Social Awareness and Stereotypes

Gunnar is probably the most socially-aware person in the entire book. Throughout the entire book, he's constantly seeing the subtly unjust social dynamics at play. During the Shakespeare scene where Nicholas messes up his monologue, Gunnar can see that this is exactly what the audience had expected of the black kids from Hillside performing Shakespeare. In response to this, he goes up on stage and calls them all out in order to draw a large amount of negative attention to it. Later on, he does the exact same thing on the basketball court by dressing up as a minstrel in order to make the performance aspect of the whole game blatantly obvious to them.

He makes his marks in very clever ways. When he notices somebody, especially himself, conforming to an unfair stereotype, he'll always call it out instead of just rolling with it. I think that it's a very good lesson to learn from Gunnar. It reminds me of the Narrator's thoughts in Invisible Man where he wonders if it really is or isn't rude for the white man to ask him to sing for them. Everybody should be themselves, regardless of whether they're conforming or not conforming to a particular stereotype, so long as they're still aware of it.

Gunnar's True Self

When Gunnar first enters Hillside, he finds himself desperately trying to fit in and find a place in the community. He resorts to being everything except for himself and really ends up getting nowhere at all with it. It's not until he settles down in school and meets Nicholas that he begins to let his true colors fly. He establishes himself as a fantastic poet and a natural-born basketball player, and everything about his character form then on out feels very organic. He is quickly accepted into the Hillside community and turned into a huge star.

By the time that college recruiters take note of him and his tremendous skills, Gunnar no longer cares about impressing anybody at all like he did before. He's become so used to obtaining respect through nothing other than being himself and doing exactly what he wants purely for the sake of doing it that he no longer cares in the slightest about what others think of him. Gunnar knows that he has exactly what they all want.

Gunnar is very conscious of the dynamic at play and he uses it to very strongly assert the fact that he is an individual who is defined by more than just his exceptional set of skills.