The Graduate

Summary

The basis for the acclaimed 1967 film, this novel about a naïve college graduate adrift in the shifting social and sexual mores of the 1960s captures with hilarity and insight the alienation of youth and the disillusionment of an era.

When Benjamin Braddock graduates from college and moves back to his parents’ house, everyone wants to know what he’s going to do with his life. Embittered by the emptiness of his education and indifferent to his grim prospects, Benjamin falls haplessly into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the relentlessly seductive wife of his father’s business partner. It’s only when her lovely daughter Elaine comes home to visit that Benjamin, now smitten, thinks he might have found some kind of direction in his life. But Mrs. Robinson is having none of it. A wondrously fierce and absurd battle of wills ensues, with love and idealism triumphing over the forces of corruption and conformity.