Central question:
About Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher’s novel follows the journey of high school student T.J. Jones as he helps put together a swim team comprised of peers who the rest of his school sees as outcasts. T.J. narrates his experience bonding with the team of misfits that join him in his endeavor to become recognized athletes worthy of letterman jackets despite the various social groups deliberately standing in their way. The team members eventually open up to one another and share the various traumas they have individually experienced, and T.J. in particular is forced to simultaneously contend with the violent effects of his hometown’s racial climate on his familial life. Through this process, the novel’s characters begin to come to terms with both their collective identity as part of a self-selected group and their own individual identities as adolescents coming into their own, who must decide for themselves what values are worth fighting for.
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