The passage, Hawaii Ironman: An Irongirl’s Story, is about Greta, a triathlete. The passage explains what her journey to qualifying and then competing in the Hawaiian triathlon was like. The passage informs us on all of the training, determination, and perseverance Greta had. The passage then explained what running the Hawaiian Ironman was like. A race that consisted of swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running 26.2 miles all in the hot, Hawaiian heat. The author uses details from the journey she went through in order to qualify for the race, her thoughts and feelings while competing in the race, and Greta’s feeling and mindset when she finishes the race to develop the theme that to finish is to win. To begin with, the author goes …show more content…
While she was racing Greta did not once think about the people in front of her or how many people had she passed or been passed by. In the passage it says, “The cheers of the crowd revived her, and with a final surge, she strode down Ali Drive, crossing the finish line with a young man from Switzerland, who grabbed her hand and held it with his over their heads. This shows that winning wasn’t the point of the race. The point of the race was to finish. She crossed the finish line with a man from Switzerland, but she wasn’t concerned with beating him to the finish line, all she was focused on was getting to the finish line. In the race all she focused in was being able to do the best she could. Having the ability to complete along fellow athletes was her dream come true. All she cared was about having the strength and using her training to be able to complete the Ironman. Throughout her run she faced many obstacles, but she kept preserving and she never gave up, and that's what the race was about to her. The race was a chance to demonstrate and prove to herself that she was able to accomplish her dream. Her thoughts throughout the race help show the reader that just being able to finish was her dream, and accomplishing your dream is truly
In the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, young Louie Zamperini is the troublemaker of Torrance, California. After his life had taken a mischievous turn, his older brother, Pete, managed to convert his love of running away, into a passion for running on the track. At first, Louie’s old habit of smoking gets the best of him, and it is very hard for him to compare to the other track athletes. After a few months of training, coached by Pete, Louie begins to break high school records, and became the fastest high school miler in 1934. After much more hard work, goes to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 but is no match for the Finnish runners. He trains hard for the next Olympic Games, and hopes to beat the four minute
This quotation shows that Gilbert wants to demonstrate to the world that despite what he went through, he overcame his awful life experience and became the man he is today. Gilbert 's terrible life experience helped mold him into the ambitious person he is now. He challenges himself and tries improving himself to reach his goal, because of his past experience. With that, the genocide had a big impact on Gilbert 's life. Also, Hall observes, "In truth, runners don 't race to beat other runners. They race against themselves: to conquer their wills, to transcend their weaknesses, to beat back their nightmares" (603). This quotation shows that running is not always competition, but it helps runners overcome their
He states, “as I came up along his side. I was sure now I’d at least exceed my best time.” Meanwhile, his opponent began to pick up his pace and sprint to the finish, “but the man with the famous final kick had already begun his move.” This pertains to how we need to approach challenges feeling self-assured even though we might not end up on top every time. All we need to do is focus on our own goals and finding ways to achieve them. These lines also imply that we need to push ourselves until the very end and never give up. The poem concludes with the speaker hearing a spectator say, “Beautiful,” as if something unavoidable was about to happen out of nowhere. This part of the poem is an excellent reminder that you should always expect the unexpected and never count anyone out. This stanza has a determined and admiring tone. We can see the determination when the speaker says, “I was sure now I’d at least exceed my best time” and the admiration when he says, “Beautiful, I heard a spectator say.”
A huge part of the story showed how a person could overcome all the odds to become successful is feats such as sports and other activities. Most sports champions show great endurance to win many competitions. Similarly, Hillenbrand indicated that Louis, a competitive runner, trained until “he (had) rubbed the skin right off one of his toes, (leaving) his sock bloody” (Hillenbrand 23). As a result of all the hard work, Louis overcome struggles such as a bleeding shin, broken ribs, and a damaged toe to set time records for many races. In my experiences, I see many people take sports and other extra-curricular activities as a burden without embracing the challenges. In contrast, Louis illustrates the rare athlete and human being who seeks solutions to
As she sat at her work table she, “was drawn away,” by the screeching sirens outside her window. In this example, the author uses the word “was” as an indicator of her recollection of the events of that evening. The way they quickly grasped her attention reveals how focused she was on these specific occurrences surrounding her. We also notice how she is reflecting on the bad things that happen in society, yet we find ways to overcome them in order to continue to live our lives. In the following paragraphs, we see the judgment she has towards people who fail to consume themselves within the events happening around them. More specifically, we see her judgment towards the young man across the street who is so dedicatedly working on his table and in fact she wonders why he takes, “all those pains to make it beautiful?” She fails to understand his outlook on life by presenting us with a rhetorical question that she herself could not answer in the very moment. She fails to understand why and how a person can cherish life so deeply when his surroundings consist of nothing but chaos. As we continue to read through her essay we come across a moment that changes her perspective on the idea that people can quite possibly live a life that is consumed in something they love rather than the fear of
Cheever, John. “The Swimmer”. Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary. 6th ed. Ed. Charles Bohner and Lyman Grant. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Despite the current scrutiny that her race faces she asserts to the reader that her race and color define her as a person and does not determine her identity. Despite the mindset that most of her peers keep about the inequality of race, she maintains an open mind and declares to the reader that she finds everyone equal. Thus proving herself as a person ahead of her own time.
