Ingredients,Process, Made Thing..........

The dissection of a piece of literature helps the reader better understand a story and what the author was trying to convey. As we dissected the three pieces in class, it helped me better understand the work and the writer. The process of ingredients, process, and the made thing can be attributed to all of our readings. “A&P”, “Rites of Passage”, and “The one Girl at the Boys’ Party” are stories that once they are broken down, they make the reader revaluate their previous thoughts. If you break down the stories to their smallest parts the reader can start to draw parallels between the readings. Even though each story is different in its plot and storyline, they share the same structure. The ingredients are the raw material for any piece of literature. The process is how the author uses the ingredients to create the made thing. The made thing is the overall message of the story or what the reader is able to take away from the story.
“A&P” is a very detailed story of three girls in a grocery told from the perspective of a cashier, Sammy. It seems like the average story of a boy trying to impress the hot girl, but as we break it down it becomes more. There are tons of ingredients in “A&P” such as “bathing suits”, “Oh Daddy”, food items, and summer colony, but the main ones are the characters Sammy, Queenie, and Mr. Lengel. These ingredients are mixed with the setting of a grocery store, public nudity, and the presence of the girls to produce a clear picture for the reader. The process of adding all of these things together including the attitudes of the main characters makes me understand and connect with the characters more. Breaking it down shows the relationship between the blue collar worker and the “dream girl”, but at the same time it shows their shared conflict versus Mr. Lengel. Updike’s great details in the story help the reader combine all the ingredients into a bigger picture. This bigger picture and “made thing” is the one of a hero that does the right thing, but is now lost in new found freedom.
The poem “Rites of Passage” can be interpreted in many different ways, which is the beauty of a poem. The breaking down of “Rites of Passage” into its three parts helped me understand the different ways it can viewed. Many of the ingredients are ironic like children, generals, turrets, small bankers, 7 year old, kill a two year old. Sharon Olds manages to intertwine the carelessness of small children with the very serious world of career men. She takes her ingredients and combines them with quick line breaks and italics to stress words. Her careful planning helps guide the reader to better understand the meaning of children becoming men. It is her process of combining these opposite things into a smooth flowing poem that the reader can only understand once they disassemble “Rites of Passage”. The “made thing” that Olds creates is an ironic view of boys and their parallels to full grown men.
The last poem that we discussed “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party” also has ingredients, process, and a made thing. It was the story of a lone girl at a swimming party with all boys that was told from the perspective of her parents. Olds includes ingredients like tower, hamburgers and fries, strip to their suits, hard body, sweet face, curves of the sexes, and math. Her process is one of irony just like “Rites of Passage”, comparing a little girl to upper level math. She describes the girl and what the girl is thinking in a way she could not understand at her age. Sharon olds other process shows the reader the girl maturing from the beginning of the poem to the end. The parent’s perspective of the poem tells the reader what the “made thing” could be. It could be that your children grow up fast and you should not miss a minute of it.
All three stories have different characters, setting and plots, but in the end they have the same composition. They all have ingredients that were usually the characters. The processes were in the descriptions and the way the stories were written. The made thing was always involving growing up and learning from your mistakes. Breaking these stories down helps the reader visualize the story thus making them understand its true meaning.