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James Dickey's Poem 'In The Pocket'

658 Words3 Pages

Football, like many sports, can be very unpredictable. You may think your receiver is wide open, but once you throw the ball they could be covered by an opponent and the ball could get intercepted. Just like many encounters you have in life, Sports can show themes of struggle and conflict. You many think some options or answers will work, but in the end, they may not. The poem "In the Pocket" by James Dickey, talks about a quarterback in the middle of a football game trying to find players to pass to. In the end all of his options were unavailable and he got sacked. This poem shows an emphasis on not only football but also friendship, war and, depression.
In life you will meet many people and make many friends. Some people will have a bigger impact than others. The first way this poem may show friendship is in the first stanza, when …show more content…

You may start to look for options to make you happier, but you might not be able to find an option. This could make you fall back even more and make things worse. All of your options start to disappear and you start to crumble and you feel like there is nobody there to help you. In one stanza of the poem, it says "Across, and one is going deep deeper than my arm"(7-8). If reading this from the perspective of depression you can imagine that he is cutting himself because he has no other option. Another line also reads, "it hit him in the middle"(19). This could be referring to a gunshot to the head because he had no other option but to kill himself.
In conclusion, even though the poem "In the Pocket" was about a quarterback looking to pass the ball, depending on the reader, they could infer that this poem was about something completely different. If the reader was experiencing a bad relationship with a friend, fighting at war, or struggling with depression, they could all interpret this poem to be written about something different not just

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