Headshot

“If Artemis has a weakness it is in the fact that she is a legacy. Her sisters’ wins hang over her. She is reminded of them constantly. This is the tournament where she can be as good as her eldest sister, or the worst boxer in their family. The type of legacy that is the Victor family is rarer in boxing than in other kinds of sports, but not unheard of. Youth women’s boxing is a world small enough that the Victors could conquer it.”

While Andi sees the Victor family legacy as one of Artemis’s unique assets, Artemis looks upon her family legacy as an obstacle. This passage drives the idea that it isn’t enough for Artemis to win the fight, she also needs to prove that she is as good as her eldest sister. Bullwinkel once again commands the reader’s sympathy by heightening Artemis’s personal stakes to the extreme: either she is the best in her family or she is nothing.

“No one in her life at that point, including her daughter, will have any remembrance of the meaning attached to what it means to be a boxer. And the boxer part of Artemis will be long gone, too. She will have had four separate lives since the Daughters of America, not one of them involving boxing, and so her injury, these un-closable fists, will not be some battle relic, but, rather, a sorry, pathetic disability.”

The novel uses its asides into the future to hint at the impact that the girls’ boxing careers will have on their lives. In Artemis’s case, boxing will cease to have any relevance in the later stages of her life, undermining the importance of the tournament. On the other hand, boxing will have a long-term effect on her physical health, impacting her mobility through the accumulation of injuries. By driving the impact of boxing on her body and its lack of impact in other areas of life, Bullwinkel hints at two major themes: Small Glories in the Grand Scheme of Life and Gendered Exploitation in Women’s Sports.

“Nobody can ever possibly know what a specific body is good at unless they’re inside it.”

This passage resonates with the theme of Self-Definition on One’s Own Terms by reinforcing the link between body and agency. In the early chapters, some of the boxers are told that they should try boxing for various reasons, sometimes because they have the body for it or because it will protect them. This passage drives the idea that only the boxers will know if boxing is really for them because their bodies react to the reality of the sport, whereas others are suggesting it on the basis of perception, not experience. The girls decide for themselves if they are meant to be boxers.

“Artemis wants to win this fight for more reasons than the family legacy. Artemis thinks if she wins, if she’s able to somehow beat her eldest sister, become the most fabled, the most brutal, the most beautiful of the Victor sisters, that a secret door will open for her, out into the world, away from her family, away from her mother, where Artemis has agency without her family that is greater than all the other types of agency she has previously known.”

This passage explicates the larger stakes of Artemis’s involvement in the tournament. More than proving that she is as good as her sister, Artemis wants to prove that she is worthy of transcending the definitions forced upon her by the world around her. Artemis feels she cannot assert herself, however, without first proving she can meet her family’s standards. This paradox represents her challenge in embodying the theme of Self-Definition on One’s Own Terms.

“She and Artemis are both technically children, not yet able to join the military or have a drink of alcohol or have an abortion without the signature of someone who is related to them in most of the fifty states. And yet, this sport that they are playing, this simulation of killing, necessitates that Andi and Artemis understand themselves not as children, but as young humans, who possess the power to control their fate and their wins.”

This passage frames the violence of boxing against the youth of the girls participating in the tournament. It drives the irony that while the girls are still too young to be considered adults, they are engaging in a sport that contradicts their innocence. In some cases, the girls think about killing their opponents in battle, which is contrasted against the innocence of activities like hair-braiding and hand-clapping games. To assert the identities they want for themselves, the boxers have to force themselves to grow out of the perception that they are children.

“You can’t train for a sport unless you believe you have control over your own destiny. The point of training is to change the outcome of the future. You train to change something you otherwise would have lost.”

This passage is the novel’s thesis for Self-Definition on One’s Own Terms as a theme. Although the tournament ultimately turns out to be unimportant in the grand scheme of the girls’ lives, they participate because they believe that it will give them power to shape the direction of their futures. The tournament finds the girls at the cusp of adulthood, maximizing their potential to follow any life path they wish. The only hindrances are the circumstances that follow them into the tournament, whether those circumstances involve death, abandonment, or ostracism.

“Rachel had a theory about other humans: people are the most scared by what makes zero sense to them but that they cannot, no matter how they try, avoid. Because of this, Rachel tried to live her life in as frightening a way as possible, dressing like a man and an animal. She had a Daniel Boone—style raccoon hat that she wore everywhere, which worked quite well. It is amazing the power that a strange hat will give you.”

Rachel’s defining character trait is her weird-hat philosophy, which is explicated in this passage. Rachel weaponizes the confusion people feel around things they cannot understand to shake their personal sense of meaning. Rather than feel embarrassed, Rachel gains power from the fact that people notice her. She embodies this symbolically through her raccoon hat.

“All Kate wants is to be the best at everything, and she feels that she has been tricked, or has somehow ended up striving for the wrong thing. Doesn’t winning always count as winning? No, it doesn’t, remembers Kate. Sometimes, Kate remembers, winning can be seen as threatening.”

