49 pages • 1 hour read
Sarah DeLappeThe Wolves: A Play
Fiction | Play | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Scenes Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Whistle
Each scene of the play takes place on the field but outside of the playing space. The girls warm up, perform their drills and stretching rituals, and interact as teammates. Tension is heightened as the girls prepare for the games, which occur offstage. The referee’s whistle calls them to the playing space to start each game, which also means their removal from the audience, regardless of whether this interrupts a conversation. With the whistle, the referee also stops, starts, and ends the game. The whistle sets a clear border between practice and performance: preparation for life, or adolescence, and actual life, which interrupts the play in totality when Megan dies.
The audience watches the practice, and during this nothing the girls do regarding soccer counts. They play, they make mistakes—not just with the ball but also in their friendships with each other, but these errors rarely have consequences. This parallels their preparation for adulthood; serious consequences don’t occur, because they’re practicing. This transition is messy and often baffling. Some are starting to make adult choices with ramifications. #7 has unprotected sex and manages to avoid pregnancy by taking Plan B. She also leaves #14 alone with an older stranger, a college man who is expecting sex, risking the real consequence that #14 could have been sexually assaulted. #13 smokes marijuana, which she presumably gets from her brother, risking the possibility that she could have a similar future to her brother.
But on the field, the whistle makes transitions obvious. The whistle orders them to drop everything and run to the field. It means the game is starting. Later, off-stage, it stops the game when rules are broken, doling out clear-cut consequences before the whistle starts the game again. Then the whistle blows to end the game. When the whistle blows, the girls know to change modes and be serious, although they do so to also play a game. Moreover, this is a game they played as children.
Now that they play as young adults, however, there are serious rewards and consequences for their play. There are college recruiters who might change the course of their lives. On the other side, there are injuries, some of which are serious. Multiple team members have had surgery on their ACLs due to injuries, and for #14, her ACL injury is ongoing. Some of them will feel the effects of these injuries for the rest of their lives. #2’s mother constantly worries headers will cause concussions.
But the team plays hard, feeling pressure to overachieve—so much so that #00 vomits before every game. Throughout the play, the sound of the whistle is familiar and makes expected demands. Unlike coming of age, the rules are overt, as are the punishments for breaking them. Each time the whistle sounds, they jog off, with the exception of the last whistle. In the final scene, the whistle sounds, and the girls start to exit. But #25 stops them and invites them to do the cheer. For all of their trouble with emotions over #14’s death, they need this moment of solidarity, and this small act of rebellion—making the whistler wait—is a step toward adulthood. Adulthood and real life enter in, but the girls maintain their community.
Body and Blood
The play begins with menstrual blood, and several of the girls have a fear that someone will see their blood. Even though periods are natural, normal, and monthly, they must remain hidden in a misogynistic society that treats them as taboo. This shame is an example of how patriarchal sexism punishes women for being women. Each of the girls has a different relationship with their own menstruation, whether they see it as powerful (#7), embarrassing (#2), or repulsive (#8). But each of them menstruates, regardless of how they feel about it. When #2 asks the other girls if they’ve ever played while on their period, #7 replies, “We’re Women, that’s like what we do” (14). They are also united as a team by their menstrual blood, as #13 declares to #2 that their cycles have synced. #7 jokes about using their menstrual blood to intimidate the other team, letting it drip down their legs and cover the ball as a way of marking it as their territory. #7 quips, “yeah like ‘score on me with my own baby blood? I think not!’” (18). For #7, this discussion of menstrual blood or “baby blood” is especially significant (18), as the audience will soon erroneously learn #7 had an abortion. This proves incorrect—she only took the morning-after pill—but Plan B is a way to bring on menstruation to prevent pregnancy, so it’s unsurprising #7 would see her period as empowering.
