Jack Kerouac -- Vanity of the Gridiron

Directions: Answer the following questions on a seperate piece of paper in at least 5 sentences per response. Each response is worth 5 points.

1) The Dracut Tigers Field, as described by John L. Duluoz, was quite the place to be for sandlot football games. Describe a place that has a similar feel for you. Be sure to dramatize the place and bring it to life with descriptions similar to those used by Kerouac in the story.

"So here comes this mob of carefree men and boys too, even girls and quite a few mothers, hiking a mile across the meadow of Dracut Tigers Field just to see their boys play football in an up-and-down uneven field with no goalposts, measured off for a hundred yards more or less by a pine tree on one end and a peg on the other."

2) Using words directly from the text, describe the football games played at the 'sandlot'. What were the games like? What role does Duluoz play in the game?

3) Using the quote below and others from the text, explain the meaning of the title.

"For instance at one point, after throwing a block for Biff Quinlan, I look up from the ground and see his big feet plowing onward about 20 yards with his head down, over the goal line, knocking kids aside in every direction. And a few plays later, to show off to my father and remind him again, some poor Garden City kid is waltzing around his left end precisely as Halmalo had done, but he a stranger in this case, I pull the same trick, come up full speed, low, get inside his interference and hit him head on in a legitimate and clean tackle at the knees that knocks him back ten feet. Off the field on a stretcher.

Now I begin to feel bad about football and war. And showing off. But after the game (HM 27, Garden City 0) my father is beaming and all delighted. "Come on Jacky me boy, we're going out and hit the town tonight." So we go down to Jack Delaney's steak restaurant on Sheridan Square, myself little knowing how much time I was destined to spend around that Square, in Greenwich Village, in darker years, but tenderer years, to come."