It’s depicted as the aggressive sport it’s also the sport that is the center of most of the novel’s conflict. Football (Symbol)įootball, in Tangerine, symbolizes violence. Soccer in the novel represents a unifying activity where class differences evaporate and everyone cooperates. It’s what allows Paul to become close with kids from different backgrounds from him. Soccer is the game that unites people in the novel. While Erik derides the Cruz kids for being field workers, it’s by working hard together that the family stays united. Paul loves working in the groves-as though by spending time in them he feels connected to a more substantial and solid world than the one he lives in. Unlike the houses in the Lake Windsor development that are built on top of torn-up trees, the groves have a solid foundation. The groves in Tangerine are the one thing connected to the earth by roots.

On the other hand it may symbolize a revelation-a bolt of knowledge or clarity-such as the knowledge that Paul experiences in the end of the novel when he finally remembers how Erik damaged his eyes when he was a small child. On the one hand it is a violent shock that shakes up the community, as Erik and Arthur’s aggression does. Lightning can symbolize a couple of different aspects of the novel. Lake Windsor is built on destruction of orange groves its football team is built on the lie of Antoine Thomas the Fisher family is built on the lies of their past. They also symbolize the broader tensions of a community that wants to appear perfect but has major problem. They symbolize the violence smoldering under the surface of Erik’s character. These fires symbolize other forms of suppression and lies in the novel. (Apr.In Tangerine, muck fires are constantly smoldering under the surface of the earth. Problems crop up, too, in this book's pacing, but first-novelist Bloor pulls it off, wedding athletic heroics to American gothic with a fluid touch and flair for dialogue. A swarm of mosquitoes hovers over the housing development. The horrific elements, however, remain largely unresolved. The playing fields are symbolic arenas in which Paul's anger at his brother and his tentative friendships with a group of poor minority kids get worked out. The element of suburban ecological horror here is both frightening and surreal, but it gives way in the second half of the novel to an onslaught of soccer and football games.

As buried memories surface, he uncovers the ugly truth of what his football hero brother did to him years ago. When his family moves to Florida's Tangerine County, where lightning strikes every day and toxic smoke billows through the air, Paul begins to remember something else. When he was little, Paul stared at an eclipse too long.

Tangerine novel edward bloor