly forgave Neely and left Messina to return to her home where she was married and had
children. Forgiving someone is never an easy thing to do. A lot of people have too much pride to actually forgive a person and will not ever do it. People can never be too far gone to be forgiven or redeem themselves. When someone does something as bad as Neely did to Cameron, it is very hard to forgive. Forgiveness is what will finally let one get over the issue and move on. It is the key to happiness in life and allows one to live life to the fullest. One cannot live a fulfilling life full of hate and holding grudges.
The Art of Forgiveness Most runaway youth are homeless because of neglect, abuse and violence, not because of choice. Lily Owens is the protagonist in the novel, Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk. Kidd, is no different. Lily is a fourteen year old girl still grieving over her mother's death. T. Ray, a man who has never been able to live up to the title of a father, due to years of abuse, has not made it any easier.
In life, everyone makes mistakes. Some are minor, some are major, but all in all, it happens. Eddie Rake made his fair amount of mistakes in life but managed to gain forgiveness back from every player and family because of the positive impact he made on the lives of the people of Messina. In John Grisham’s, Bleachers, Neely Crenshaw, one of Rake’s former players, said, “Coach Rake was not easy to love, and while you’re playing here you don’t really like him. But after you leave, after you venture away from this place, after you’ve been kicked around a few times, faced some adversity, some failure, been knocked down in life, you soon realize how important Coach Rake is and was” (Grisham 223). This tells one that no matter how bad Rake hurt a
As strong, independent, self-driven individuals, it is not surprising that Chris McCandless and Lily Owens constantly clashed with their parents. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, Chris was a twenty-four-year-old man that decided to escape the materialistic world of his time for a life based on the simplistic beauty of nature. He graduated at the top of his class at Emory University and grew up in affluent Annandale, Virginia, during the early 1980’s. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily was a fourteen-year-old girl who grew up in the 1960’s, a time when racial equality was a struggle. She had an intense desire to learn about her deceased mother. Her nanny, Rosaleen, with whom she grew very close over the years, raised Lily with little help from her abusive father. When her father failed to help Rosaleen after three white men hospitalized her, Lily was hysterical. Later, Lily decided to break Rosaleen out of the hospital and leave town for good. While there are differences between Chris McCandless and Lily Owens, they share striking similarities. Chris McCandless’ and Lily Owens’s inconsistencies of forgiveness with their parents resulted in damaged relationships and an escape into the unknown.
First, Bleachers is well written in the New Criticism point of view because the characters in the book are believable. The character that plays an important role in this novel other than Neely would be Coach Rake. Coach Rake is involved in every possible situation that occurs upon the lives of his athletes. First of all, what makes Coach Rake a believable character, is that he has stayed at the same town and coached for the same school for many generations of football player’s. In addition, he tends to over exaggerate situations just as much as a normal human being would tend to do when their memory fails on them. For example, Rake had exaggerated that one of his fellow athletes had completely broke his ankle and still continued running across the footba...
In the locker room, the Spartans had just won a game, after the coaches walked out, Rake walked up to Neely and punched him in the face. Nobody knew what Rake did but they all knew something happened. It was never the same, Neely never planned to forgive Rake because he had caused him so much trouble and ruined his life and everyone knew it. So when Neely stepped up to the podium at Rake's funeral, the whole town of Messina, his fellow Spartans in their green jerseys and even Neely himself were aghast at the kind-hearted words he spoke in memory of his coach. This was a turning point for Neely Crenshaw. Long gone were the feelings hate and resentment only to be replaced with appreciation and acceptance for the man he formerly called Coach. Neely was a new person who through forgiveness found peace and renewed love for his sport that he thought he had
The town of Messina revolved their life around the football team, so they knew everything about anything that happened with the boys. Coach Eddie Rake was a thick headed individual who continuously pushed his players past their breaking point every day. Practices included the many players puking and the death of one after their daily bleacher run that the boys dreaded. Games included one breaking his hand, Rake becoming unconscious, and the team “just doing the impossible” of winning a State Championship with no coaches after being down 31-0 at halftime (Grisham 144). Like every person in Messina, Rake has two sides to him; the shrewd side and the compassionate side. Rake’s many personalities made each and every person in Messina have a different opinion of him. “The question is, ‘do I love Eddie Rake, or do I hate him (Grisham 223)?’” Coach Rake loved every one of his players, but he had a reputation to maintain which made people think differently about him.
