Ex Basketball Player Poem Analysis

Life’s Simplest Pleasures Are Taken For Granted The ability to see, hear, walk, play sports and other functions may seem to be a given in people’s lives. The expectancy of these things can easily be taken for granted. Poetry can express how precious these values are through intentional choice of words. In “Ex-Basketball Player” by John Updike and “Mutterings over the Crib of a Deaf Child” by James Wright, reveal that people easily take life’s simplest pleasures for granted. For instance, in “Ex-Basketball Player”, John Updike uses imagery to create an image in the reader’s mind to show how the ex-basketball player wasted his talent in basketball and compares his life now to how his life was in high school. When referencing imagery, the author includes, “His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench. / It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though. / ” (Updike 23-24). These lines of the poem uses imagery by giving his hands characteristics of being fine and nervous on the wrench he uses for mechanics, and how his once talented hands for basketball …show more content…
The author achieves this by making the reader feel the senses the deaf child attains and experiences. The author describes how the deaf child uses other senses by saying, “Sometimes you could feel the dawn begin, / And the fire would call you /” (Wright 18-19). This line of personification generates a visual for the reader of how the child uses his other senses to go through day to day life, since the child is deaf. This line can have the reader experience how the child has to compensate their life from a simple function being taken away. The reader can experience this through the use of personification of the fire would call you, to make the assumption that the child’s hearing and other senses are enhanced to hear the crackling and feel the warmth of the fire to know that it is