The Desert
Set in West Texas, the novel makes references to the dry, desolate landscape. The novel's protagonist, Gary Harkness, goes "a mile beyond campus" to think in the think in the desert. Attention is paid to the colorscape of the land ("different shades of one nameless color") as well as the sheer harshness ("water would have been a miracle or mirage"). As much of the novel's focus on nuclear destruction and holocaust, the landscape is portrayed as an embodiment of apocalyptica and uninhabitable.
The Violence of Football
The plot of End Zone revolves around the football season of Logos College. The novel makes frequent references to both training and football gameplay, with explicit and detailed accounts of the sport's violent nature. It is revealed that the novel's protagonist, Gary Harkness, was involved in an accident in which "three players [converged] on a safetyman who had just intercepted a pass... he died the next day." The second portion of the novel is focused entirely on a single game and features play-by-play descriptions of the heated game. Reference to football terminology is heavily employed. The frequent mention of football is juxtaposed against the horror of war and the possibility of nuclear apocalypse. In this sense, participation in a football team mirrors service in an armed forces.
Myna Corbett
The novel's protagonist, Gary Harkness, becomes romantically involved with a fellow student at Logos College named Myna Corbett. Repeated mention is paid to her body, which is described as "very heavy," as well as her dress, featuring "a mushroom cloud appliquéd on the front." Gary is attracted to her, and fetishizes her unconventional beauty. When she loses weight in an attempt to become more attractive, Harkness admits that he's less attracted to Myna. In this sense, Harkness employs Myna's body as an attempt to rebel against the standards of beauty, as well as the expectations of male desire.
"Bang Your Dead"
In Chapter 7, the football players engage in a game called "Bang your Dead," in which one points their finger in the shape of the gun, aims it at another, and says "bang." The recipient of the shot must fake a death. As the game progresses, it grows more intense and dramatic. A massacre occurs with "everyone shooting each other, men in their underwear rolling down the stairs, huge nude brutes draped over the banisters." The presence of the game in the text gestures towards the centrality of death within the plot. It is a device which provides a bonding opportunity for the team, and also one that allows them to act childish before the seriousness of the upcoming football season begins. Yet on a more serious level, the playful act of fake murder speaks to the violence which the men, as football players, must engage with. In this sense, the game becomes a means by which to cope with the physical stress of a brutal sport.
