Analysis of two poems with highlighted sections

¶ … Ex-Basketball Player" by John Updike analyzes a former high-school basketball's life after he has graduated and introduced to the "real world." "Ex-Basketball Player" allows the reader to empathize with Flick Webb, the poem's subject, and see how Flick's life has changed and how it still remains the same. "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden explores similar issues of change and focuses on the sacrifices made in order to live life.

A metaphor of Flick's basketball career can be seen in the layout of Pearl Street where the gas station he works at is located. The layout of the street echoes the movements a basketball player. Like a basketball player would maneuver a basketball court, traversing from one side to the other, stopping to decide his next move before finally taking a shot, "Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,/Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off/Before it has a chance to go two blocks,/At Colonel McComsky Plaza" (Updike, 1993). "Berth's Garage/Is on the corner facing west, and there,/Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out" (Updike, 1993). In this context, Updike (1993) contends that Flick and Berth's Garage are mutually dependent on each other for success like players on the same team.

The personification used in the second stanza helps to further reinforce the basketball symbols in Flick's everyday life. The imagery used in the second stanza influences the personification of gas pumps, which are given human attributes. Updike (1993) writes, "Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps -- / Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,/Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low./One's nostrils are two S's, and his eyes/An E. And O." Through this imagery, Updike allows the reader to see how Flick continues to navigate the proverbial basketball court of his everyday life.

In the subsequent stanzas, the tone of the poem shifts from nostalgic to remorseful. The focus shifts to Flick and his accomplishments, as opposed to Flick's role as at Berth's Garage. The immediate change can be seen in the first line of the third stanza as Updike (1993) writes, "Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards." The use of the past tense in this stanza emphasizes that Flick is no longer the same person he used to be. While "He was good: in fact, the best," the fourth stanza quickly brings the reader back to the sad reality that Flick did not make anything of himself beyond his high-school career.

In "Those Winter Sundays," Hayden takes a look at the relationship that a child has with his father and the unspoken sacrifices and duties that have been undertaken by his father. The poem begins with "Sundays too my father got up early/and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold" to make sure that the house would be warm for when his family woke up (Hayden, 1966). The imagery used to describe the cold implies the dangerous nature of the environment and conjures images of frostbite. Moreover, the care the narrator's father takes extends beyond taking responsibility for warming the house; Hayden demonstrates the father cares by stating that the father would wait until the house was warm to rouse the children from their beds and that he often took the time to polish the narrator's good shoes. The narrator implies in the poem that he does not recognize his father's sacrifices because of the "chronic angers" that permeate the environment and that his father's sacrifices went unrecognized.