The graduate door Charles Webb

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Summary

The Graduate is about a young man called Benjamin Braddock.

Benjamin just graduated from College and he arrives home.

His parents have organized a party, but Benjamin is not in the mood. He wants to leave the party, but his parents force him to stay. After talking to a few guests,

Mrs. Robinson asks Benjamin to drive her home in his new car. At first he refuses, but Mrs. Robinson insists.

He drives her home.

She invites him in. He asks why and she gives an excuse about being afraid to be alone in her house. Benjamin goes inside and they have a drink. Then Mrs. Robinson asks Benjamin to stay until her husband comes home. After a while Mrs. Robinson goes upstairs to get ready for bed. Then when she calls Benjamin and he comes up she is naked and tries to seduce Benjamin. But he doesn’t want to spend the night with her. As they are talking he hears Mr. Robinsons car arriving. Benjamin quickly runs downstairs and sits in a chair. He welcome Mr. Robinson and tells him that he brought his Mrs. Robinson home. Then he leaves.

After a few weeks Benjamin goes to Hotel Taft and calls Mrs. Robinson to have a drink with him. She comes, they have a drink and have sex in a hotel room.

This is the start of his affair with Mrs. Robinson. For a few weeks all Benjamin does is drinking, smoking watching TV and secretly going to the hotel every evening to have sex with Mrs. Robinson.

Benjamin's parents are worried about him and force him to take Elaine on a date. Elaine is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. Benjamin doesn't want to date Elaine so on their date, he is very rude to Elaine until she starts crying.

He then apologizes to Elaine and decides to make it up to her. They get something to eat and they talk. Benjamin falls in love with Elaine. They kiss and Elaine suggests that they go to the Taft Hotel. When the enter the hotel, everyone recognizes Benjamin. They go outside and Benjamin explains to Elaine that he once had an affair with a woman, but that it is in the past now. He drives her home and asks if he can take her out the next day.

The next day he drives to her house, but Mrs. Robinson opens the door. She is angry and jealous.

Mrs. Robinson threatens Benjamin with telling Elaine about the affair. Benjamin decides to tell Elaine himself. He runs up to Elaine's room and tells her that the affair he had was with her mother. Elaine yells at Benjamin and tells him to get out of her live.

Benjamin gets depressed and stays home for several weeks. Then after a while, he decides he wants to marry Elaine. He goes to Berkeley where Elaine goes to college. He tries to talk to Elaine several times, but backs out at the last moment each time.

Until one day. He talks Elaine and finds out that Mrs. Robinson told Elaine that Benjamin raped her. Benjamin explains to Elaine that that is a lie and he tells Elaine that he loves her and that he wants to marry her. Elaine tells him that she loves him too but that she doesn't want to marry him yet.

After some time Benjamin finds out  that Elaine's parents have forced her to marry some guy named Carl Smith.

Benjamin flies to San Francisco and then to Santa Barbara to stop the wedding. When he arrives at the church he stops the wedding and

 he en Elaine fight their way out of the church and run to a bus and ride away.

Important Text Fragments

After several drinks he gave the waitress a tip and left the bar for the

telephone booths in the lobby. He looked up the Robinsons’ telephone

number, memorized it and closed himself into a booth. For a long time

he sat with the receiver in one hand and a coin in the other but without

dropping it into the machine. Finally he returned the receiver to its

hook and lighted another cigarette. He sat smoking it inside the closed

booth and frowing down at one of the booth’s walls. Then he ground it

out under his foot and walked out of the booth and into the one beside

it to call Mrs. Robinson.

(p. 58)

In this fragment Benjamin decides to call mrs. Robinson. You can clearly see that he hesitates and isn’t really sure if he should do it.

“It wasn’t just some woman with a husband and a son.”

“Who was it then?”

Mrs. Robinson appeared in the doorway and stopped. Elaine looked at

her and then back at Benjamin. “Will somebody please tell me what

is—” Suddenly she stopped talking. Her head turned slowly back

toward her mother. Mrs. Robinson looked down at the floor, then

cleared her throat quietly and left the room. Elaine pulled her hand

away from Benjamin but continued staring through the empty

doorway.

“Elaine?”

“Oh my God.”

“Elaine?”

“Oh my God,” she said again. She looked for a moment at Benjamin,

then walked slowly to her window. She stared out through the glass at a

house on the other side of the driveway. For a long time it was perfectly

quiet. Finally Benjamin took a step toward her. “Elaine?” he said.

She spum around to face him. “Get out of here!” she said.

(p.128)

In this fragment Benjamin tells Elaine that he had an affair with her mother.

Time:

The book doesn’t explicitly tell in what year the book takes place, but it does tell that the book starts in June after Benjamin graduated and gives some hints that it probably took place a long time ago. For example, it isn’t an issue to drink and drive yet. Our guess would be that the story takes place around the time it was written: 1968. The story is completely narrated in a chronological order, but sometimes when nothing happens during a time period, it is left out in the book. This happens mostly between chapters.

Narrative Perspective:

In the book you see everything that happens to Benjamin, but you don’t really get to know how he feels about anything. You can see this in the following text fragments.

During the next week Benjamin spent most of his time walking. On his

twenty-first birthday he ate breakfast, then went out the front door,

walked around the block, walked around the block again, then walked

downtown. He walked back and forth along the main street till it was

time to eat lunch, then went into a cafeteria. All during the afternoon

he walked, sometimes stopping in a park or on a bus bench to rest a

few minutes, but usually walking slowly past houses and stores,

looking down at the sidewalk ahead of him.

(p.54)

In this fragment you can see that the book tells you what happens to Benjamin, but not what he thinks.

The driver waited a moment, then turned around and climbed back up

into his seat. He pulled a handle and the doors of the bus closed.

Benjamin sat back down.

Elaine was still trying to catch her breath. She turned her face to look

at him. For several moments she sat looking at him, then she reached

over and took his hand.

“Benjamin?” she said.

“What.”

The bus began to move.

(p.215)

This fragment is at the end of the story, when Benjamin took Elaine away from her wedding. As you can see you get to know nothing about what’s going on in Benjamin’s head.

Because of this Benjamin remains a mysterious person, who you can’t really relate to, but it also gives you an objective view of the events.

Opinion

To be honest. Neither of us really enjoyed the book. We thought it was boring and uninteresting. The characters don't have many character traits and the main theme: the Affair isn't very interesting either. The most exciting part of the book was the ending when Benjamin fights of the wedding guests. Benjamin is a weird character, but not the funny or interesting kind of weird. He is the annoying kind of weird. Fortunately the book wasn't very difficult to read. There weren't many difficult words and the story isn't very complicated. All in all we do not recommend this book for reading in you free time, but we do recommend it for when you need to read an English book for school because it isn't very difficult to read.