The Shifting Family Dynamic in John Updikes Separating - Essay Example

The Shifting Family Dynamic in John Updike’s “Separating”

Appearing on the literary family scene in the late 1950s, John Updike as the father of the modern American literature, puts forward a somewhat conservative aesthetic project even for those years, focusing on the traditions of classical, "big" literature, as depicted in the images of Richard and his children in “Separation”. He reaffirms everything that modernism and the avant-garde would seem to have forever rejected: the inviolability of aesthetic and family values, the literary taste, the understanding of a work as an organic whole, etc. However, the searches undertaken by literary radicals were not ignored by him in any way. In the texts of Updike, you can find a modernist analytical game that exposes a trick, and methods reminiscent of the strategies of Camus, Salinger, and much more. As a highly professional artist, he undoubtedly took into account their strength, mastered them, included them in his creative space. But all these searches of his predecessors, radicals, were aimed at overcoming the traditional understanding of the aesthetic whole, at the destruction of great literature. Updike did its best to preserve it and neutralize conservatively destructive (but productive from any other) techniques with the final synthesis in the representation of the family dynamic. Essentially, Updike tried to create aesthetically conservative literature, but not epigone, but rather original and creative for a family reading.

The person seeks truths, answers to the vital questions of life not in the eternal, but in the temporary. Richard and his family in the work “Separation” are held hostage to worldly wisdom, common sense, collective reason. From individuality, he turns into a stereotypical person, a person of the crowd: a lifeguard (the story "The Separation"), sitting in an armchair towering above the beach, where a huge mass of people are sunbathing, cannot see the true personality of Richard and his children among them. A family person falls into the slavery of his own "I", selfish and, at the same time, stereotypical desires that make them fall apart from the family values. Alienating themselves from God, from objects whose sacred essence Richard and his children do not recognize, people alienate themselves from the soil, the land on which they grew up, and, most importantly, from each other in the family dynamic. The connections between them are mechanistic, superficial, rational, and can easily be broken in the separation. That is why Updike in his works, in particular, in some stories (“Dear Alexandros!”, “Snowfall in Greenwich Village”, “Four sides of the coin”, “Double number in Rome”) develops the theme of breaking family ties, by Richard, Joan, and their children, relationships between a father and a son. Almost every of the family heroes of John Updike is aware of, or at least intuitively, senses this process of disintegration, affecting the core of his personality and family dynamic, and seeks to overcome alienation from the world, overcoming pride, the reason for this alienation. For many, the so-called “universal values,” the norms of Christian ethics, which, without a doubt, are a reflection of divine wisdom, turn out to be a possible refuge. Following these family values ​​that stand above him, a father and his son undoubtedly rise above the ordinary, mercantile, above his primitive desires for separation. Richard, the character in the work “Separation’, tacitly rejects Joan and their children, trying to seduce them and remains faithful to his wife. An allegorical hint to Richard and his children how to behave becomes snow in the tale, depicted (contrary to the tradition of seeing him as a symbol of death) as a divine sign, the protest between a father and his son. General, ethics as an echo of the eternal triumphs over the single and the transient. An inspired love of Richard for Joan blocks a primitive sensual attraction, about to wake up. It would seem that the path is found. Personality and his family, following the example of Richard, Joan, and their children, a father, and a son are overcoming the uniqueness, striving for the general (ethics), acquires true individuality. Nevertheless, this path of the family dynamic is insufficient, and there are a lot of disappointments waiting for the Updike heroes here. Following ethical imperatives of separation not only elevates a person over what is happening but also distances him from the real world. Ethics does not correspond to the world of ordinary things, the world of animals, and even the natural behavior of Richard. Here the eternal conflict between the physical and the spiritual opens. With particular clarity, the life of a family in development is articulated by Updike in the story "Separation". Richard, the character of this tale, refuses love and submits his sense of duty, that is, puts the general above the individual. But following the ethical imperative does not bring peace, as in the case of Richard from the story, on the contrary, brings even more confusion to his family life and the life of people associated with it. The conflict is unresolved. The single, sensual shamelessly deny the general, spiritual.

