Inexperience vs. Experience - What part did Love play in It?
When one stumbles into a new experience, and he passes through it with or without flying colors, his "Inexperience" is essentially changed to some form of "Experience," whether good or bad. When love is involved in this experience, the learned lesson is remembered forever, for the love that is used as a means of communication is attempted in the real world, and is able to change that person's inexperience for life. No matter the result, one channels his love as a sort of teaching, for himself and others to use as an example; to change their green and callous inexperience to a battlehardy and somewhat matured real experience. In David Updike's short story "Summer," and Flannery O'Conner's short story "Good Country People," this idea of a conflict of experience vs. inexperience is woven within the fabric of each story. In their respective stories, Homer overcomes his inexperience when he meets his first love in the form of a beautiful girl, Sandra, at his best friend's lake house, and Hulga is "graced" by the presence of her first experience of love before it takes a turn for the worst. No matter what the outcome is, each protagonist undergoes a new and exciting feeling that will change the rest of their lives. They grow and ma
The night before they were to leave they were all sitting in the living room after dinner - Mrs. Thyme sewing, Fred folded up with the morning paper, Homer reading on the other end of the couch where Sandra was lying - when the dog leapt up and things shifted in such a way that Sandra's bare foot was lightly touching Homer's back. Mrs. Thyme came over with a roll of newspaper, hit the dog on the head and he leapt off. But to Homer's surprise Sandra's foot remained, and he felt, in the faint sensation of exerted pressure, the passive emanation of its warmth, a distant signal of acquiescence (Updike 51). Homer has his respective feelings both before and after the "revelation." In "Summer," Homer is stricken with an enamorous feeling at even the first mentioning of Sandra: "The texture of the smooth, unbroken air was cleanly divided by the sound of a slamming door, echoing up into the woods around him...He would watch her, hear the distant door slam, the shower running in the far corner of the house" (Updike 48). As soon as Homer sees this beauty, he decides to pursue her as soon as possible. Yet she seems to be indifferent to this one-sided "courtship": "On the tennis court she was strangely indifferent to his heroics...When he arrived back at the house she asked him who won, but didn't seem to hear his answer" (Updike 49). Even though throughout the story Sandra seems to reciprocate some type of mutual feeling, the reader never really knows for sure whether Sandra feels the same way about Homer that Homer does for Sandra. But then, just as Homer thinks the pursuit is in vain, an epiphany transgresses: ture in a relatively short time from this experience, either eager to pursue it again, or appetent to rebuke the next possible chance. In "Good Country People," Hulga is a middle-aged woman who shows no emotion of love in the least, even to her own mother. She spends her days reading from books of science and philosophy, which makes her mother very upset: "These words had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of the room as if she were having a chill" (O'Conner 807). Hulga does not practice love, and residually participates in a mundane routine of reading books and talking in snappish tones. Everything about her life pushes away from the entire concept of love, and almost seems unreal: Her n
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1638
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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