George Hickman Bannister Character Analysis

A local Midland City high school student who is killed playing football on Thanksgiving Day. George’s tombstone, a towering sixty-two-foot obelisk with a football on top, is the largest in Midland City’s cemetery. For years, The George Hickman Bannister law prohibited any structures taller than the obelisk to be built in Midland City, but the law is “junked” to allow for radio towers. The local high school fieldhouse and the theater are both named for Bannister as well, and while both buildings still stand, almost no one remembers the high school football player. George Hickman Bannister reflects Vonnegut’s claim that in some cases, gone really does mean forgotten.