Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger Essay

Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream is a 1990 non-fiction novel wrote by H.G. Bissinger. The story chronicles the pressures and expectations of the Permian Panthers football team in socially divided Odessa, Texas. Throughout the story, challenges are presented with each of the protagonists: James “Boobie” Miles, Mike Winchell, Don Billingsley, Gary Gaines, Brian Chavez, and Ivory Christian.

In the passage, The Horizontal World, Debra Marquart states, “Driving west from Fargo on I–94, the freeway that cuts through the state of North Dakota, you’ll encounter a road so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves in places that it will feel like one long-held pedal steel guitar note” (Marquart 1). Debra Marquart, along with several others, share a great passion for the Midwest. The Midwest is an area that is truly full of the unknown, as much of its qualities are not known to society. The Midwest can easily be viewed as bland and insipid, yet also overly structured and undisclosed. It can be exceptionally difficult for one to fully understand the Midwest due to its size and variation. Although, all in all, it most certainly can be described as an area, whose positives are not know by all. In Debra Marquart’s writing, The Horizontal World, she utilizes comical satires and evident allusion to characterize the land of the upper Midwest.

In Odessa, Texas high school football is a major contributor to the society of a small town in Texas society. Every Friday night, 50,000 people fill the stadium to see high school students put their lives on the line to win a football game. H. G. Bissinger writes a novel called Friday Night Lights, about a year in 1988 where High School players prepare and play on the High School team, and what an impact they have on a small city in Texas.

In the Heat of the Night made it’s debut appearance in 1967 and received and Oscar for Best Picture. The rustic and quiet town of Sparta, Mississippi is the setting for the movie. The story starts off with a cop making his nightly rounds when he discovers a murdered body on the ground. The deceased belonged to Philip Colbert, a well-off man from Chicago who was planning to build a factory in town. This murder causes an undesired commotion in the rural town. Police Chief Bill Gillespie finds himself burdened to catch the killer of Philip Colbert.

“‘Athletics last for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don’t apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it’s over and the harsh reality sets in, that’s the real joke we play on people’” (Bissinger xiv). “Friday Night Lights” shows the darker side of high school football. Players are taught to play games to win, and thats all that matters. Football players are put under a tremendous amount of pressure, almost enough to be considered unfair. Even though football is a “team sport”, pressure on individual players is unnecessary. Some players have the burden of the team, the city, their family, and their future, resting on their shoulders. These players

The Twilight Zone was notoriously known for reflecting social and political issues in an entertaining and imaginative allegories. Debuting in 1959 and airing until 1964, this anthological series often left viewers contemplating their own thoughts through the stories creator Rod Serling painted out for them. One episode in particular, directed by Douglas Heyes, was notorious for the impact it left on viewers. Airing on November 11th, 1960 and running at 25 minutes and 14 seconds, Eye of the Beholder made a dramatic impact on viewers due to its intensely eerie nature and topsy turvy world.

Analysis of Friday Night Lights Friday Night Lights is a good view of how football envelops the live of everyone in the Texas town of Odessa. While it does use football as a main theme, I don't believe it is a book mainly about sports. The story is mostly about the people in a town that has nothing to look forward to except football. The story chronicles the lives of a few players and their parents. The author describes their background, characteristics, and reactions to football and life

Bissinger’s descriptions of classroom activity reveal that the role of education was not important compared to football in Odessa. My school is not like that but I can imagine some of the bigger schools are. I agree with Bissinger’s statement because Odessa was just the same as a lot of other high schools in America. This didn’t make it a bad school, just a typical one.

A wise person,Tommy Hilfiger once stated, “the road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American Dream”. This quote means that through willpower and passion, anyone can become successful. In the world we live in now, achieving the American dream can be challenging than before, on the contrary, with the right mindset, and inspiration the American dream is still possible.That being said, yes the American dream is still possible to accomplish, getting a good location, a future, and lastly a monumental historic moment that can be never unremembered.

Simply put, politics tend to have its grasp on youth sports when those in powerful positions abuse their positions to create outcomes not based on merit. A good example is a school board member demanding certain team members, originally cut by the coaching staff, to be reinstated during team selection.

After extensive philosophical examination of the play Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, suggests that the most compelling key points to analyze are the ethical problems that occur throughout the play. As a matter of fact, to create a better understanding of the play on the ethical context and the text itself, the New Criticism and Issues of Evaluation approach is necessary. In particular, a remarkable ethical problem that must be considered are the decisions taken by the Baker and his wife, and the Witch throughout the play, decisions that play a very important role throughout the play and the field of ethics. In fact, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and David Hume– philosophers that extensibly contributed with ethical views regarding respect and dignity– may agree or disagree with the ethical decisions taken by the characters on specific instances. In fact, Kant and Hume have developed a set of views that determine what is right and wrong; very useful to decide whether or not the Baker’s decisions are ethically correct in the aspect of respect and dignity.

A number of strange incidents occur throughout the story. Jack finds a wasps' nest while maintaining the roof, uses an appropriate wasp bomb on it, and puts it in Danny's room. That night, although Jack had checked there were no wasps still in the nest, Danny is stung several times, and when Jack manages to put a bowl over the nest, there are many wasps trapped inside. Then in an almost hypnotic fit after spending too much time going through the hotel's papers in the boiler room, Jack smashes the radio, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world as snow has fallen heavily, and reaching the nearest town has become impossible except by snowmobile.

Since the introduction of organized team sports into American culture, numerous sports have stepped into the limelight for certain periods of time but none have stuck around as long as football has. Just as with everything else in life, football has had it’s fair share of drawbacks since its invention in the mid-19th century. Despite the drawbacks and criticism football has faced, its role and influence on American culture between the 1890’s and 1930’s far outweigh the negative aspects of its past.

     Is High School football a sport, or is it more than that to some people? Recent newspaper headlines include such items as coaches abusing student athletes; fathers of athletes murdering coaches, and mother’s disabilitating cheerleading candidates to assure their daughters make the cheerleading team. In Odessa, Texas high school football is a major contributor to the society of a small town in Texas society. Every Friday night, 50,000 people fill the stadium to see high school students put their lives on the line to win a football game. H. G. Bissinger writes a novel called Friday Night Lights, about a year in 1988 where High School players prepare and play on the High School team, and what an impact they have

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides not only a commentary on the industry of which it is a product but also a shared anxiety about the corrupting influence of external perception. Narrated by a dead man, centering on a recluse tortured by her own former stardom, and concerning a once-promising director who refuses to believe his greatest star could ever be forgotten, the work dissects a multitude of illusory folds to reveal an ultimately