Poem Analysis: To An Athlete Dying Young

Many people work hard for their reputation and how others perceive them. Once people finally get that understand of whom they are and what they want to do, it is hard to let go of that. “To an Athlete Dying Young” is about a young athlete that died before his reputation; therefore, when people think of him, they will think of the athlete he was. “Ex-Basketball Player” is about a boy that was phenomenal at basketball, but his career came to an end when he did not go to college and play basketball; his reputation died before he did. These poems have similar subjects but still differ a little bit.

In the poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”, begins with a young athlete being celebrated by his townspeople after he just won a big race. Soon after the

young athlete died and the townspeople carried his coffin and set it down at the threshold of the tomb. The third stanza talks about how the athlete was smart do die young before his fame got the chance to weaken.

At the end of the third stanza it says, “Though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose,” and in these lines the laurel is a symbol of success, and it withers faster than the rose, the symbol of life. What this is saying is that a person’s success fades quicker than their life. Therefore, this whole stanza is saying that it was a wise thing that the young athlete was able to die before his reputation died, and people got to remember him as the young athlete he was and not the athlete he was when he was younger. In the fourth stanza it says that his eyes are sealed eternally and he cannot observe the ending of all the records he had set. Since this young athlete can no longer hear, he cannot tell the difference between silence and cheering from the townspeople. The next stanza explains that he is not joining all the other athletes that

lived longer than their legacy and were ultimately forgotten. Celebrity and brilliance eventually outran those competitors, so their names perished before their bodies. As in the rest of the poem, the sixth stanza is also talking about how the young athlete will not be one who will become forgotten, he died before his glory and success was neglected. The last and final stanza clarifies that the cemetery residents will look at the young athlete as he is crowned with a laurel wreath as a sign of triumph. The many among this young athlete will find that he and his laurel wreath are well looked after.
Lastly, the poem “Ex-Basketball Player” starts off speaking about Pearl Avenue and how it is indirectly compares to the street to Flick’s life and how Flick works in a garage, which is located on the corner of that street.

The word Avenue is symbolic to Flick’s life, because it begins terrific but then ends on a corner at a gas station, which embodies his overall life choices. Also, the main character, Flick Webb, could have a symbolic name, because Flick could be talking about how he shoots the basketball, “flick” as in how he flicks his wrist to shoot and “webb” as in the basketball net. Therefore, Flick Webb could indicate that he shoots the ball and only gets net, meaning that he is an incredible basketball player. The second stanza describes the gas pumps at the gas station Flick works at and is incidentally associating these pumps to his basketball team. In line 9 it says “Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low,” which is a sign of personification, because the author, John Updike, is giving the gas pumps human features by giving them elbows and showing what it would look like if they did not have any elbows. In the third stanza it defines Flick’s high school basketball team as supernatural, hence the name Wizards, and as the stanza goes on it shows the audience a little bit about Flick as a player. Flick set a record for his county with 390 points and scored around 40 points in one game. John Updike used a simile to describe Flick’s hands “like wild birds,” meaning

that his hands were always unrestricted and nobody could figure out how to break him. In the fourth stanza the audience figures out that Flick did not go anywhere after high school to continue his basketball career, instead he started working at the gas station. At the end of this stanza, it states that Flick’s unrestricted hands do not affect his new work at the gas station. The fifth and final stanza defines Flick’s inadequate life, constantly sitting at the same café playing pinball.
Everybody wants to be remembered as a success or a legend; nobody wants to die forgotten. Both poems “To an Athlete Dying Young” and “Ex-Basketball Player” talk about people who were once a legend in their town but one died and one was forgotten. These poems compare because they both had a successful career in sports. However, these poems differ because in “To an Athlete Dying Young” the boy died before his legacy and in “Ex-Basketball Player” the boy’s legacy died before he did. It is hard for an individual to start up a reputation or a legacy, but it is even harder to keep it.