John Updike's The Centar: Literary Analysis

John Updike originally conceived his novel The Centaur as a companion piece to Rabbit, Run, published two years before. If the earlier novel was about a life-embracing man constitutionally unable to sacrifice himself for any person or idea, the later one is its opposite: a novel about a man obsessed with his own death who is nevertheless able to sacrifice himself for the betterment of his family. He thus exchanges his literal, physical death for a series of smaller, spiritual, daily deaths—the deaths of his dreams, his ambitions, everything but his love for his wife and son. What Updike is attempting in this novel, I will argue, is a 20th-century ArsMoriendi—an art of holy dying wherein George Caldwell will model a Christian attitude towards death and sacrifice. But Updike's faith is always mixed with doubt, and thus, his updated ArsMoriendi belongs firmly to the existentialist tradition wherein the black hole of death creates an inescapable anxiety. Updike implicitly adopts Martin Heidegger’s notion ofSein-Zum-Tode (being-towards-death); to live authentically is …show more content…
In his case, the implication is art. He works with such literary techniques that exploit the devices like dialectical method, irony, parody, fantasy, myth, nostalgia, dreams, allegory, fable, and the symbolic motif. The detailed imagery intensifies the impact of the artistic vision in its wholeness. The wealth of minutest details with which he describes the scene, setting the atmosphere, milieu, characters, and the vast range of his vocabulary do also contribute to the obscurity of his fiction. His unique style, though it has increased the resources of the English language, also creates problems of comprehension as it carries layers of meaning. If one is not clear enough to pick up to the tropes of art is bound to falter and fail. That’s why Updike’s fiction has been termed