The Bone Cage Analysis

Superior Essays
In order to become talented in a specific sport it takes practice, patience, and athleticism but over time it is very possible for an ordinary person to achieve this status. However, in order to become the best in the world, that presents a completely different story. Through the eyes of both Tom “Digger” Stapleton and Sadie Jorgensen in Angie Abdou’s novel The Bone Cage, the reader quickly learns the difference between becoming an athlete and becoming an Olympian. Both of these Olympic hopefuls put their lives on hold in order to hopefully achieve this standard of greatness. Neither person has long term goals for the future after the Olympics, they subsist week to week and both have sacrificed the majority of their lives for the opportunity …show more content…
She is so focused on her goal of becoming the best that she dwells on her friends ' achievements. When Katie wins gold while Sadie was grieving over her grandmothers death, Sadie implies that Katie earned what she deserved and could not even congratulate her. Sadly, Sadie’s relationship with her parents is even more controversial. Being twenty-six and still living at home is very abnormal, but her parents neglect her at times and rarely support her. One example of this is when “Her parents look up from their coffees at the same moment, both startled, as if they have forgotten her presence, forgotten that she dwells among them” (Abdou 135). Sadie has thrown away one of the most important attributes of life in order to be the best in the world but the cost is nowhere close to the end product as she never participates in the Olympics and never truly enjoys the …show more content…
Both of these athletes have made large sacrifices for the chance to become Olympians, but Sadie’s failure to grasp the more important things in life led to her demise. On her way to a ski trip with Digger, Sadie fractured her L3 vertebrae in a car accident which prohibited her from competing at the Olympics, while Digger, riding in the same vehicle was unharmed. Sadie’s actions are the seeds to her fate that ultimately leads to her destiny. Her poor work ethic, along with her choice of being alienated and missing out on the most important things in life including family and friends, led her to remain an athlete instead of becoming an Olympian. In the end, Sadie blames the accident for her missed opportunity, but it was no accident, it was destiny

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Sickness is, through the events of Ward’s Salvage the Bones, a recurring theme: Esch realises that she is pregnant and gets sick because of it; and Daddy loses his fingers, getting sick too. Salvage the Bones is a novel set in the mid 2000’s during the previous days before Hurricane Katrina. During Salvage the Bones, illness creates difficulties both in long term and short term that disrupt the family, but after the family overcomes these illnesses, the family becomes stronger. During the second chapter of the book, we become aware of Esch’s pregnancy, a pregnancy which continues affecting her through the book: she is almost unable to outrun the dog chasing her in chapter 4 and continuously feels nauseous.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Off The Rim Summary

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Intro: Today I will be talking about Off The Rim Details: The author of this book is Fred Bowen. Fred Bowen was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a seaside town north of Boston. His wife was a reporter on a local paper, she suggested that I try writing movie reviews.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cut To The Bone Analysis

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Cut To The Bone, by Michael Grabell is an interesting piece centered around the idea that big business takes advantage of the common man. In this case, Case Farms taking advantage of illegal immigrants. The context behind this piece is so much deeper too stretching back decades to really understand why these immigrants are coming here. This article invokes several questions such as does the immigration system need to be reformed? How did we get here, both with the industry and with the immigrants?…

    • 1034 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Where Is It Written”, by Adam Schwartz, is a story about a kid who asked his father to fight for his custody, doing so many problems came up. Sam first cut all the connection with her mother because he wanted to know his father better. Then Sam confronted his father about being sick and tired of doing chores for his mother. Finally, Sam and his mother were arguing. Sam criticize his mother making her cry and suffer.…

    • 2033 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The aforementioned training regime was a necessary price to pay if I ever hoped to improve and outperform peers, and I stayed dedicated to it from the beginning. Because of this, I grew accustomed to the ring of the victory bell and the satisfying validation that came from it. However, after many years of relentless training and competition, what has taught me most is not the split-second touch of victory, but the long stretch of perpetual failure. At the age of sixteen my athletic improvement became halted without explanation in a sport in which the sole purpose is to outperform the athlete you had been in the race before.…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Fone Bone Analysis