Kate stands in contrast to the other fighters because she is the only one who decides to actively leave boxing because it isn’t for her. This passage shows her actively reasoning out that losing is the best way to move forward because it will untether her from her obligations to the sport. Rather than see her loss against Rachel as a bad outcome, the novel uses her reasoning to frame the outcome as a win-win scenario.

“That’s the thing with children. So often what they do, or what they think they should do, or what they think they are good at is just some product of something someone told them that they would be good at. If you’re tall people say, Surely you’re magnificent at basketball. If you’re a girl shaped like a block without hips, people say swimming, boxing, the discus, and then one thinks, Am I good at these things? Surely if people say it, it must be true.”

This passage corresponds to the earlier quote about embodiment and competency by reinforcing the idea that people will suggest that the girls try sports based on perception. What this passage adds is the idea that suggestibility is a characteristic of childhood. Where children easily accept what they are told they should do, adulthood is framed as the point in life where the girls can independently decide whether those perceptions line up with their personal reality.

“If she loses, who will get Rachel’s prize money? Who will get to own that crisp bill that is worth one hundred dollars? No one, thinks Rachel. She’ll have to burn it. That’s what it means to lose, thinks Rachel, burning something you’ve worked really hard for […] It’s always better to destroy something if you can’t have it.”

Rachel’s nihilistic worldview is demonstrated in this passage. She decides that if she cannot win, then the prize money is worth nothing, reflecting her failure to exert the effort necessary to claim it. The image of fire in this passage also foreshadows the exposition of Rachel’s backstory, where the destruction of her childhood home by fire played a crucial role in shaping her worldview.

“What could be better than being whispered about when not in attendance? This is another reason why the weird-hat philosophy is something Rachel swears by. Give people something to confuse them, thinks Rachel.”

Rachel finds joy, rather than shame, in the idea that people might talk about her behind her back. This aligns with her nihilistic worldview by making her feel as though her presence is bigger than her material reality. If she cannot leave a lasting impression on others, then her presence means nothing. If she can confuse people enough to make them talk about her, then she persists in some form.

“Good girl, thinks Rachel, is mountains and mountains worse than good boy. All a good boy has to do to be good is put on a clean shirt. Nobody wants to be a good girl, thinks Rachel. There can’t be a single girl in here who wants to be just fine.”

In this passage, Rachel underlines the sexism implicit in traditional values of goodness. Although she doesn’t explicate what is required for girls to earn the title of “good girl,” her sentiment about boys suggests that girls are expected to do more than present themselves nicely. This aligns with Gendered Exploitation in Women’s Sports as the girls put their bodies at risk for entertainment while the men reap the prestige and the profits for administering the tournament.

“The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular.”

Kate is a conformist because she needs other people to validate her choices. This passage underscores the alternative to her conformity, which is singularity or loneliness. Because Kate comes from a doting family, she cannot function as an isolationist, choosing things without the comfort of validation. In this way, this passage is a thesis for Kate’s worldview.

“It is this ability of Kate Heffer’s to rewrite the reality of her own desires that will allow her to turn every narrative of her life into a self-fulfilling truth. She is, in this way, able to perceive and remember only those events that fit with her current perception of the world around her. Kate Heffer will train her brides from her wedding-planning business to employ this same strategy.”

If Rachel is defined by her weird-hat philosophy, Kate is defined by her ability to fit the facts of her life into a worldview that suits her. The novel uses another aside into the future to show how Kate leverages this ability into her career as an event planner. While this ability aligns with Kate’s decision to conform with others, it also sets her apart by making her adaptable to different environments, such as boxing.

“Artemis Victor’s discus of a world hangs below Andi Taylor’s. It’s covered in photos of herself, photos of Artemis in dresses, Artemis on covers of magazines, Artemis with husbands, piles of husbands-in-waiting, telling Artemis that she is the very best, the only woman, the only thing, that they have ever imagined even looking at, let alone holding. One of the husbands from Artemis Victor’s discus is reaching down and stroking the hair of an image of Kate Heffer, whose discus is directly below Artemis’s.”

Shortly after introducing the world discus as an invention of Iggy’s imagination, the novel applies the world discus metaphor to all the other boxers in the tournament, depicting them in their respective worlds as though they had always existed. This underscores the transitive quality of the tournament, allowing all of the fighters to absorb each other’s characteristics just by virtue of participation. It suggests that they are bonded by being the best boxers of their class, driving a sense of relation akin to sisterhood.

“Tanya Maw and Rose Mueller are not hand clapping. They are boxing. But there is a collaboration in the way that they stand. When Tanya Maw extends her fist out Rose Mueller greets it. When Rose Mueller puts her left leg forward, Tanya Maw moves back.”

