Comparison/Contrast essay

When most people think of a hero, they often visualize a sports figure. While this fulfills the idea that a hero is a person who embodies the most important attributes of a culture, often people fail to take into account the price young athletes pay for this temporal fame. John Updike and A. E. Housman explore the ideas of fame, failure, and fate in their poetry; their two poems “Ex Basketball Player” and “To An Athlete Dying Young” share a common theme; however, they diverge when considering their tone.
The theme of both poems centers around the idea that athletic fame is important but fleeting and short-lived. In “Ex Basketball Player” the narrator says that Flick “bucketed three hundred ninety points/A county record still.” These lines establish Flick as a local hero who has brought fame to his town. The unnamed athlete in “To An Athlete Dying Young” is said to have “won [his] town the race” and t...