46 pages • 1 hour read
Carl DeukerGym Candy
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Strength and Weakness
Strength and weakness appear in many forms in Gym Candy. On the football field, physical strength and speed are Mick’s greatest assets. The willingness to grind through exhaustion during a tough game involves mental strength. Physical weakness, and mental fragility, are liabilities to a football player. Weakness manifests in the novel in more ways than strength does. Mick’s father lies to Mick about his NFL past because he is embarrassed and does not want his son to learn the truth before he has to. Mick gives in to the temptation to use steroids out of an insecurity that he will never be good enough to be a star running back. The steroids then lead him to episodes where is out of control—another type of weakness. As the novel ends, it is clear that Mick still has struggles ahead of him; he knows he will be tempted to use steroids again, and will be in a situation where he will have to choose between the physical strength the drugs imbue or the emotional strength of resisting.
Deception
As Mick begins using steroids, he tells himself that he’ll be able to quit at any time. When he begins breaking league records, he tells himself that he isn’t cheating: yes, he is taking steroids, but he is also working harder in the weight room than anyone else. It is not until Drew tells him that their season was for nothingbecause Mick cheated that Mick sees how much he was lying to himself. Mick’s father is the other character in the story that lies. Out of embarrassment, he deceives Mick about the reasons for his short-lived NFL career. But their respective lies have destructive effects: Mick’s health and future are put in jeopardy, and Mike struggles with the life of regret that his poor choices led him to.
Success
Mike says to Mick, “You think I’m a failure, don’t you?” (30), after Mick finds out that he was an NFL washout. Because he did not last in the NFL, he sees himself as a failure. Later, when Mick gets stopped by Foothill’s linebacker during the football game, Mick sees himself as a failure, despite it only being one play in a game with dozens of sequences leading to the conclusion. Mick takes steroids because he is determined not to failbut he is unable to see that his perspective on failure is skewed. Because nothing is more important to him than succeeding on the football field, he can only see success in terms of the game, not in the way he lives his life. Even when he is the star running back, Mick’s happiness is contingent on his results, and his results depend on an illegal drug.
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By Carl Deuker