In this passage, the novel draws a comparison between boxing and hand-clapping games. Both are favorite activities of the fighters in this chapter, which allows them to engage each other as though they are performing a childhood game in synchronicity with each other. Implicit in the comparison is the contrast between the two activities, juxtaposing the violence of boxing against the innocence of hand-clapping games.

“It’s not that all of the girls in the Daughters of America tournament are punching their way through a dead person. Tanya Maw’s winter-disappeared mother, and Andi Taylor’s dead red-truck kid, are things that hover above these girls when they box, but they will also be things that follow these girls after. These disappeared people are part of these boxers. Like viruses, they are stored in their bodies, in the spaces between the vertebrae in their spines.”

This passage underscores the tournament’s lack of importance by reminding the reader of the things that loom large over some of the boxers, allowing them to find common ground even if they never meet on the tournament bracket. Andi and Tanya will continue to be haunted by their respective traumas, which emphasizes the fact that both are much bigger than the worlds they build around boxing.

“Tanya Maw does not yet know that she will become an actor. Here, at the Daughters of America tournament, Tanya Maw is a fighter. But she is also just a child—just a girl waiting to see what her life will be like compared to the lives of the other people she knows.”

In this passage, Bullwinkel highlights the tension between the present and future. One thing that characterizes the teen characters of the novel is the unbridled potential that awaits them in life after boxing. In Tanya’s case, she isn’t even aware that her adult life will be devoted to acting, but her curiosity as a girl on the cusp of adulthood will leave her open to explore that possibility once the tournament is over.

“Boxing is the opposite of being alone on a dust-filled prairie. Rose Mueller loves every girl who agrees to fight against her because they have agreed to be with her without needing to speak to her. Rose Mueller loves Tanya Maw, even as Tanya Maw lands a hit on her. It is a gift to be alive, and to be fighting each other.”

The novel drives the idea that boxing can also be a venue for community and affirmation, as demonstrated in this passage. Rose comes to the tournament as someone who has been ostracized and bullied by her local community for her personality and for her body. In the boxing world, those character traits help to make her one of the best athletes in the nation. The idea that Tanya would want to fight her makes her feel less alone and affirms her existence. This passage drives Small Glories in the Grand Scheme of Life as a theme.

“The coaches of victorious fighters borrow their fighters’ glory like slipping into someone else’s luxurious dinner jacket. The coaches whose girl boxers lost complain about their wives and the mothers of their children. They linger over how nobody ever listens to them.”

The interludes of the novel highlight Gendered Exploitation in Women’s Sports as a theme. As the athletes get their rest for the next day of the tournament, the male league administrators reap the rewards, claiming the victories as their own over drinks at the casino. Notably, the coaches of the players who lose distance themselves from the loss, acting as though they had nothing to do with the outcome at all. They demand sympathy from one another, acting as if their voices go unappreciated and unrewarded.

“Parts of their souls are carried inside each boxer who beat them, as if Kate Heffer’s and Andi Taylor’s bodies, post-defeat, have been cannibalized by the victors as part of a ritual of war. Andi Taylor’s dead red-truck kid lives inside Artemis Victor, and Rachel Doricko clenches Kate Heffer’s counting numbers in her hands.”

As the tournament progresses, one of the unique outcomes of each match is that the winners start to take on the aspects of those they have beaten. This passage explicates this, foreshadowing later moments where the boxers will express thoughts or sentiments that resonate with the boxers they have defeated. Artemis, for instance, will think of herself as water, which resonates with Andi’s thoughts because water caused the death of the boy at her swimming pool.

“Andi Taylor’s boxing past seems, to Andi Taylor’s lover, if not secret, then plastered over […] These hands are the hands that once hit Artemis Victor. Andi Taylor never got to fight Kate Heffer, but because Andi Taylor’s hands touched Artemis Victor, and because Artemis Victor’s hands touched Rachel Doricko, who beat Kate Heffer, there is a connection between the hands of Andi Taylor and the hands of Kate Heffer.”

This passage resolves an earlier concern that Andi raised in Chapter 1. Wishing that her body could show evidence of her effort as a boxer, this passage drives the idea that recognition of that evidence is akin to love. Although Andi loses the very first match of the tournament, her lover sees not only the evidence of her boxing career, but also the aspects of the other boxers who fought in that tournament. This frames Andi as someone who shares in the victory of the tournament, making this passage resonate with Small Glories in the Grand Scheme of Life as a theme.

“As Rose Mueller walks by the folding card table on her way to reenter the ring for the championship match, she sees that there is no way that the Daughters of America Cup trophy would ever hold water. There is a slit in the cup where the plastic mold came together.”

This passage highlights the symbolic character of the trophy, which drives Gendered Exploitation in Women’s Sports as a theme. The trophy, which should represent the champion’s achievement, is a performative ode to the effort of boxing. Although it resembles a cup, it can barely function as one. Rose furthermore observes the generic quality of the trophy, which is signified by the plastic mold slit in the cup. This implies that all the champions are generic to one another, none of them standing apart as unique or exemplary.