Seabiscuit and How Perseverance Can Cause People to Beat the Odds. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand is an exhilarating read about a horse owner, Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith, jockeys John “Red” Pollard and George Woolf, and the horse itself Seabiscuit and their journey to stardom. In this story, these five characters all face many different challenges. With these adversities come many different themes. The themes include perseverance and beating the odds. In the book, Charles Howard, well-known automobile dealer and prominent (thoroughbred) racehorse owner, hires quiet horse trainer Tom Smith so he can get a boost into the more competitive side of horse racing. This is followed by the adoption of Seabiscuit. Before, and for a short
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In chapter 3, “ Mean, Restive, and Ragged,” Howard finds that Seabiscuit is highly capable of running and could become a very good asset. Based off the quote “Thanks to his unfortunate assembly, his walk was an odd, straddle-legged motion that was often mistaken as lameness. Asked to run he would drop low over the track and fall into a comical version of what horsemen call an egg-beater gait, making a spastic sideways flailing motion with his left foreleg as he swung it forward, as if he were swatting at flies…” (Hillenbrand, 40), we understand that Seabiscuit isn’t built like many of the other racing horses and doesn’t seem very likely to win many if any, races. But, because of the perseverance and patience exercised by Smith, “Red” Pollard, and Woolf Seabiscuit began to exceed the expectations set by the society of horse racing. To the rest of the horse racing world, Seabiscuit was never expected to become one of the greatest racing horses and was constantly faced with skepticism from other competitors. An example of this would be that “Everyone was wondering what Smith possibly could have been thinking. The horse was a train wreck…” (Hillenbrand, 99) and/or, “... a New York columnist summed up eastern opinion of him with two words: ‘Glorified Plater’” (Hillenbrand, 144). Both of these quotes prove to the audience that before and when Seabiscuit began to prove himself, people …show more content…
When it was announced that Seabiscuit would be racing War Admiral many people were surprised, “War Admiral, like Man o’War, awaited a horse who could take the true measure of greatness. It never occurred to anyone in the east, that this horse would be Seabiscuit.” (Hillenbrand, 143) Even though a majority of people believed that because of Seabiscuit’s apparent ‘lameness’ he was able to pull ahead and win the race, “ He had never heard such cheering, Arms waved and mouth gaped open in incredulity as seabiscuit came on...” This moment became one of the major defining moments in which Seabiscuit proved that he was not the weak horse everyone thought he was and that he was in fact quite the opposite. Through perseverance, patience, and failure (as well as progress) he would become one of the greatest racing horses of his
In chapter 3, “ Mean, Restive, and Ragged,” Howard finds that Seabiscuit is highly capable of running and could become a very good asset. Based off the quote “Thanks to his unfortunate assembly, his walk was an odd, straddle-legged motion that was often mistaken as lameness. Asked to run he would drop low over the track and fall into a comical version of what horsemen call an egg-beater gait, making a spastic sideways flailing motion with his left foreleg as he swung it forward, as if he were swatting at flies…” (Hillenbrand, 40), we understand that Seabiscuit isn’t built like many of the other racing horses and doesn’t seem very likely to win many if any, races. But, because of the perseverance and patience exercised by Smith, “Red” Pollard, and Woolf Seabiscuit began to exceed the expectations set by the society of horse racing. To the rest of the horse racing world, Seabiscuit was never expected to become one of the greatest racing horses and was constantly faced with skepticism from other competitors. An example of this would be that “Everyone was wondering what Smith possibly could have been thinking. The horse was a train wreck…” (Hillenbrand, 99) and/or, “... a New York columnist summed up eastern opinion of him with two words: ‘Glorified Plater’” (Hillenbrand, 144). Both of these quotes prove to the audience that before and when Seabiscuit began to prove himself, people …show more content…
When it was announced that Seabiscuit would be racing War Admiral many people were surprised, “War Admiral, like Man o’War, awaited a horse who could take the true measure of greatness. It never occurred to anyone in the east, that this horse would be Seabiscuit.” (Hillenbrand, 143) Even though a majority of people believed that because of Seabiscuit’s apparent ‘lameness’ he was able to pull ahead and win the race, “ He had never heard such cheering, Arms waved and mouth gaped open in incredulity as seabiscuit came on...” This moment became one of the major defining moments in which Seabiscuit proved that he was not the weak horse everyone thought he was and that he was in fact quite the opposite. Through perseverance, patience, and failure (as well as progress) he would become one of the greatest racing horses of his