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Pages

    so far in the story, Fone Bone and Smiley are lost in the wilderness after a battle with the mole rats and a giant mountain lion. Fone Bone tried to climb a tree seeing where he was, but fell of the tree then slammed his head into a beaver hole, when Fone Bone got out of the hole he recognized it was Fone Bone and got scared because he “thinks” he killed Kingdok the leader of the mole rats then he went to hide in its hole. Fone Bone was confused because he thinks that he didn’t kill Kingdok. Then Ted came across Fone Bone and Smiley and said that there is a rumor going around saying that Fone Bone killed Kingdok. But Fone Bone knew this was false because the only real damage someone did to Kingdok was Roque Ja but Fone Bone saw that Kingdock…

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bart Conner Dedication to one thing in life is hard to accomplish, especially if the one thing requires hours and hours of dedication every week. Bart Conner, an Olympic gold medal winner for the United States and a National Championship at the University of Oklahoma was very dedicated to his career. Bart’s journey to become the outstanding gymnast he is today was long and hard, but it eventually paid off. Even though he had to mature in a hurry, he soon realized that his childhood dream would come true. Through his hardwork and dedication, Bart overcame many obstacles and injuries to become the successful athletic he is today.…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hi Everyone. Instructor Murphy did an excellent job of describing the skeletal system in more detail for us in her recent post. I though it would be fun to talk about some of the different types of fractures that can occur. Simple fractures or closed fractures occur when a bone breaks without breaking through the skin.…

    • 323 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Jump Shooter Analysis

    • 930 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Sports writing gives an insight into the everyday lives and decisions that American make. There are themes that are represented in each poem, story, and article that have other meanings for our everyday life. Some of the most popular points made though out these sports writings is that weakness is only as bad as you make of it, live everyday in the moment, and individuals are just as important as a team. Many people don’t realize how much sports reflect our lives that we live everyday.…

    • 930 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    If I were to put Homer’s The Odyssey into a feature film the theme of the film would be a young high school freshmen trying desperately to get over the heartbreak of her last relationship. She had a boyfriend of two years and found that he was cheating on her at a party on their two year anniversary. She thankfully has her two best friends to help her through the obstacles that are just the after effects of her heart break and that will finally get her back on her feet. The reasons to why you should make The Odyssey into this type of feature film is that it is based on modern day problems of a teenage girl so it is more exciting, but still in the perspective of Homer's The Odyssey.…

    • 993 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Olympic gold medal represents the greatest achievement for athletes in modern day Olympics. The winning athlete receives a personal victory for their physical abilities and training, and it is also a victory for their family and country. The successful athlete catapults to another level of great honor, and duly earns respect for their victory when engaged in Olympic competition. Pindar’s epinician poetry celebrated Greek ethos during ancient Olympics. The victorious athletes of Pindar’s time achieved great honor and respect during competition through epinikia (Kyle 194).…

    • 1648 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    For over ten years my average day consisted of four main activities: school, homework, gymnastics, and sleep. While school breaks or holidays may have upset three of the four, competitive gymnastics was always a constant. Three hours a day five days a week with no off season left no room for apathy. During my years as a gymnast, I learned the lessons I am sure every athlete is taught— dedication, time management, and determination. However, gymnastics taught me two lessons that other athletes fail to learn thoroughly.…

    • 224 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    NYU Shushanna Guy Jan-25-2016 Writing Workshop 2 Questions: “Documents”-Charles D’ambrosio When Charles D’ambrosio, asked his father about events from the past why do you feel that the father became so defensive? Why had he written off what Charles said as fictional? 2.…

    • 1951 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I was never the fastest competitor on the team, never the one with the lofty goal of achieving an Olympic medal, or compete at the international level. I wasn’t a natural by any means, but I knew how to work hard, and when I put in the effort and I could get results. I was in the upper quarter of finishers and finalists, winning some events, losing others. I was happy, and had fun competing in the sport, reveling my recently discovered realization – as long as I continued to work hard and dedicate myself to the sport, I could do well. I trained and…

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Figure 2.3: The structure of bone (Abedon, 2014) 2.1.2 Mechanical Properties Bones is always considered as man-made engineering materials. Due to its synthesis there have more variation in properties than engineering materials. The factors can include as the location in body, mineral content, disease, age, gender and the amount of water that presence in the human body. The mechanical properties of bone tissues must be considered as very hard and lightweight material. Mechanical behavior of bone can be explained using composite method.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays