5) Major Changes in the Main Character

                John Grisham’s main character in his novel Playing for Pizzais a 28 year old man named Rick Dockery. In the beginning of the story, Dockery is widely known as the cocky, third string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. He had jumped from team to team and state to state all throughout his professional career. He was also known for his hard, fast passes and his unearned arrogant nature. In practice he was quite the all-star, but when you get Rick Dockery into a real game, he chokes and makes the wrong decisions and the wrong passes; which is why he is always the third string. In High School, Dockery was the all-American player, which is where he developed such arrogance and pride and where he built up the rather large pedistal he sits upon still in his professional career. During the Brown’s first Superbowl game, the first two quarterbacks were taken out due to injuries which left Rick to clean up the last eleven minutes of the game. This didn’t seem like such a hard task considering they were up 17-0. But somehow, Rick managed to screw that up with a few terrible passes and finally a brutal beating from his blind side to get him out of the game; Browns lose. After his recovery Dockery was recruited to play in Parma, Italy where he sees the game of football in an entirely new way. He learns what a team truly is and how they support each other. He also learns that its okay to play for the fun of the game rather than for the money. While in Italy, Rick loses the arrogance he lived with for so long and becomes a team player in order to win the big one with his new team, the Parma Panthers.

3) Setting and Genre

        John Grisham’s novel Playing for Pizza is set during modern times, and although it is a fictional story, its quite possible that such events could occur in our world today. Rick Dockery, Grisham’s main character, is a NFL reject who loses his team’s Superbowl all by himself in only eleven minutes. This embarrassing failure of Dockery’scauses him to lose his contract with the Cleveland Browns and causes all of the opposing teams in the NFL to contact Rick’s manager to tell him they don’t want to recruit Dockery. When all seems to fail, Rick’s manager manages to find a position for Dcokery to fill in Parma, Italy as their starting quarterback, which Rick had never before played after High School. This type of situation is incredibly possible for any man who plays football or any other sport. It’s not unlikely that a person would go out of the country to play their sport in a different culture. This novel is quite realistic in the fact that such events could happen to somone in our world today.