The Boys in the Boat

The personal journeys of the key figures in The Boys in the Boat are influenced by the larger historical events of the 1930s in the US and Germany. The rise of Nazi Germany led to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, which precipitated World War II. The US stock market crash in 1929 was the catalyst for the Great Depression, which ended in 1941 when the US entered World War II. After the stock market crash, about half of all banks in America shut down, and many people lost their life savings in addition to their jobs. Unemployment rates soared to the highest levels in history. Joe was 15 years old in 1929, which also marked the year that his father and stepmother abandoned him. Joe was familiar with displacement, but this was the first time he was left to survive on his own. The fear, uncertainty, and isolation he felt in that moment matched the overall feeling that swept the US during the Great Depression.

However, Joe transformed these feelings into fuel for his steadfast mission to endure and excel. He began to survive on his own, foraging and poaching his food. He looked for ways to make money wherever he could find them, from poaching and selling fish, to stealing and reselling alcohol, to a variety of physically taxing jobs. The mental resilience and physical strength that Joe cultivated and maintained daily to survive would eventually make him an indispensable member of the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew, the “boys in the boat” who would go on to represent the US in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where Hitler was rising to power. Through a combination of shared experiences, character traits, and goals, the boys learned to row in authentic harmony, a stark contrast to the façade Hitler created in Berlin for the Olympics.

Brown uses the context of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin to dissect the irony of Nazi Germany as host, who used the games as a carefully orchestrated, public relations stunt to create the illusion of a powerful and sophisticated nation. The Olympic games symbolize unity among all countries of the world, yet Hitler’s worldview was based on the superiority of one nation and culture above all others. On a smaller scale, this idea of superiority connects to the Depression-era prejudice and classism exhibited by the American Olympic Committee, who demanded that the boys pay for their own passage to Berlin, knowing that they did not have the means to afford it. The committee wanted to replace the Washington team with a wealthier, more sophisticated group of boys from Penn, and it went to immoral lengths to impede Washington in favor of those with money and power. In the end, their plan backfired: Even during the Great Depression, the people rooting for Washington pulled together and raised enough funds to send the boys to the Olympics, where they would once again beat the odds and win the gold medal.