52 pages • 1 hour read
Ana HuangThe Striker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A 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
The Tension Between Personal Desires and Communal Expectations
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses violence and sexual content.
As protagonists Asher Donovan and Scarlett DuBois pursue their individual dreams and their romance, they must navigate the tensions between their personal desires and the expectations of their families and colleagues. Football has been central to Asher’s identity since he was a child. He loves the game, but his father’s pressures have complicated his ability to pursue his dreams on his own terms. The further he’s gotten in his career, “the more [he’s] felt like [he isn’t] doing it for [himself]” (245). Instead, he’s playing for his father, which has slowly eroded his love for the sport. Playing with Holchester, therefore, made him feel like he was “trapped in this bubble where [he] couldn’t breathe” (245). Throughout the novel, Asher tries to balance his longing to succeed at football with his need for independence from his father. Simultaneously, he attempts to pursue a relationship with Scarlett without compromising his relationship with his new team. The novel uses these conflicts to show how individuals struggle to navigate familial and professional expectations while claiming personal autonomy.
Like Asher, Scarlett struggles to balance her personal desires against the expectations of others. Scarlett understands “where [Asher is] coming from” when he explains his familial, professional, and personal conflicts, because she’s “tasted it as a dancer” (246). In the narrative present, Scarlett similarly wants to prioritize her own desires—both with RAB and in her relationship with Asher—but fears that doing what she wants will mean disappointing her colleagues, students, brother, and friends. The novel primarily uses intimate scenes of dialogue between Scarlett and Asher to illustrate how Scarlett’s internal conflicts complicate her ability to pursue her dreams. In one such moment, Scarlett voices her anxiety to Asher, saying, “I know a staff showcase isn’t the same as a Royal Opera ballet, but those are my colleagues. My students. If I screw up, I’ll have to face them every day afterward, and I don’t know if I can do that” (109). Scarlett is using a raw, honest tone to convey her fears, allowing Asher to understand how her colleagues’ expectations complicate her individual pursuit of her passions.
Once Asher and Scarlett face their fears and prioritize their own dreams, they’re better able to balance their familial and professional challenges. The novel again uses intimate scenes of dialogue to show how claiming one’s needs, wants, and voice is essential in navigating life’s constant conflicts. For example, Asher has repeated conversations with his dad that help him make sense of his internal unrest and to focus on football and his relationship in new ways. Scarlett’s conversations with her brother Vincent DuBois, her mother, and her friends similarly help her to articulate her desires and put them in perspective with others’ expectations of her. The novel thus underscores the importance of taking care of oneself before one can healthily devote oneself to one’s family and vocation.
Emotional Intimacy as a Means of Overcoming Trauma
Asher and Scarlett’s evolving romantic relationship gradually helps them to confront and overcome their personal hardships and past trauma. The more time they spend together, the more comfortable they feel being vulnerable with each other. The novel uses intimate settings to facilitate these heart-to-heart conversations, to bring the characters together, and to inspire their mutual support. Examples of such settings include Asher’s car, Asher’s private ballet studio, Asher’s home theater, Asher’s childhood bedroom, and Scarlett’s apartment. These spaces are defined by privacy, comfort, and familiarity, granting Asher and Scarlett the safety they need to articulate the loss and hurt they’ve experienced and to ask one another for help to heal from it. The novel therefore suggests that intimacy has the power to help individuals process difficult experiences and make peace with the past.
For Asher, the past is defined by his fraught relationship with his father and by his grief and guilt over his best friend Teddy’s violent death. Although Asher has transferred off the Holchester team to establish healthy distance in his relationship with his dad, he still feels burdened by his father’s constant pressure to excel. Asher feels that his father’s intense coaching stole his childhood from him and robbed him of a normal family life. Asher also feels guilty for Teddy’s death—convinced that he would “be alive if [he had] stayed with him” at the bar the night he died and “insisted he leave when [Asher] did” (251). In the present, Asher feels burdened by the past because he doesn’t know how to resolve his lingering bitterness and grief. In Scarlett, he finds someone with the empathy and insight to help him process his trauma and move forward.
For Scarlett, the past is defined by the car accident, the injuries she sustained, and her breakup with Rafael Pessoa. The car accident robs Scarlett of her ability to perform and thus compromises her sense of self in the present. Because the accident coincided with her breakup, Rafael’s “abandonment […] left [her] with deep-seated trust issues” (288). In the present, Scarlett’s life is thus defined by fear of repeating the past. She worries about returning to the stage, because she doesn’t want to get hurt or disappoint more people again. She worries about committing to a relationship with Asher, because she doesn’t want to have her heart broken again. The novel thus shows how the past can impede an individual’s ability to enjoy life in the present.
Once Asher and Scarlett learn to open up to each other about their difficult pasts, they find healing from their trauma. Talking to each other about their difficult experiences gives them closure and lets them engage in the present and look forward to the future, instead of letting the unprocessed traumas of the past inhibit their growth.
Romantic Love as a Catalyst for Self-Discovery
Asher’s and Scarlett’s alternating first person perspectives trace their individual journeys toward self-discovery and personal growth. The more time they spend together, the more their journeys overlap and inform one another. At the start of the novel, Asher and Scarlett are convinced that they know who they are and that their identities are fixed. Even when they meet, they make conjectures about one another that they’re convinced are true. Asher believes Scarlett is going to be cold, hostile, and petty because of his rivalry with her brother. Scarlett believes that because Asher is “so famous and good-looking,” he must “be an arrogant playboy” (289). However, as the characters get to know one another, they simultaneously get to know themselves better. Scarlett realizes that Asher is “so much more than the words other people [use] to pigeonhole him”—and that he in fact makes her feel “safe, worthy, and cherished” (289). Being with Asher therefore helps Scarlett see herself better. Because Asher values her, she realizes her own self-worth. The novel thus suggests that healthy, balanced romantic relationships can usher individuals toward personal growth and self-discovery.
Asher’s relationship with Scarlett also teaches him how to be a better person and to care about himself more. When they first meet, he can’t understand why “everything route[s] back to her,” and he wonders if it’s because she’s beautiful, “witty and talented,” or because she is “off limits and seemingly uninterested in [him]” (81). Over time, he realizes that Scarlett pushes him to be the best version of himself. She won’t tolerate how he “compulsively choos[es] to do something that leads to self-harm” (491). Her insistence that he care for himself is both an expression of love and a source of motivation for Asher. Loving Scarlett makes Asher want to outgrow his childish antics and to behave like a mature adult who’s ready for a committed relationship.
Asher and Scarlett are both dynamic characters who grow and change because of their deep, caring relationship. Asher encourages Scarlett to remember her talents, skills, and heart, while Scarlett encourages Asher to take responsibility for his life and relationships. The author illustrates their internal growth by allowing their first-person narrative voices to evolve over the course of the novel. This means that the way Asher and Scarlett describe themselves, their experiences, and their relationship at the novel’s start starkly contrasts with how they depict their lives at the novel’s end. Their reflective tones in the novel’s final chapters convey how their relationship has helped them revise their understanding of their lives and themselves.
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