On the other side of menstrual blood, with its generative potential, is the blood and other fluids from injures that occur as a sacrifice for the team. #00 vomits before every game, likely damaging her stomach, esophagus, and teeth with the frequent expulsion of digestive acid. Playing on an empty stomach also has its own risks. But with the intensity of #00’s anxiety, throwing up is the maladaptive coping mechanism that allows her to play. Then, there are #2’s nosebleeds, one of which projects blood onto #8’s jersey.
Ironically, #2 doesn’t feel the same embarrassment she feels about menstrual blood. There are hints that #2 has become extremely thin and might have body dysmorphia and possibly an eating disorder. She denies she’s thin, and when the others have run off to the field, she consumes the rest of the orange slices. At the end, the Soccer Mom asks with concern if she has been eating, as she almost didn’t recognize her. An eating disorder would likely be related to the team, too, if #2 sees thinness as an optimal playing condition. Nosebleeds also might be a byproduct of an eating disorder. In a patriarchal society that fixates on women’s weight and bodies, #2 harms herself by not eating, which causes nosebleeds, and also must be ashamed of her natural menstruation.
On the field, the girls’ bodies sustain frequent injuries, often injuries that will trouble them for life. Throughout, the team is afflicted with a cold, which all of them play through. The cold starts with #14, and in each scene, different girls have caught it until it has passed through all of them. In the final scene, #46 has caught the cold, which is almost a rite of passage in becoming incorporated into the team. It’s also a living piece of #14, which makes it fitting for #46 to catch it last, as her acceptance by the team coincides with #14’s death. The girls bond around the damage done to their bodies and this sacrifice, which symbolizes women overall uniting around their shared bodily afflictions. All must endure shame for their menstruation and struggle with conforming to patriarchal weight standards; they fight through these difficulties in solidarity with each other.
Orange Slices
Providing orange slices for players to eat at half-time is a time-honored tradition in children’s soccer leagues. Every Saturday, a different soccer parent (usually a mother) is asked to bring food, and orange slices are a popular choice. They are hydrating, they have carbohydrates, and they’re full of potassium, which helps to replace the electrolytes the athletes sweat out. Even many professional athletes often snack on oranges at halftime.
For the girls, the days of organized snacks during soccer are ending. At 16 or 17, they’re old enough to prepare their own food and mature enough to know when they need it. But when #14 announces her mother brought orange slices, the team stops stretching and becomes joyful. The team has developed many rituals over the years, and eating orange slices together is one that disappeared as they grew older. #25 even warns them not to eat too many and end up getting side cramps on the field, a reminder that 16- and 17-year-olds shouldn’t need. The play is about the girls’ coming of age, and their delight in the orange slices, savoring a familiar taste that brings happy memories, suggests growing up doesn’t necessitate discarding all pleasures of youth.
The girls put orange rinds in their mouths in front of their teeth as they smile, which was something they did as children. They decide to take a picture, and they are ready to snap it when #25 notices #46 standing by herself and invites her to join. #46 surprises everyone when she becomes upset, nearly crying, because she doesn’t understand what they’re doing. As #46 has not been accepted into the team beyond having her name on the roster, their team bonding practices are unfamiliar to her, and she feels like an outsider once again. #25 tells her to just get in the picture, which she does. This picture becomes significant as not only (presumably) the last photo of the whole team together but also the last moment of the whole team experiencing this childish joy together. After #14 dies, #11, who is supposed to be the morbid one, can’t bring herself to look at the photo. But #8 looks at it over and over.
#8 says, “I can’t stop checking it” (150), but it’s unclear what she is checking it for. At the end, #14’s mom brings another bag of orange slices. Only two weeks earlier, she had been a regular soccer mom sending a snack to the team. Now, she is named “Soccer Mom” in the text, but she no longer is one. Her gift of orange slices indicates the girls’ need to perform their bonding rituals and not allow the team to fall apart. She is giving them permission to experience joy and play, even in the wake of loss. The women, as they grow, will be united in adolescence—and all of its struggles—and the oranges encapsulate this larger theme of the play.
