The Theme Of Perseverance In The Boys In The Boat

I will be going through one central theme in a non-fiction narrative called The Boys in the Boat, written by an American author Daniel James Brown. The five central themes of this narrative are perseverance, teamwork, hope, fidelity, and discipline. The central theme I will be talking about is perseverance. Throughout this entire book there are many points of perseverance, ranging from small levels of perseverance like just making it through the day, to high levels like winning the gold at the 1936 Olympics for rowing despite all the odds that were stacked against you.

As previously mentioned, Boy's, Brown Displays an overwhelming amount of perseverance throughout the life of Joe Rantz, a boy born just a few months before the start of World

War I. Rantz was born in Spokane Washington, to his mother and father. The amount of perseverance that Joe will go through in his life is nearly unbelievable. One might say that Joe either has the best or worst luck in the world. See at a very young age Joe lost his mother to lung cancer. Losing someone that close that early on in life is already hard, but on top of all this Joe’s father had a very guttural reaction to the passing of his wife. Joe’s father had packed his bags and set out across the American Canadian border, in the meantime Rantz was put on a train to live with his older brother Fred, and his wife. Through a lot of this time Joe had experienced a preathla of emotional roller coasters in his life but things would seem to get better, then worse, then better again.

One of the biggest moments of perseverance in Joe’s life is when he was kicked out of his own home by his step-mother, Thula.

At only thirteen years of age, Joe was forced to go out on his own. Of course Joe wasn’t just out in the open all alone, he had a little guidance from his father before being sent out alone. Despite the terrible position Joe was put in he persevered. He chopped wood so that he had some sort of roof over his head, one that would provide a place to sleep. On top of that Joe helped out the local cookhouse, where he was repaid in food for his service. “...he trudged down the wagon road to the cook house” (36) This is a sort of milestone of perseverance for Joe, for this was the first big time he was set up to almost fail, just to still succeed. Another big point of perseverance in Joe’s life was when he was left behind again by his family in Sequim. During this time Joe was only fifteen years old, and had high school to attend to. So Joe was forced to yet again survive on his own, gathering money and going to school. The worst part about all this was the great depression. So Joe went through a great level of perseverance in surviving on his own, in high school, during the great depression. “... This unflagging resilience - this readiness to bounce back, to keep coming, to persist in the face of resistance…”

(139).

The greatest thing that Joe persevered was the 1936 Olympic rowing competition. Not only the Olympic one though, every single one of the competitions before the Olympics. Joe, and the others in the boat had persevered through the several races before Poughkeepsie, the Poughkeepsie competition, and the Olympic preliminaries, all leading up to the finals. “It was neck and neck now… The three boats stormed towards the finish line” (350) In the final Olympic race the boys were set up against several other countries, arguably the toughest being Germany. They boys were also put in a starting position which would have them going directly against the wind. So while battling wind resistance for a good chunk of the race, the were still able to catch up to Germany and gain enough leverage to still end up winning the gold. This level of perseverance was so great that it can very well be called one of the most inspiring parts in the entire book.

In conclusion, Boy’s, Brown has a lot of moments of perseverance, and the ones listed above are only a fraction of what this book shows off. What the boys had to go through was so brutally hard that it really is amazing. But the one who showed the most perseverance was easily Joe. Joe had such a difficult life leading up to the Olympics that it’s really amazing how he kept it all together. This book contains so many examples of perseverance that one could argue that is what the book was meant for, perseverance.