In the book “Unbroken”, Laura Hillenbrand does an excellent job in describing Louis “Louie” Zamperini’s transformation from troublesome child to a hardworking Olympic runner. Louie's brother saw running as a way for Louie to get his mind off of stealing, drinking, and bullying. Louie not only became an Olympic runner, but he had also become a man that never gives up, no matter the challenge. His transformation at a young age helps him through childhood, a plane crash, and even a Japanese POW camp.
In the novel, Esther Greenwood, the main character, is a young woman, from a small town, who wins a writing competition, and is sent to New York for a month to work for a magazine. Esther struggles throughout the story to discover who she truly is. She is very pessimistic about life and has many insecurities about how people perceive her. Esther is never genuinely happy about anything that goes on through the course of the novel. When she first arrives at her hotel in New York, the first thing she thinks people will assume about her is, “Look what can happen in this country, they’d say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can’t afford a
In John Cheever’s short story, “The Swimmer” he conveys the transformation of the character through the use of the literary element of setting. The story begins in an American, middle class, suburbs. After what seems to be a night of partying and drinking. Neddy Merrill, the main character initially appears very optimistic; he has a perfect family, high social status and very few problems in his life. In spite of his age, he feels young and energetic therefore decides to swim across town through the neighborhood pools. However, his journey becomes less and less enjoyable as the day unfolds. The water become murky, uninviting and he becomes exhausted. Also the people in his surrounding become less cordial including his mistress who wants nothing to do with him. His voyage then comes to an end when he arrives to an empty, abandoned home. The central idea suggests that an unhealthy obsession with the materialistic aspects of life can lead to alienation.
“A race is like a work of art that people can look at and be affected by in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.”(70) Here the author quotes Steve Prefontaine, and in this quote it explains that humans can enjoy and appreciate running with there minds and feeling, unlike animals. “I’m moved by others dreams and by their devotion and courage in the pursuit of excellence. I get choked up when I see a kid or anyone else, fighting against hopeless odds. Someone who goes out there to run the lonely roads with a dream in the heart, a gleam in the eye, and a goal in mind.”(74) Then, later on the author concludes that completing a race is not about having a fit and healthy body, but a dream, an “antelope”, or a goal in mind. To back that up, is the mental courage to fight for your dream, your
The second thing he talks about is that guys do pointless things just because it was made a challenge. Dave talks about just to make some people shut up about their running records he decides to challenge them and say he can beat their record. In the first run he was only three-hundredths of a second away from beating it, as he began to run it a second time he felt his hamstring pop and he could not walk correctly for weeks. Although the guys were sympathetic the man who held the record would often call him and brag that he still had not beaten his
...his story the main message that life is short and he succeeded by using point of view, setting and symbolism. “The Swimmer” can teach many readers not to waste valuable time like Neddy did when drinking, caring about insincere relationships among social status, and taking his family for granted. Cheever’s usage of literary elements not only displays the theme of “The Swimmer”, but also organizes passages of events for the reader to experience throughout the story. John Cheever once said, “The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness” (Good Reads). He perfectly illustrates this objective in “The Swimmer.”
Going into the first race we had not expected much since Susan and I had never run this type of race. There were so many crucial things that we had to remember. It wasn't just to get out of the blocks and burn up the track; there was a baton involved, a certain amount of steps to take, and even a certain way to hold the baton.
The miles increased each week and before I knew it, the last long run before the marathon was only twenty miles. Then came the marathon, 26.2 miles of runners’ high, pain, agony, and unstable weather.