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
BetaThemes
Coming of Age as Adolescent Girls
While coming-of-age stories are a common trope, the uniqueness of adolescent girlhood is often neglected and even more often misrepresented. The play undermines traditional representations of girlhood and womanhood, which fail to comprehend the complexities of femininity. Even when there are more expansive depictions of women and varied gender roles, rarely are girls shown as they are. The girls in the play are athletes, but many of them also exhibit their femininity, no matter how hard they push their bodies. The pressures they put on their bodies instead parallel the pressures all women’s bodies endure, through shame over menstruation and conformance to patriarchal weight standards.
The team’s strength and discipline are strongly feminine, with #13 even noting the girls’ menstrual cycles have synced and #7 joking about a ball soaked with menstrual blood. The text suggests their femininity is Amazonian. But these girls are also still teenagers. At 16 and 17, they are on the cusp of adulthood, but they are still girls. The play’s loose structure, organized by the regularity of weekly pre-game rituals, is united only by the messiness of their adolescence, in which femininity ultimately means something different to each of them. Notably, none of their approaches and experimentations, from being or not being sexually active to shaving one’s head and potentially experimenting with sexual identity, are judged by the world of the play. There are no ramifications for any of these choices, because they are neither right nor wrong but are simply authentic representations of female adolescence.
Sarah DeLappe has been especially praised for the naturalness of the girls’ dialogue, but she also captures the complicated reality of growing up as a girl. In the first scene, the girls debate—alongside a discussion about the bloody atrocities of the Cambodian genocide—the benefits of pads or tampons. Despite the natural process of menstruation, the shame imposed on it is ubiquitous. For school-aged girls in the United States, visibly bleeding through one’s clothing is mocked and made mortifying to the point of lasting trauma. But antiquated and incorrect ideas of virginity are a barricade to proper protection.
In the first scene, #2, who comes from a conservative, religious family, is on her period. She is terrified the pad might fall out the bottom of her soccer shorts. But despite encouragement, and instructions, from #7, #14, and #8, #2 refuses to try a tampon, which would offer much better protection, especially while playing a sport. #2’s use of pads becomes a momentary source of gossip among the others, as pads are seen as beginner equipment, which she ought to have graduated from. #2 is also the product of an over-protective parent who forces her to wear head protection and takes her to the emergency room for normal soccer moves. Despite their differences and teasing, these girls are an authentic depiction of the variations of girlhood.
But while menstruation is a mark of puberty, these girls are also developing mentally and emotionally. The play asks what rites of passage mark this coming of age and the transition from childhood. The girls pass through the transitions individually and as a team. For example, they have reached a point in their training in which they effectively have no adult oversight. They lost previous coaches, and now they have Neil, who is a “creep who asked [them] to scrimmage in [their] sports bras” (91). They accept sexual assault as an expected part of girlhood and womanhood. The conflict that breaks #7 and #14 apart as best friends is when #7 leaves #14 in a situation where she is being pressured for sex.
Asserting themselves and saying no, whether it’s #25 to their coach, #14 to #7 and the unknown college boy, or #8 to the boy who tried to put his hand down her shirt, are marks of confidence, self-assuredness, and growing up—as is #7’s acceptance of responsibility by taking the morning-after pill. For #25, shaving her head for herself, regardless of anyone else’s reactions (which end up being positive), is an act of self-identification and maturity. But at the play’s end, the team has a moment of shared maturity, as they deal with #14’s death. Despite their “what-ifs” about the driver’s icy windshield or #14’s choice to run with headphones, death is random and unpredictable. Understanding their lives are fragile and can be cut short is a disillusionment that is part of growing up. The realization centers around the loss of a girl among them, but this also reinforces their shared womanhood.
Astroturf and American Exceptionalism
The gap between a sheltered life in America and the globe’s atrocities is central to The Wolves. The idea manifests in the girls’ discussion of the Cambodian genocide upon the safety of their practice field. In the Preface, DeLappe asserts the play isn’t actually about soccer but “Astroturf and American Exceptionalism” (9). Throughout the play, the girls talk about different human rights violations, mostly occurring elsewhere but also close to home with the detained and incarcerated immigrant children at the US border. They debate about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and whether the last surviving perpetrator of the genocide should be fully punished in his 90s. They write papers on Rwanda and do projects about the Armenian genocide, but these lessons and subsequent conversations are intellectual exercises for a group of girls in suburban America. They attend different schools, which means the existence of these atrocities is only a matter of curriculum—or, as #7 comments, “We don’t do genocide ‘til senior year” (25). Yet for other children in countries that are facing their own deaths, genocide occurs in any grade.
The girls are an encapsulation of American Exceptionalism, as illustrated in the first scene when, during their discussion of Cambodia, #11 accidentally says: “I mean like yeah we should take our liberties for granted” (16). The other girls attack her, even as she tries to correct herself. They discuss genocide without realizing genocide occurred in America as well. European colonists murdered an estimated 9,700,000 Indigenous people, more people compared to the number murdered in the Armenian genocide (664,000-1.2 million), the Cambodian genocide (1.5-2 million), and the Rwandan genocide (500,000-800,000). Additionally, the country was built by the 5.5 million Indigenous and 12.5 million African enslaved people between 1492 and 1880. American Exceptionalism once referred to the lack of a codified class system or singular absolute rule. It supported individualism, or individual rights and personal freedom (especially under capitalism), as well as pluralism, which was the belief that power should be spread among different ideological or ethnological parties rather than an exclusive group of elites. American Exceptionalism has been rebranded by Republican politicians, however, who use the phrase to describe a national feeling of patriotism, an essential sense of virtue and upright morality, or simply a broad understanding of American greatness. These beliefs tend to deflect from the widespread animosity toward the United States on the world stage, perhaps in part due to American Exceptionalism. Depending on the level of progressiveness of their varying schools, each of the girls in the play may or may not learn about these truths in class.
