Someone once said, “Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel”. In John Updike’s “Poker Night”, we see an internal conflict in the main character, where he is struggling to wrap his mind around some troubling news, and how he feels about it. Updike shows that experiences can lead to internal conflict and a loss of innocence.
When the main character finds out that he has cancer, he still goes to poker night, and realizes that everyone has had different experiences, and has probably lost their “innocence” in different ways and amounts. The text says, “Their hands as they reached on the table were another story altogether: they were old guys’ hands, withered long wrinkled white claws with spots and gray hair and stand-up veins.
When the main character finds out that he has cancer, he still goes to poker night, and realizes that everyone has had different experiences, and has probably lost their “innocence” in different ways and amounts. The text says, “Their hands as they reached on the table were another story altogether: they were old guys’ hands, withered long wrinkled white claws with spots and gray hair and stand-up veins.