H.G. Bissinger, author of the novel, Friday Night Lights, tells the story of the 1988 Permian Panther football team and their families as they go about their lives in the scanty town of Odessa, Texas. Bissinger uses unprecedented techniques such as exposing his readers to several points of view, using a journalistic style, including strong diction and rhetorical terms, and setting the tone throughout the novel. These factors collaborate in order to allow the readers to understand Bissinger’s main purpose for writing Friday Night Lights, which is to relate a story of a high school football team and the town’s reliance upon them to keep them afloat, amidst the societal and economic issues they undergo such as racism, a struggling education
…show more content…
This style of writing allows the readers to connect emotionally to the characters in the book. Through his honest and critical diction, Bissinger develops a straightforward, journalistic tone. He uses derogatory words such as “nigger,” “homophobe,” and “dumb jock”. Such words make clear his honest diction and journalistic tone because he writes things as he hears them, as a reporter would do. In Friday Night Lights, readers are exposed to the real life problems that the citizens of Odessa experience on a day to day basis. Throughout the story, Bissinger highlights these problems, connecting each of them to the Permian “football addiction”. The purpose of this book is to highlight important societal issues that are still present today, while giving the readers a story of how something as small as a high school football team can make those problems seem irrelevant. For example, the matter of racism seems to be significant in the town of Odessa in 1988. At Permian High, a primarily white high school, African Americans are only seen as useful when it comes to sports, especially …show more content…
By using a high school football team, Bissinger relates to the teens reading, as well as the adults because the teens understand what it is like to have many pressures placed on you, while the adults can relate to wanting their children to succeed. Somewhere in this book, whether is it in the story about Mike Winchell’s father passing away, Boobie Miles being taken in by his uncle, or Gary Edwards failing Algebra, readers are able to attach the emotions felt from this book to their own lives, making it an amazing book for teens and
This style of writing allows the readers to connect emotionally to the characters in the book. Through his honest and critical diction, Bissinger develops a straightforward, journalistic tone. He uses derogatory words such as “nigger,” “homophobe,” and “dumb jock”. Such words make clear his honest diction and journalistic tone because he writes things as he hears them, as a reporter would do. In Friday Night Lights, readers are exposed to the real life problems that the citizens of Odessa experience on a day to day basis. Throughout the story, Bissinger highlights these problems, connecting each of them to the Permian “football addiction”. The purpose of this book is to highlight important societal issues that are still present today, while giving the readers a story of how something as small as a high school football team can make those problems seem irrelevant. For example, the matter of racism seems to be significant in the town of Odessa in 1988. At Permian High, a primarily white high school, African Americans are only seen as useful when it comes to sports, especially …show more content…
By using a high school football team, Bissinger relates to the teens reading, as well as the adults because the teens understand what it is like to have many pressures placed on you, while the adults can relate to wanting their children to succeed. Somewhere in this book, whether is it in the story about Mike Winchell’s father passing away, Boobie Miles being taken in by his uncle, or Gary Edwards failing Algebra, readers are able to attach the emotions felt from this book to their own lives, making it an amazing book for teens and