Growing and Growing
"A&P" by John Updike has vivid ingrediants. It uses personal simple vocabulary in metaphorical ways. Sammy paints a perfect vision of the supermarket pinball machine with the people weaving in and out of the aisles. He uses strange graphic descriptions of freckles and lips all bunched up together. These descriptions are painfully accurate, like watching something under a magnifying glass.
The process is first person, absolutely commited to Sammy, who is growing from childhood to adulthood. Usin the ingrediants in story formatt along with an introductory setting, a climatic paragraph and a conclusive ending.
This story's product is a story, of course, and a meaning that it doesn't matter what people think, only what Sammy thinks of himself. If Sammy thinks he's a hero, he's a hero. It doesn't matter what the small town he live in thinks or what the girls didn't notice, it's that Sammy thinks he did right.
"Rites of Passage," written by Sharon Olds, is comprised of different ingrediants, processed in a different way, and with a different end product. The ingrediants are comprised of words like "jostling, jockeying," "Generals," "turret," and a repetition of "men" when referring to characters that are actually young children. The words are agressive at first with phrases like "eye each other, seeing themselves small," then change to gentle descriptions like "freckles like specks of nutmeg" implying something else entirely. The author juxtaposes a happy event with the serious and grave manner of make-believe war in children's minds.
Processing this poem is first person as well, through the eyes of the mother. The conflict is certainly man against an idea, that men will fall in the line of other men, like sheep, and already the main boy in the story proves he will think differently. Part of the process is also conversation in italics, so that we may know why he will be different. The contrast between men and boys is how the poem ferments into being both humorous and interesting.
The Product of the poem is the meaning and the poem itself. It is the message from the writer to the reader that she hopes her child will be different and think differently whether it is pretending at a young age or making real decisions as an adult.
"The One Girl at the Boy's Party", also created by Sharon Olds, is a poem about girls but contains similiar elements, however the words she uses that are eye-grabbing is composed of mathematical terms. Unlike most poets who use superfluous words like chandierlers or unnecessary vases, she use them like gears and tools that keep the meaning and the textured imagery flowing. Words like "smooth," "sleek," "indivisible," pencil lead," "sealed," and "plunge." Phrases like "molecules of chlorine" and "to the power of thousand" only increase the drama and awe the poem entails.
The poem is composed of woman versus image. We as readers are expected to be well aware of the myth that women aren't good at math, and that the poem is used to defy that mythical information. Using first person of perhaps a mother or father, it depicts the scene of the only girl at an all boy's party who is joining in with swimming. At first, the main girl character has seemed to enter the scene as a child, but by the end of it, she has become something powerful to admire. This theme from child to adult is common place.
The end product is a poem and a meaning that when women become older, the point of views of the children will change along with age, but will not change who they are. The energy and smarts grow with a person and will defy expectations.
A common theme between all three of these literary examples is the change from child to adult, from the helpless position and age to the decisive and powerful age whether through the loss of a job, the change a subject, or entering a new area of expertise.
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