People only reflect on the past when they have a fire inside of them; otherwise, a shadow forms behind them. In John Updike's short story "The Slump," a man remembers his life before he began to feel trapped in a cycle while playing baseball. The man's life starts to unravel as a result of becoming so mentally disoriented. To help readers better understand the speaker's emotions and experiences, Updike uses a setting to illustrate the speaker's voice.
Reflexes are first and foremost learned movements that are memorized over time. The speaker keeps going back to the moment when his coach told him that his faulty reflexes were the reason he wasn't succeeding. But "a cloud... a sort of spiral vagueness" is what his mind looks like (Updike 1). Despite being aware that he is playing, the speaker doesn't seem to understand how to do so. He obsesses over what ifs and whens instead of letting his mind wander.
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He would always start the big butterflies by "grooving with radio rock" (Updike 2). The speaker's schedule before a game is used by the author to illustrate to readers the speaker's past and how drastically his life has changed. The speaker used to be enthusiastic about games and be familiar with his every move; however, now that the radio is turned down, he feels needles in his throat rather than butterflies. The theme of missing the past and wanting to move forward is illustrated by the speaker's writing about how she feels and