The story “Separation”, the part of the "Tales of Maples", reflects the relationships of a family, a married couple that John Updike wrote throughout his life. Every (well, or almost every) marriage goes through the same stages: first, the touching awkwardness of the fact that you are now husband and wife with this person. A sense of pride and pleasure that you have a separate house (apartment). You receive guests and emphatically copy the manner of your parents or, conversely, do everything in order not to be like them. You are adults. This is the most pleasant period. Then there are children who require a lot of strength. Feelings are not the same; sex ceases to bring as much pleasure as before in the shifting family dynamic in John Updike’s “Separating”. It seems that you have not been in love with anyone for a long time and will no longer be because you have a husband (wife). But suddenly, a new character appears on the horizon, who is not only good in his own right but his novelty. You are addicted. One hobby replaces another, and at some point, it remains either to get a divorce or to agree that the family is above all. Approximately this path went Joan and Richard Maples - the heroes of John Updike's separation stories, to which he returned from time to time throughout his life. “The Maples met the author in New York in 1956, disappeared from sight for seven years and reappeared in Boston in 1963 when they donated blood. Since then, they have been featured in a dozen stories, until in 1976 the couple divorced, ”Updike summarizes the biography of his characters in the foreword. Maples have four children; however, they almost always play the role of extras. They are not important to Updike, nor are they important to Maples himself. Children can be an argument in a dispute ("you turned me into a housewife, making me give birth to four"), but no more, a separation between a father and a son is evident. Updike is merciless, somehow even sadistically observant and unemotional. Under his magnifying glass is a couple of Richard and Joan. Here is a young but already experienced husband, father of three children, Richard admires the luxurious femininity of his Joan, who feeds the children dinner, and then puts them to bed one by one. He is the head of a whole family, next to him is a beautiful female, who is still attractive, but not young, but already mature, bloomed beauty. But in the morning, this beauty turns into a mirage, the wife seems thick and lethargic, her skin is gray, and he is disgusting to himself. The anthem to the family is replaced intonationally with an irritable separation grumbling (the story “Separation”). So they realized that their marriage was at an impasse. Richard and Joan decide to spend a farewell vacation in Rome, and then separate. But in Rome, Richard suddenly sees how happy Joan becomes from the consciousness of impending freedom, and he becomes insulted of separation. In addition, she is so smart - is it possible to let go of an intelligent woman (the short-story "Two sleeping places in Rome"). In general, instead of a divorce, Richard and his wife will have a fourth child. And they will continue to balance on the verge of breaking until they disperse completely. “The moral of these stories is reduced to the ambiguity of all bliss. And also to the fact that people remain themselves, and this is incorrigible,” summed up John Updike. And there’s nothing to add.

So, Richard inevitably becomes a hostage to a sinful, too human. Even if it strictly follows ethical imperatives: ethics for John Updike is not a product of the divine mind, but of the human mind in separation, which is a very unreliable adviser. In search of a way out of this paradoxical situation, Updike turns to the Danish philosopher Seren Kierkegaard (his name is mentioned in the story "Rescuer"). Following Richard, Updike recognizes the limitations of the general and, at the same time, affirms the absurdity of God, his incomprehensibility. In turn, the world as the embodiment of divine design is an incomprehensible, immeasurable human mind. Does this mean that the person is Sartre-style left to herself and can only trust in herself, paving the way in the surrounding emptiness? Of course not. Based on the ideas of Kierkegaard, Updike believes that Richard and his children gain "I" only through faith, absurd in its foundation. He returns to his own oneness - but this is a special kind of oneness, washed by the general and abiding over him and his children. We are talking about a person who escaped from the clutches of reason and human ethics and accepted the divine plan in all its irrationality reflected in the meaningful relationships between a father and a son in separation.

A person realizes himself not as the highest form of life, but as one of the many unique forms in which life, the energy inherent in the world, finds its embodiment. However, from other forms of human life, it is precisely the recognition of oneself and the possibility of choice - the truth is extremely limited. To accept the divine will, no matter how absurd it may seem, means (like Kierkegaard's Abraham, who decided to fulfill the will of God - to kill his son) to achieve true humility. This humility means the possibility of overcoming the limitations of the self, constant openness to the new, unimaginable. It forces a person not to evaluate things, phenomena, but unconditionally accept them, recognizing in each of them the divine will, the miracle of creation. Looking around himself, the individual sees that the world is not a formula derived by consciousness and not a whirl of bodies indifferent to a person. The world is an infinite variety of independent forms, each of which is unique. Events and things that often seem insignificant are remembered by a person, unlike others, which at first glance are more important, for in them, as it turns out, the life force manifests itself in its ultimate expression, such as, for example, in flowers sent in gratitude (the story "Separation").

The ability to feel the ancient foundation of the world is a very important moment in the formation of the human person. In his stories, Updike speaks of the deep connection of the individual with the earth, primarily with the terrain in which he grew up. This connection is not mystical, but rather athletic, so it would be a big mistake to rank Updike as the so-called “soil writers”: the place where the person was born forms his consciousness, his habits, his bodily reactions [362]. Over time, it becomes for him a life-giving source, a kind of the beginning of being, from where it draws vital energy. Fraternity is established between man and objects. This theme is developed in detail in the short-story "Separation". Moving away from the native land, a person after some time experiences nostalgia for it. He feels isolated, separated from the world, doomed to vegetate in prison his own self. These are the main lines of the conservative project about Richard and his family, which John Updike, working on the creation of the organic universe, sought to implement, in particular, his stories. It seems to us that he was not able to fully accomplish this task. Even in his best works, such as “Separation”, the synthesis did not work: the material did not form an organic whole, and the techniques could not get along with each other. However, the attempt itself admires, the boldness of confronting, firstly, postmodern analytics and, secondly, the rapid degeneration and marginalization of literature.