The Graduate

“What’s the book you’re reading,” she said.
Benjamin picked it up from the desk and handed it to her.
“Are you interested in astronomy?” she said, looking at the cover.
“No.”
“Then why are you reading this.”
“I just picked it up,” he said, carrying the socks to his bed. “I just wanted to be reading something when you came.”

“You have no right to ask me to do that.”

“But I’m begging you to do it, Elaine!”

“Well you have no right to beg me to do it.”

Not too much. Taking it easy.”

Chapter Two
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.

Late in the afternoon he returned to his own block and to his house. He walked up toward the front door but then stopped as he noticed several people sitting in the living room. He turned around and walked back toward the sidewalk but before he reached it the front door opened and his mother stepped out onto the porch.

“I mean I just feel like it’s kind of an inevitable thing now,”

“Ever since I’ve been out of school I’ve had this overwhelming urge to be rude all the time.”

You had to marry him because you got pregnant?”

Two days after he got home from the trip Benjamin decided to begin his affair with Mrs. Robinson

“Sow a few wild oats,” Mr. Robinson said. “Take things as they come. Have a good time with the girls and so forth.”

everything—everything is grotesque all of a sudden.”
“Grotesque?”
“Those people in there are grotesque. You’re grotesque.”
“Ben.”
“I’m grotesque. This house is grotesque. It’s just this