The Blind Side Themes

At the heart of Michael Lewis’s book The Blind Side is a question: why would two rich parents, Sean Tuohy and Leigh Anne Tuohy, with two biological children of their own, adopt an impoverished inner-city teenager, Michael Oher, and lavish love and attention on him? Throughout the book, characters propose various cynical answers to this question: they suggest that the Tuohys are exploiting Michael for his football talents, or that they’re motivated by…

In addition to telling the story of the life of Michael Oher, The Blind Side studies the history of professional football since the 1970s—an era during which many coaches and managers began to rethink the way the game was played. The book shows how Michael Oher’s spectacular success as a left tackle reflects some major changes in football strategy in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which resulted in a much stronger emphasis on passing…

Throughout The Blind Side, Michael Oher is an outsider. Thanks to the persistence of a father figure, Big Tony, Michael becomes one of the only black students at Briarcrest Christian Academy. He’s also the biggest kid at Briarcrest by far, and he comes from an impoverished inner-city family. At school, he’s extremely shy and lonely, partly because he isn’t sure how to make friends with his wealthy white classmates, and partly because he…