...pen arms to Rake when not many did because of the death of a player, Rake showed a different side to him. Rake showed that there was more to him than just football and discipline.
Bleachers is a fictional story that has many characters and events that could exist. Events like the 1987 incident and the twenty-one mile marathon seem unlikely. Characters like Neely Crenshaw, the typical all-American, to the meanest coach around, Coach Eddie Rake are characters that portray characteristics of real people. This story is full of events and characters that seem believable, as well as the town they live in and the crowd that cheers every Friday night.
A person like this is the Bird, The Bird was a leader of a prison of war camp who treated Louis as if he were not even human. Louis never did anything against the Bird but he still tried to break Louis down. The Bird acted as if Zamperini had done something absolutely and horrifyingly terrible. The first encounter Louis had with the Bird was at the first camp called Ofuna which was a military based camp. The Bird had put a target on Louis back because he recognized him as a famous olympic runner. He beat and made fun of Louis endlessly trying to get him to his breaking point. later, Louis is moved to a second camp called Omori where he thought that he has finally escaped the Bird’s cruelness, he was wrong. The Bird also moved to Omori so that he could stay with Zamperini. The situation here did not get better as Louis thought it would, the bird actually got meaner and things got harder (Bos). Now, this seems like one of those particular situations where it would be impossible to forgive. It would take a very special person to forgive someone that has done so many horrible things to a person like the Bird had done to Zamperini. Louis, against all odds and against all normality decides that the right thing for him to do would be for him to forgive the Bird. This decision to forgive him happens later in Louis life, but no one knows where he is so Louis would
Forgiveness and justice are very similar than we believe them to be. We believe that justice is
John Grisham uses personal experience and cause and effect strategies for emotional appeals or also known as pathos to show the audience how movies greatly influence people and their decisions.
Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus unfolds the story about his father Vladek Spiegleman, and his life during the WWII. Since Vladek and Art are both the narrators of the story, the story not only focuses on Vladek's survival, but also the writing process and the organization of the book itself. Through these two narrators, the book explores various themes such as identity, perspective, survival and guilt. More specifically, Maus suggests that surviving an atrocity results in survivor’s guilt, which wrecks one’s everyday life and their relationships with those around them. It accomplishes this through symbolism and through characterization of Vladek and Anja.
In the book Bleachers by John Grisham, Rake was a long time hero because of the winning streak of 84 games and the 13 state titles Rake, but despite the legacy and popularity of Coach Eddie Rake, he is a horrible person.
The novel, “A Visit From The Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan is told through a span of forty years by several loosely connected people. The two main characters, who are the most closely linked are Bennie Salazar and Sasha, for most of the novel, Bennie is a record producer and Sasha is his assistant. There is no real chronology in the story, making it difficult to follow because each chapter is another person’s story. The interwoven thread throughout the novel and embedded into each chapter is the seeking of some form of redemption, as well as trying to buy or turn back time to redeem past actions. The story ends in the near future, leaving the sense that each person has gone as far as they will go towards redemption and if someone is going to
Forgiveness is the act of releasing an offender of any wrong or hurt they may have caused you whether they deserve it or not. It is a decision to let go of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group of people. When we choose to forgive, we’re wiping the slate clean, cancelling a debt, or as I love to say, “Letting it go.” In the Bible, the Greek word for forgiveness literally means to “let it go.” This concept, “forgiveness,” is easier said than done. Majority of people find it very difficult to let go of offenses and hurts caused by others. I really do believe that most people desire to let it go, but we lack the knowledge of how to do it. As believers, we are instructed by God maintain an attitude of forgiveness.