Analysis of "Friday Nigth Lights" by H.G. Bissinge
Analysis of "Friday Nigth Lights" by H.G. Bissinger
The book Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger, is a great book about high school football in Texas in the 1980’s. The book is based on a true story and it is amazing to see how different life was for many teenagers in Texas. In the town of Odessa, Texas, is Permian High School, one of the best high school football teams in the country. The Permian Panthers are a team that is expected to win just about every time they step on the field. They have great tradition and great fans that support them every Friday night. Sometimes as many as 15,000 fans will come to watch a Permian football game. They will sit outside for days before the game to get tickets. The Permian Panthers make it to the playoffs almost every year and they have won the state championship four times. The team and the town’s goal every year is to win a state championship and if they fall short of that goal, most people feel as if the whole year was wasted. The coach of Permian, Coach Gaines, is put under tremendous pressure to win a championship. He lost a few games during the season and Permian was in danger of not making the playoffs. He came home after one of the losses to find seven “for sale” signs up in his front yard.
The town didn’t care about what this did to Coach Gaines or how bad it made his wife feel, all the town of Odessa cared about was winning. When the kids were really young, they were usually taught by their parents how important playing football for Permian is. Many of the parents were players for Permian years before and understood the importance of it. Football games on Friday nights brought the whole town together to root for their team. They all cheered for the boys and they knew most of them personally. Almost every Permian fan had a program book of all the players on the team that was 224 pages long. It was great to see so many people come together to support the kids of their town and to cheer them on, but the fans of Permian football were obsessed with winning. Nothing else really...