Hockey William Faulkner Analysis

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In the hockey passage written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a hockey virgin recreates his first experience with the exhilarating sport. He discovers that hockey is not only a physically demanding sport, but also that it is a sport that retains reason as well as meaning. He soon learns the etiquette that is necessary for the players to have to play the game. Fitzgerald uses devices of language like imagery and structure to convey what the "innocent" experiences throughout the hockey game. Fitzgerald uses imagery to compare the components of hockey with other finely detailed images. In the first paragraph, the author describes the ice to appear tired and resigned. He goes on to compare it to a "Xmas store window, not before the miniture fir trees...were arranged upon it, but after they had been dismantled and cleared away" (6). Continuing on to the second paragraph, Fitzgerald envisions the game to be full of energy, motion, and speed. To the "innocent" this sudden change seemed "paradoxical like the frantic darting of the weightless bugs which run on the surface of stagnant pools" (14). His creative diction emphasizes the great confusion the "innocent" must have experienced with choices such as "discorded" and "bizarre". Once the innocent learns to follow the puck, he sees the individual players emerge. The innocent views the players "as fluid and fast and effortless as rapierthrusts or lightening" (26). He gradually understands the passion and triumph of the game by comparing the players to lightening, which is fast, shocking, and uncomplicated. Structure is used specifically to show the progression of the hockey game as well as his the narrator's own thoughts. Fitzgerald acknowledges his thoughts throughout the passage while noticing the changes in pace of the game. In the last sentence, the innocent sums up his stance and view of hockey by believing that hockey's

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