Ex-Basketball Player Poetry Analysis

Pearls Before Swine
Where you are can explain who you are. Why you are in a particular place and how you got there tell an outside observer about your decisions and the inferred motives behind those decisions. In “Ex-Basketball Player,” John Updike introduces a character whose surroundings emulate his success in life: Flick Webb. Flick’s momentary success did not remain later in his life. Because setting partially defines a person, Updike uses it, along with tone and irony to remind readers that success is as fickle as humans themselves.
Just as an individual's location often reflects his or her relative success, Flick’s success can be approximated by his current location. Updike brings his audience to “Pearl Avenue,” a seemingly promising location. “Pearl” represents the idea of materialistic value, as a pearl originates from a lackluster grain of sand. However, Pearl Avenue abruptly “stops, cut off.” His life stopped progressing after high school, so abrupt as to be without regard for the future. Pearl Avenue ends “before it has a chance to go two blocks, at Colonel McComsky Plaza.” This symbolized an opportunity for Flick: a literal turn in his life’s journey. The appearance of “Colonel McComsky Plaza” at the end of Pearl Avenue represents a respectable career in the military service, a possible destination along his life’s road; however, Flick fails to exploit this opportunity. Beyond the plaza, Flick finds himself at “Berth's Garage... on the corner facing west.” When the sun veers to the west side of the sky, the day is dying, and Flick faces westward, towards the latter part of his dimming life.
The people’s impressions of Flick can be determined by the tone of the narrator. The narrator lists objective, emotionally detached facts about Flick Webb in the fourth stanza, such as: “he never learned a trade, he just sells gas, checks oil and changes flats,” and “Once in a while, as a gag, he dribbles the inner tube.” The narrator simply states the truth about Flick without pity for his situation or revealing any impressions of him. Notice the use of the word “just,” which implies a hint of scorn towards Flick. The narrator reduces Flick’s very existence to simple, monotonous automobile procedures; people are indifferent to Flick because he has a shallow, one-dimensional character. Flick dribbles inner tubes as a reversion to his time as an athlete, and the people of the town “remember anyway.” The people of the town share the narrator’s scorn and indifference towards Flick. They simply acknowledge that Flick played basketball; there is no worth recognized by that fact. Just as “his hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench. It makes no difference to the lug wrench though,” the lug wrench, like the people of the town, recognize his former skills, but are affectless to their existence. Updike uses a scornful, indifferent tone to demonstrate Flick’s utter lack of a faceted personality. Now that his high school experience has ended, Flick often “hangs around Mae’s luncheonette,” where he “plays pinball.” Earlier in his life, he played a different ball game: basketball. The only fans Flick has now are “bright applauding tears of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju beads.” Flick went from being the star basketball player wearing the vibrant colors of the school basketball team, to a pinball-player wearing grease-gray work clothes. Flick never learned how to do anything besides play games, and he’s taken comfort in the material comfort of “thin cigars” and “lemon phosphates.” Flick played a ball game in high school and earned much respect and success, and now he plays a ball game still, but the way he is seen by others around him has changed diametrically.
Success in high school may not reflect successes in future endeavors. Although the high school experience enforces lessons and ideals through punishment and reward, it still permits a sheltered lifestyle for students; high school is like training for the adult world, requiring a sudden increase in individuality. Relative success in high school may not translate to success if the student does not learn how to learn. The poem Ex-Basketball Player adopts a mocking tone to describe Flick, but many students, especially males, are attracted to the glamour and romance of sports and don't succeed in life when their athletic career fails to take off. Updike does not mock Flick to degrade athletes or discourage athletic involvement, but rather encourages a back-up plan behind the athletic career, enforcing the chances of success. Don't just play basketball, like Flick “just pumps gas;” live in the moment, but with one eye looking ahead to the future.