Philosophical Background

Nature Versus Nurture Michael Lewis has at least two themes in The Blind Side besides merely telling a good football story. Behind the disguise of his biography, he is putting emphasis on the fact that nurture overpowers nature and the ability to persevere. By emphasizing Michael Oher’s uncertainty of what he wanted to do in the beginning of the book, he discreetly attributes this to Oher’s mentality developed while living in the Hurt Village projects. And in using the results of his Aptitude test, his unstable residency, and his skin color, he presents a series of allusions that were identifiable to his contemporaries as critical of American stereotypes of blacks who are impoverished will remain impoverished. Despite Oher stating that “Failure was not an option…” (Yaeger) It is hard to state whether he would have made it out of Hurt Village without the help of his adoptive family, the Tuhoys. Why, one might ask, did Lewis choose to write this biography? Why not a science fiction novel, poetry, or a play? Lewis was born to an upper-middle class, liberal parents, his father a corporate lawyer and his mother a community activist. “Their financial standing and liberal view on people most likely contributed to this,” (Embuscado). After graduating from high school he attended Princeton University and later attended London School of Economics where he received his MA degree. His love for knowledge explains the stress on Michael Oher’s academic progression after he moves in with the Tuohys. Within the broad scheme of The Blind Side, Oher seems to be an average teenage kid from the southern projects. He is not concerned with much, yet he is confronted by the appraisals that people make of him. Michael is utterly incapable of concerning himself with education and the outside world, and, therefore, he and the ideal person in society are ever-present contrasts for us. We are always aware of the difference between the deficient ethical life of Michael, and