Ingredients, Recipes, and Their Products

All forms of literature are products of separate pieces put together in a particular fashion. The separate pieces, or the ingredients of a work of literature, can consist of a plot, characters, settings, and much more. These separate pieces, or recipes, are then combined in a specific manner to create things such as short stories, poems, plays, or essays. The combined pieces are then read by a person to get the final product: an idea or meaning that leaves the person in deep thought. The deep thought leads to pulling apart the recipe to see its ingredients. As a result, the reader sees the work of literature in a new light with a better understanding of what the author wants people to get out of his or her work. The short story, “A & P” and the poems “Rites of Passage” and “The Only Girl at the Boys’ Party” are examples of recipes that are meant to leave the reader with the resulting product of a deep meaning.
John Updike’s short story, “A & P,” a boy narrates an ordinary day at a grocery store. Updike uses a multitude of ingredients to get his readers to understand his intended product. He uses his character Sammy, an important ingredient, to describe the store he works at in great detail. The detail vividly describes the setting, another ingredient, of the story as a boring, everyday supermarket that can be found in any town or city. The tone of the story is dulled, to emphasize the average quality of Sammy’s place of work. Sammy standing up for what he believes in is the climax of the story. Updike makes his character a hero for having this quality. The reader is then left with the product, wondering what the qualities of a hero should be.
In the poem “Rites of Passage,” written by Sharon Olds’, gives the final product of what she thinks a hero should be. Sharon Olds’ poem focuses on making the reader believe that wisdom is what makes a person heroic. Some of her ingredients include irony, setting, and conflict. The major conflict in her poem is it is her son’s birthday and all the boys are fighting each other, trying to prove who is the toughest of them all. Her son then cleverly finds out a way to calm all the boys down with a simple solution, saving his party and the sanity of his mother. Ironically, after he calms his friends down, they begin to play war games. The poem takes place in a living room, full of six and seven year olds and birthday decorations. These ingredients are put together according to its recipe, to get the final thought that the little boy’s wisdom makes him a hero.
Another poem by Sharon Olds’, “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party,” also focuses on a person’s wisdom, or even intelligence, as what makes up a hero. Instead of a woman’s son being the hero of the poem, a woman’s daughter is the main character. Like the previous literary works, the character is an ingredient. Other ingredients Olds uses in this poem include setting and point of view. The daughter is at a swimming party with a group of bustling boys. Her mother’s proud tone tells how smart her child is in comparison to the other children there. It does not matter that her daughter is the only girl there and therefore seen as the weakest, but that her daughter could beat all the boys just because of her wit. The product of the poem is leaving the reader thinking that intellect is stronger than a physical force.
Focusing on what makes up a literary work- the ingredients, recipe, and final product- is an important task when reading. It gives a deeper understanding of what an author has written. Focusing on these three items helps give a reason behind what a reader’s thoughts are when examining a piece of literature. Pulling apart these three pieces of literature has allowed me to find reason behind the authors’ words and why the authors wrote their works the way they did. By dissecting the recipes’ ingredients, I have discovered the final products.