“Trust Me” by John Updike – First Draft Essay

Standing shivering on the wet tile edge of the pool, aware to his white skin, his father telling him to jump; There is blue –green water all around him he can’t breath he is sinking. One event, small or big, bad or good, is enough to shape and change one life. There is one event for Harold the main character of “trust me” that changed and influenced his life. Besides not being able to swim after almost drowning in the swimming pool, it seems that Harold also had had emotionally scars which developed into trust issues with his family and relatives.It first started with his mother, who at the same event where he almost drowned, choose to take out her anger by slapping his father instead of embracing Harold making him feel secure. The public embarrassment of his mom slapping and yelling at his dad is bigger than the embarrassment of being drowned.

“His mother anger seemed directed at him as much as at his father” (page 2) and he can’t trust her for her anger. The story implied that Harold developed trust issues with all the women in his life. And it is almost the same pattern with each one of the.His first wife was afraid of flights but when Harold tells her “Either you fly or resign from the twentieth century’ (page 3) she trusted him and had many over seas journeys with him. Once they encounter a life threatening event in one of their flight she doesn’t fly with him anymore which can interpreted to an action that shows she lost her trust in him. They separated a year after. When his daughter came to him in pain, she came to her dad because she trusted him, but once he tried to help her “her eyes widened with fear of worse pain” (page 5).

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Harold accused her “you don’t trust me” (page 5). Although he is trying to be patient and gentle to his daughter unlike his mother, he still can’t help her. Harold’s girlfriend trusted him when he convinced her to ski from the top of the mounting in spite of her novice skills. When his girlfriend starting to have doubts “with obedient eyes gazed at the infinite blue-green perspectives of wooded mountain” (page 6) the same blue-green he was facing on the edge of that swimming pool.Harold feels empathy to her as he felt to his wife on the airplane and for his daughter when she was scared.

“He gathered all his love into his voice” when he tried to relax his girlfriend, unlike his mother who was yelling when he needed her most. His girlfriend fall and cried but Harold only tried “to give her a treat, but she doesn’t trust him” (page 8). Unlike the women in Harold life, his son who Harold trusted gave him a hash brownie.The brownie made Harold feel sick. He thinks “the people in the subway car started at him as if they could hear this loud interior conversation going on in his head” (page 9) as the same people who stared at his mom when she was yelling at his father.

The person he reached to gain his trust again was his girlfriend but she refused to help him hung up the phone: “the click sounded like a slap, the same echoing slap that had once exploded next to his ear”.The only person his himself; “his protective trustworthy half of his brain” (page 10) It seems that Harold expected everyone to overcome their fear when he couldn’t overcome his own. He expected his family to trust him when he couldn’t forgive and trust his mother. His relative trust him with their pain and fears but he can’t keep their trust no matter how compassion he is with them. He feels the victim each time it’s happened, he didn’t mean to hurt them “it had not been his fault, and in surviving he was somehow blamed” (page 10).