Essays on literary works - 2024
Myth and Reality in John Updike's “The Centaur”
John Updike’s novel The Centaur belongs simultaneously to mythological art and art that is deeply grounded in earthly reality.
How does one retell the most cherished memory? How does one recreate one’s childhood world for a beloved girl? How is this possible when the past, like the present, is fluid, unstable, with blurred boundaries between what was and what seems, between order and chaos?
Such is the world in The Centaur. The artist Peter Caldwell speaks to his lover, telling her about himself, his childhood, his father, contemplating the present and returning to the past.
It’s not immediately clear when the events take place: in 1947, fifteen years later, or even in the time of centaurs. One could, of course, try to recount the book chronologically, to “stretch” it out in the order in which events occurred, selecting only the real episodes and discarding the mythology. But this cannot be done with Updike’s novel: in art, changing the order of the parts always changes the whole. The world in The Centaur is one in which yesterday and today are whimsically intertwined. Yet Updike’s book is not a puzzle designed solely for intellectual prowess or specialized knowledge. It can be perceived as a fairy tale, and then it won’t seem strange that the hero is still alive and active after we have read his obituary, that the teacher is not shot at with a traditional slingshot but wounded by a real arrow. There is much whimsical fantasy in the book. But the pain from the wound is real.
What is the purpose of human life? This question has always been asked by Updike’s characters, and the members of the Caldwell family, over three generations, ask it sorrowfully.
So, what opposes chaos? That black abyss into which everything inevitably falls sooner or later and into which all of humanity could be plunged at any moment today? What protects and shields a person from chaos, what gives the strength to live?
Could religion be the answer? But it didn’t save the grandfather-priest, who was so full of sorrow on his deathbed. His tragic experience closed the path to religion for both his son and grandson. Many people are shielded from chaos by another faith—the belief in the possibility of transforming society. But Updike’s characters, and Updike himself, do not have this belief.
Various forms of human connection can also protect against chaos: attachment to one’s homeland, city, factory, or school, and a sense of connection with other people. But Updike’s hero is alone. Love cannot help him either. His wife can barely hear him anymore. The feeling that briefly arose toward Vera Gammel is closer to the realm of fantasy than to reality.
Still, in Updike’s novel, the world and man do not drown in chaos. George Caldwell’s anchor is his kindness.
He is a strange man who behaves oddly. Even his ugly, worn-out cap, found in a junk drawer and so hated by his son, is, in essence, a fool’s cap, only without the bells.
In his response to the world and in the tone of his speech, the hero may be fifty, not sixteen, yet he still hasn’t grown up in the slightest.
He feels responsible for all people. However, Caldwell’s kindness is not rewarded. The hero is doomed because he is helpless, kind, and pitiable.
His kindness is not inherited by his son. Peter doesn’t even try to imitate his father. He is made of a different mold. He opposes chaos in a different way. From childhood, Peter perceives the world in vivid, tangible images, in colors. Peter becomes an artist. His goal is to capture fleeting moments on canvas, to preserve his own world… because no one else on Earth will ever see or depict the small farm near the town of Olinger, Pennsylvania, the way he does. And then this tiny world, too, will sink into oblivion, along with countless other worlds.
But writer Updike does not submit to nature. He transforms it; he powerfully creates his own world.
Despite the demystifying details about the gods’ lives, mythology in the novel retains its significance as a model, a symbol of harmony.
Updike’s drive for harmony and aesthetic order is deeply contradictory: he wants to capture the fragment of chaos in which his characters live, meaning he must inevitably let chaos onto his pages. Yet, at the same time, he seeks to restrain it, to hold on to the fleeting, strange, and whimsical.
If you completely trust the writer, his reality and fantasy unfold into an increasingly structured and unique combination.
From the first chapter, it’s clear how different layers are combined in Updike’s writing. The teacher is shot with an arrow. He feels pain, and the class laughs. The laughter is unpleasant, turning into “a shrill bark.” The teacher’s visions grow more terrifying: at one moment, he imagines himself as a giant bird; at another, his brain is a piece of meat he is trying to save from predatory teeth. He flees the classroom, slamming the door “amidst the animalistic triumphant roar.” His return to the classroom is equally revolting. Caldwell is afraid. And not without reason. The school principal, Zimmerman, has arrived. He is both Zeus the Thunderer. Caldwell’s arrow is the lightning rod.
The class behaves cruelly, playing along with the principal, and Caldwell allows himself to be mocked.
With great difficulty, the teacher forces himself to continue the lesson. He does so passionately, with talent, but no one listens to him. The hero cannot help but feel that he is a poor teacher and that his life has been lived in vain. This is the reality behind the phantasmagoria of thoughts, feelings, and actions in the novel’s first scene.
The wounded Caldwell runs from the classroom and the school to Gammel’s garage, where the arrow is removed.
Around him are still the realities of the town of Olinger—school, tram, warehouse, a Coca-Cola crate… But these realities are already being replaced by mythological ones. Caldwell clicks his hooves, and while discussing modern children, he recalls his students—Achilles, Hercules, Jason. The garage resembles a cave, and when he leaves, cyclopes laugh after him.
It all seems like chaos. Yet, against both chaos and fear, a person still stands. As the teacher says at the end of his difficult lesson: “A minute ago, with sharpened flint, with smoldering tinder, with the anticipation of death, a new creature with a tragic destiny appeared, a creature…”—the bell rang, a thunderous noise rolled down the school’s halls; nausea swept over Caldwell, but he pulled himself together…
Transitions from one artistic world to another in Updike’s writing are not always smooth; sometimes, they are dizzying. At such moments, the focus shifts, and everything freezes, revealing the structure behind the glittering scene, the dusty backdrops of the set. The author feels this himself—after all, Peter says: “The last boundary I cannot cross.”