Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland

work-as-meaning

• It was, in so many ways, his way of pulling his family together and keeping it there. The LeCleres wrestle. That's life.

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embodiment

• The energy-sapping, soul-diminishing art of cutting weight… walking the line between light enough and strong enough.

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• A wrestler's job is to inflict immense amounts of pain and suffering on his opponent… the products of months of hard labor.

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• Ben is sitting, nearly naked in his little wrestling singlet, on the frozen dead grass, tears streaming down his face.

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ambition-and-status

• He remembers vividly the feeling of losing… the flushing of his cheeks at the defeat, all of it.

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• You look over at the wrestler he just beat to win it, and that guy is crushed. And I just choke up for that guy.

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