Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Deadly, Unna?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race, Injustice, and Action
Courage and Masculinity
Duty and Sacrifice
Teamwork and Family
Summary
Analysis
Blacky’s friend Pickles asks Blacky if he wants to hang out after school. Blacky declines because he has practice with Arks. Arks picks up Blacky in his rundown car. He asks Blacky if he is nervous about the big game. Blacky says only a little bit. Arks recounts how he panicked before the biggest game of his own football career, back when he played in front of fifty thousand people. Blacky can’t even imagine playing in front of that many people.
Blacky minimizes his feelings of anxiety in front of his coach, because men in his society are not allowed to show signs of weakness or emotional distress. Arks’s recollections of his past career are important for understanding the glory and importance he and other adults in the Port assign to football.
Themes
Arks remarks how as both a player and a coach, he never won the grand final, the final game of the season. Blacky senses Arks wants him to say they’ll win the game this time. But Blacky cannot bring himself to promise that, even though he knows football is supposed to encourage optimism.
Arks’s past failures only add to the pressure Blacky feels. Blacky’s characteristic pessimism and worry prevent him from being able to feel optimistic, once again showing how his attitude diverges from that of his community.
Themes
Blacky and Arks begin practicing on the football oval, which stinks of the nearby pig farm. Even though Blacky knows all the technical theory about goal scoring, he cannot seem to connect that knowledge to his body’s actions. Blacky recalls how at a recent game, a spectator mocked his skills, causing all the other townspeople to laugh and Blacky to miss a goal.
The smell of the pig farm emphasizes the poverty of Blacky’s hometown, highlighting how significant hope and excitement for sports is. Meanwhile, Blacky’s fear of appearing inadequate is so great it effects his physical ability.
Themes
Blacky and Arks switch from practicing goal-scoring to practicing rucking. Blacky struggles at first, but then manages to “thump” the ball into the goal. He feels accomplished. Arks makes Blacky continue practicing until Blacky is exhausted and the sky is too dark for him to score. Arks says they can finish for the night, but Blacky can tell he is disappointed. Blacky feels sorry for Arks, knowing all the disappoints in Arks’s past. Blacky feels worse knowing the upcoming grand final may be Arks’s last chance at winning the league, and thinks it’s unfortunate that Arks has only a player like Blacky to depend on.
Because high expectations for youth football players is the norm, neither character in this scene is aware of the absurdity of a grown man being disappointed in a fourteen-year-old for becoming tired and of a child carrying the ambitions of an adult. All of this highlights the immense pressure Blacky feels and explains why Blacky has come to fear and resent the responsibility placed upon him by his team and his town.
Themes
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