Fans are like flowers. They give people attention but when the flowers die, so does the attention. Just like in baseball, when the team wins a game, they have all of the attention from their fans but when they lose, they lose the attention, too. In the “First Kiss” by John Updike, he speaks to the fans of baseball in an honest and passionate tone about the opening of a new baseball season to show that baseball is not just about the money and the players, but about having fun. Updike conveys the audience’s attitude by using metaphors and repetition of a word to make an ethical and emotional appeal to show the audience’s attitude towards sporting events like baseball.
Updike utilizes repetition many times in his essay. He repeats the word “we” from the beginning to the end of the essay to establish his ethics to the audience. The constant use of “we” established a tone that makes the author seem more humble and genuine. This displays that he has been
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The phrase “broke its monstrous big heart” and “first kiss of another prolonged entanglement” shows the complicated romance of the fans and the team. The fans are getting entangled into an intimate relationship with the baseball season. It states, “statistical virginity had been taken. The season had begun.” In the beginning, Updike shows the audience’s feelings toward the baseball team losing the game. They were angry and upset, just like in a relationship, they could “never get us to care again.” However, there is a shift in tone hating to loving when he says “But monsters have short memories, elastic hearts, and very foolable faculties.” This displays the loving and forgiving characteristics of the monsters, aka fans, toward the new season of baseball. It shows the humanity in monsters. The fans like them one minute but would hate them the