In "The Slump," John Updike uses the national pastime, baseball, as the setting to explore one individual's frustration with the world. The story is told by a professional ballplayer who finds himself, for no identifiable reason, unable to hit as well as he once did. He thinks about why this might be, but not very deeply; for the most part, he accepts this slump as his fate and considers what it says about life in general. The story depicts the superstitious nature of athletes in the way that its narrator hopes for better days without having any hope that anything he can do would make his luck return.
<span>is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. so it would be "to set the mood and tone of the play and provide background information"</span>
Scrooge sees under the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Present, two children, whose names show that they are symbols: Ignorance and want. They represent your standard impoverished Dickensian children; they are ragged in clothes, dirty and starving.
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Overview. Puritans were English Protestants who were committed to "purifying" the Church of England by eliminating all aspects of Catholicism from religious practices. English Puritans founded the colony of Plymouth to practice their own brand of Protestantism without interference.