Life lessons in Bleachers by John Grisham include forgiveness, whether winning is important, and coming to terms with one's life in order to move forward.
Bleachers focuses on the death of Coach Eddie Rake, a hard man who drove the team to multiple wins but who used brutal tactics to do so. At one point, they won every game they played for four years straight. When former players gather to remember him, they reminisce about the harshness of the man and the results he produced.
The issues of forgiveness and coming to terms with the past are personified in Neely Crenshaw, who played for Coach Rake. He looks back and remembers when Rake backhanded him for something that happened during a game. Still, Rake helped mold him into an excellent player who had the chance to go pro until he was injured.
Crenshaw has to decide to forgive Rake and to move on with his life instead of idealizing his past and regretting what could have been.
The reminiscing of the players shows the cost it took for Rake to win so many games and championships. For example, one player died of heatstroke. Rake was known for making players practice on hot days in full uniform. Rake was a hero to the town—but the boys remember the harsh cost of that heroism.
At the end of the book, a letter from Rake shows that the man himself had regrets. One was slapping Crenshaw. The other was the death of the boy. Once he knows this, Crenshaw is able to forgive Rake.
One of the lessons in Grisham's Bleachers is that winning doesn't always justify what it takes to win. For example, when Coach Eddie Rake dies at the end of the book, a former player on his football team, Mike Hilliard, delivers one of the eulogies at his funeral. He says:
"The practices were beyond brutal... Our parents were alarmed. My mother told me later she felt like I was off at war. Unfortunately, I've seen war. And I would prefer it over Camp Rake" (page 206).
Coach Rake is merciless when training his team, and he makes them practice even after games are over and their parents and friends are waiting for them. His relentlessness about practicing and concentrating on basics mean that the team wins, but it also results in tragedy when Scotty Reardon, a sophomore, dies of heatstroke during a practice. In addition, Coach Rake hits the protagonist, Neely Crenshaw, during the halftime of an important game. As a result, Neely has not forgiven him in the fourteen years since he has been in his hometown, Messina.
However, another lesson of the book is that each person has both good and bad and that people need to practice forgiveness. After Coach Rake dies, several players deliver eulogies that present another, deeper and more positive side of Coach Rake. Mike Hilliard says, "Eddie Rake allowed us, players and fans, to touch greatness, to be a part of it" (page 209). The Messina players experience something that approaches perfection by playing on the team, and Hilliard says that this experience is unlike anything the players have gone through in their lives because of Coach Rake's work ethic. In addition, Reverend Collis Suggs, who was the first African-American captain of the Messina football team, recalls that Coach Rake was very accepting of African-American players when they first went to the high school through a court-ordered program of desegregation. Suggs says in his eulogy of Coach Rake, "He said he didn't care what color we were. All his players wore green" (page 212). The coach's fair-minded attitude paved the way for other football teams across the state to desegregate.
Finally, Neely says of the coach in his eulogy, "Once you've played for Eddie Rake, you carry him with you forever... And you want to thank him for teaching you that success isn't an accident" (page 222). Even though Neely has long held a grudge against the coach, he forgives him in the end because he respects the coach's emphasis on excellence. By forgiving his coach after many years of feeling bitter, Neely can move on in his life and consider both the positive and negative sides of his former coach. Therefore, Grisham's book teaches the reader that people have to forgive others and understand all the sides of their multifaceted personalities.
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