My first impression when reading this book is that we all have our own problems and difficulties in life and everyone just has to deal with them instead of running away from them. The main theme in this book is about a star-athlete named Willie. During a freak skiing accident where he is crippled and partially brain damaged his whole life is destroyed before his own eyes. Losing everything he's ever had was too much for Willie so he ran away and slowly rebuilt his life.
My favorite character in this book was definitely Willie. He goes through about every emotion a person can go through in this book, and still ends up by the by the end of the story ready to take on life again. In the beginning of the story Willie is the hero of the town in a way. His home town baseball team has won the national tournament several times and is looking like they will for another year. They face the Crazy Horse Electrics for the championship game. Willie almost single handedly wins the game for their team. However; all of his fame and glory comes to a screeching halt when he is in a freak boating accident. This leaves Willie partially paralyzed and brain damaged. This led to a chair reaction of events that caused him to not be able to take life in his home town anymore and run away to Oakland, California. There he goes through many different experiences which eventually lead him to pull his together and return home.
My least favorite character in this book was his girlfriend Jenny. As Willie is trying to coupe with his new life of being handicapped he catches Jenny cheating on his with another guy. This is already bad enough but then she says, "To hell with you, Willie. I can't spend the rest of my life feeling sorry for you. To hell with you." I think this was the last straw for Willie when he decides that everyone would be better off without him and runs away. I realize that it is hard for Jenny to deal with something so tragic but to end things with him so harshly is very cruel.
"Good Gracious! anybody hurt?" "No"m, killed a nigger" "Well it's lucky; because sometimes people get hurt" (page 216) This quotation from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows the mindset of people in the Mississippi Valley in the early nineteenth century. Black people were not even though...
