John Updike's Poem Ex-Basketball Player

Imprisoned by King Minos of Crete, Daedalus decided that he and his son would soon escape. So he began to work on an invention that would set them both free from their capturers. After evaluating their situation in Crete, Daedalus soon realized that there was no other way to escape other than by air. Daedalus created two pairs of functioning wings made with feathers and wax. He gave his son, Icarus, a pair and warned him not to fly too close to the sun. After a while in the sky Icarus became too excited and forgot his father’s warning flying closer and closer to the sun. His wings began to melt from the extreme heat and he started to fall from the sky to his death in the now named “Icarian Sea.” The reason I bring up this story is to show the how happy and free Icarus was for a moment but ignoring reality and what “could be” he fell from the sky and reality struck soon after with his death. In John Updike’s poem “Ex-Basketball Player” we are introduced to the world of Flick Webb and his life. We get a brief description of his area, then we are introduced to him and his current situation, reading further we learn of Flick’s past as a high school …show more content…
There are five players on a basketball team so this could be referring to the five players on the opposite team hints why he calls them idiot pumps. “Their rubber elbows hanging” helps the reader visualize a basketball player’s arms even though it is talking about a gas pump. The end of this stanza also implies that athletes are not as smart as the average student when it says “without a head at all-more of a football type.” This entire stanza was alluding to Flick’s past as a high school basketball star and implies that he wasn’t smart enough to be prepared for a different future. We understand more about Flick once we finish reading this stanza. We see that he still sees the world as his own personal court and certain objects become the opposing