Sooley

On the surface, Sooley resembles a morality tale about the dangers of fame and all-consuming ego. Samuel starts the novel as pure, naive, and innocent—he simply wants to play basketball and reunite with his family. He spends his time practicing, exercising, going to class, and working his minimum-wage job. Even though he is redshirted and doesn’t get to play in games, he is thrilled for the opportunity to just be on the team. But once he starts playing and his status grows, so does his ego. He gets annoyed with the strict and watchful eye of Ida, fails to call his mother and stops telling her things, and starts making decisions on his own. Once he is drafted into the NBA, he suddenly has access to money, and a new world opens to him. He falls prey to the temptations this new world offers, and his life is cut tragically short. Grisham’s tone in Samuel’s final chapters becomes censorious, describing the festival as “unbridled hedonism with seemingly no rules” (364). This gives the impression that Samuel’s death is entirely a consequence of his poor choices and weak character. However, this simplistic reading ignores several other important facets of the text.