The girls on the team are all sheltered in American suburbia. Their world is fabricated and small, a suburban microcosm of safety and privilege, with #46 as the only outlier, having traveled the world. They ignore #46’s comments about visiting the countries they’re talking about, because these places are functionally imaginary to a group of teens living in a suburban bubble. Their soccer field is in a literal bubble, an Air Dome covering a field of AstroTurf, which stays perfectly green because the blades are made of plastic. They can play soccer all winter, protected from the weather. When #46 notices a bird has found its way into the dome, #13 starts to panic, afraid the presence of a bird signifies a hole in the dome, which she is scared could cause the bubble to pop. Alternately, #46 only calmly identifies the bird. Little about the outside world frightens #46.
#46 is only at a loss in the bubble, where the other girls treat her like she’s unfamiliar. #13 imagines a hole in the dome would cause something akin to a balloon popping, but in reality, the dome certainly has safeguards. The girls aren’t protected from every hardship and unpleasantness in life. But they are able to hold onto that irrational and ubiquitous belief within young people living sheltered, safe lives that they are invincible. In their minds, tragedies only happen to other people. But #14’s death—sudden and illogical, leaving so many things unfinished—shows them it’s impossible to ever be truly sheltered.
Wolf Packs, Team Bonding, and Group Identity
The Wolves have been playing together since they were children, and their team was called the Blossoms. The team is much larger than the nine players who are taking part in the inside season, but the characters in the play seem to be the most dedicated to the sport, as they play year-round. The team dynamic extends to the structure of the play, which features an ensemble cast with no protagonist or antagonist. The girls aren’t named in the play (except #7 and #14 at the end), and their only identifying marks are their jersey numbers, which are printed on their shirts but rarely said aloud. They are, first and foremost, a team. But rather than negating their individuality with numbers and positions, the play uses the team as a way of formulating the girls as individuals.
The girls’ names are tied up in the way their parents, boyfriends, teachers, or friends identify them, just as the girls identify the others who come up in their gossip by name. On the field, they are athletes, defined by their strength and agility, and even more significantly, how they function as a team. Without names— or even individual fashion choices—the audience gets to know the players as they know each other. Their easy, overly familiar banter about tampons and war criminals gives a sense of who they are, for instance: #2 is innocent and afraid to use a tampon, #11 is intellectual and ready to correct her teammates’ facts on world affairs, and #7 is brash and likes to be shocking. As the girls warm up, their easy coordination with each other demonstrates their connection as a team.
It’s also significant that the team is called the Wolves. The other teams they play have names like Fusion, Xtreme Xplosion, the Hornets, and the Diablos, which are intimidating but don’t have the same association with team identity as a pack of wolves. Wolf packs are families. Wolves are known for their loyalty to the pack and their ability to communicate through body language. They are also territorial, which seems to be a barrier to #46 as she tries to assimilate into the team. Logically, the team should want to welcome a talented new teammate. But #8 comments, “It’s like so weird she just joined our team,” and #11 adds, “Nobody does that” (54-55).
At the play’s beginning, #46 doesn’t know their warm-up rituals, and no one tries to teach her. She has to learn on her own, which she does over the course of the play. But the group is bound by blood—both the blood they spill while playing and their menstrual blood, as evidenced by the image of a period blood-stained soccer ball and #13’s claim to #2 that their cycles have synced. This suggests they have spent an excessive amount of time together. The players are all good, and they almost never complain to each other over a missed goal or an inaccurate kick. But for this team, belonging has little to do with soccer.
For #46, soccer has always been a way of connecting and making friends with other kids in countries where she didn’t speak the language. She’s an excellent player because she has played all over the world, and undoubtedly her impressive talents made her immediately welcome. But every time she moves, #46 is alone once again, and she has to start over. This is her first time playing on a team. Theoretically, joining a team dynamic ought to be an even better way to make friends. But the team rejects her, refusing to let her play and berating her for failing to know things about her teammates she couldn’t possibly know.
The microcosm of their team politics mirrors the politics that lead to the genocides they discuss. Genocide starts with the formulation of an in-group and an out-group, which is treated as inferior. Those in the in-group start to believe they are better than the out-group. This type of groupthink is common in most teams and certainly among the Wolves. The girls’ commitment to the team unit is so fervent that they injure themselves and shed blood for the good of the team. Even jogging in dangerous conditions is prioritizing the conditioning of #14’s body for soccer over her own safety. Genocide functions the same way, with a zealous belief in the in-group and a growing disgust for the out-group, which develops into a willingness to participate in eradicating the out-group. They may not murder #46, but they ostracize her. Their behavior speaks to the problems of American Exceptionalism, even among an oppressed group of adolescent women. But when #7 is injured and they suddenly need #46, she is finally accepted as part of the team. At the end, the Wolves, including #7, huddle together and, for the first time, chant their full team cheer: “We are the Wolves” (174-75). This grows louder and louder “until it feels rabid and raw and Bacchic” (174). Although #14’s death nearly tore the team apart, this chant is a declaration that they are and always will be a team. Their bond is stronger in their acceptance of other women, in this case #46, as they eschew the pattern of in-group thinking. The Wolves are unified but also inclusive.
