53 pages • 1 hour read
John FeinsteinLast Shot
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Superdome and New Orleans
The Final Four takes place at the Superdome in New Orleans, and the setting enhances the spectacle of the event. New Orleans is an important port city and a popular tourist destination known for jazz music, architecture, nightlife, Mardi Gras celebrations, and outstanding restaurants—particularly those with expertise in Cajun and Creole cuisine. The city also has a reputation for gambling, both underground and through its casinos, which supports the book’s plot of trying to fix the championship game to win millions of dollars through betting. The NCAA is also presented as focused on making money; it presents itself as an upstanding organization through its myriad regulations and security guards, but its concerns aren’t so different from those of the gamblers in the story. The NCAA’s aim is to maximize the Final Four’s earning potential.
The Superdome symbolizes the excess and extravagance of the Final Four. The scale of the Superdome inspires awe in its visitors: Stevie “couldn’t get over how big the place was. The entire Palestra would fit into the curtained-off area that wasn’t being used” (41). Almost everything about the Final Four comes across as supersized. The facility has hosted multiple Super Bowls and Final Fours, and its capacity is approximately 75,000 people, depending on how it is configured for a particular event. Stevie marvels at the size of the interview room, which is “longer than a football field, with giant TV monitors in several places around the room so that those in the back could see” (56). The Superdome represents the enormous scale of the Final Four and its mammoth monetary value. In other words, the Superdome is a site through which tens of thousands of people and amounts of money Stevie can’t fathom flow regularly.
The Superdome’s scope and role as the hub for a billion-dollar event support the younger reporters’ sense of awe and the believability of the venue as a site for unscrupulous behavior. Stevie and Susan Carol witness Whiting blackmailing Chip in the Superdome. Later, Ventura harshly confronts Stevie within this space. Its cavernous foundation provides hiding places for untoward behavior.
The Security Guards
At the Superdome and around the Final Four, Stevie sees so many guards that he thinks “even the bathrooms would have security guards” (72). The numerous guards contribute to the spectacle of the Final Four and support the theme of illusion versus reality. The guards create the appearance of security—their role is to protect the players and the figures involved. Yet the guards don’t protect Chip, Stevie, or Susan Carol, and dangerous, illegal behavior occurs under their noses. Rather, the guards unknowingly contribute to the harm perpetrated against these characters because they’re singularly focused on enforcing the NCAA’s rules. Their actions highlight the vapidity of the organization’s regulations. Neither the NCAA nor the guards have a clue about the scheme being carried out beneath the veneer of ethics and order. The guards become a false symbol of safety and order, just as the NCAA falsely portrays itself as an honorable organization of student-athletes. In Last Shot, the true symbols of order are those who work to excavate the truth—Chip, Stevie, Susan Carol, and Jurgensen—and the FBI agent, Applebaum.
The Traits of a Good Journalist
Last Shot can seem like a guide for young reporters on for how to write quality journalism. Throughout the story, Feinstein, via his characters, explains the requisite traits of a good reporter, making writing and journalism a central motif that bolsters the work’s themes of teamwork and illusion versus reality.
The novel demonstrates that reporters should put their biases aside and work together to crack a story. The duo succeeds in exposing the plot and salvaging the integrity of the tournament because Stevie overcomes his biases and teams up with Susan Carol. Had the two not become journalist partners, it’s unlikely they would have been able to uncover the scheme individually. Together, they bring the perpetrators to justice. Their work shows that a good journalist must also stay determined. Stevie and Susan Carol experience many setbacks, but they never give up their pursuit of the truth. They stick with the story, and in the end, their ethical reporting is rewarded—their article on the scandal will appear in major newspapers across the United States.
The motif of good reporting ties to the theme of illusion versus reality because a great journalist doesn’t reinforce superficial images but tries to reveal the truth of a situation. Kelleher, as a writer, criticizes TV reporting, saying that it is “shallow and requires that you spend most of your life screaming into a microphone about how great every coach is. We need to encourage real reporting because it’s important” (30). While his role as head of the USBWA biases him toward print journalism, his words are also supported by Stevie and Susan Carol’s observation of the type and tone of reporting at the tournament.
The superficiality of TV personalities allows the spectacle of the Final Four to proceed. None of these figures engages in “real reporting.” Rather, they support false narratives, as in Wallace’s use of Whiting on his panel about the failings of college sports. What qualifies as “real reporting” is truth, and Susan Carol and Stevie, despite their age, are validated as “real” reporters and good journalists because they uncover the truth about the attempt to fix the championship game and disrupt the hollow, self-congratulatory tone of the other Final Four media coverage.
