Centaurul de John Updike – Reînvierea Mitului American
=== Centaurul de John Updike – Reînvierea mitului american ===
UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
ENGLEZĂ-SPANIOLĂ
LUCRARE DE LICENȚĂ
Coordonator științific:
Prof. Univ. Dr.
Îndrumător științific:
Asist. univ. dr.
Absolvent:
CRAIOVA
– 2015 –
UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE
ENGLEZĂ-SPANIOLĂ
John Updike’s The Centaur –
The Revival of The American Myth
(Centaurul de John Updike – Reînvierea mitului american)
Coordonator științific:
Prof. Univ. Dr.
Îndrumător științific:
Absolvent:
CRAIOVA
– 2015-
Contents
Introduction
This paper analyzes the characteristics of the revival of The American Myth and the only writer who managed to highlight this approach is John Updike through his novel The Centaur. It is a marvelous piece of work containing mythological elements with an emphasis on the Greek myth of the noble centaur, Chiron. Many critics and scholars were interested in this novel intrigued by the way in which Updike employed the structure of the myth in American literature and ended up with such an alluring story. Altogether The Centaur represents John Updike’s struggle to be appreciated by a father who was very dear to him and that is why he tried his best to make this novel one of the best creations of his literary career.
Like most of his characters that are thought to have sympathy towards the others, Updike’s characters from The Centaur are inclined to be true or false to themselves, rather than good or bad. His works express bitterness towards Modern America and even though he presents all the interaction as they are perceived, by the participants, Updike cannot be a psychologist.
It is already known that John Updike is considered by some critics to be a detached commentator of the American life, a writer who explores rural life in an urban age and because of this fact most of his novels reflect a precise historical situation. Similarly The Centaur is regarded as a Truman book.
The two main chapters of the present paper explain the importance of the myth in modern times and its features concerning John Updike’s characters making clear the fact that the novel has a unique item that puts it in a fascinating light. The first chapter deals with the importance that myth had in John Updike’s novel and the characteristics that made it what it is today. It also underlines the impact that mythology had upon modern times and upon The Centaur as well. Moreover in the quest for identity and change one can notice that all the characters of the novel look for a specific time and place to tell the story of their struggle so as to get where they are now.
The second chapter highlights the idea that mythology and Updike’s characters make a good pair in the quest of discovering the hidden stories surrounding all this mystery regarding whether Updike used the features of the myth just as a way to put his protagonists into a better light, or he wanted to let the reader discover as well the beauty behind it. Likewise these chapters present the parallels between George Caldwell and Chiron and also between his son’s Peter and Prometheus. Moreover we discover different sides of the characters that are shaped by their mythological counterparts. The novel shows that during his youthful years, Peter had a bad opinion about his father’s sacrifice and that when he grew older he understood all the things that his father had made for him and for his family as well. Both chapters analyse the lives of the characters and their relationship (e.g. the relationship between Peter and his father George Caldwell) and also they illustrate the impact that theirs mythological counterparts had upon them.
Updike’s novel was studied by many critics who thought that his idea of incorporating myth into the novel will be a failure but others were positive and concluded that he was a very capable writer, able to merge myth and reality into one. It has been elaborated that John Updike used Joseph Campbell’s idea of mythology, and that his aim for this work was used to bring forward his famous novel The Centaur. By doing so it is crystal clear that John Updike used the myth as his own personal tool which provided him with plenty of opportunities and possibilities.
The Centaur represents a marvelous piece of work with mythological elements in which the author emphasizes the Greek myth of the noble centaur, Chiron. Many critics and scholars were interested in this novel by the way in which Updike employed myth’s structure in American literature and gave such an alluring story. Another aim of the paper is to present the features and consequences of the myth’s revival into the twentieth century literature. Among the main objectives of this paper the following issues emerge: presenting the twentieth century mythological literature, stating John Updike’s importance in American Literature, presenting some features of the mythological novel and at the same time analyzing the Greek myth about Chiron and determine its role in the development of the narrative. Other important facts’ regarding the aim of this paper is that its role is to present the features of myth’s revival into the twentieth century literature and its consequences. Moreover such as, approach cannot be identified with Christianity, some critics thought that Updike’s world view is different from that of the historic Christianity and because of that he thinks that God’s signature is written on the patterns of life for the only person that will look for it. Several goals represent the main objectives of this paper and they are the following: to present mythological literature of the twentieth century, to make it clear that John Updike is an important writer of the American Literature, to present some features of the mythological novel and also to present the Greek myth about Chiron and determine its aim.
This novel develops the myth of Prometheus and Chiron and merges mythical figures and their story into the narrative sometimes even shifting between the two. The main character’s name was inspired by Updike’s father and this is a very important fact because it shows how much he loved his father despite the criticism that he had received from him during his live.
As already mentioned, the main objective of the present paper is to present the twentieth century myth in literature, its place and importance along the time, it’s wonderful features which shape it into the myth that is it today and also analyze the parallel between John Updike’s characters and the mythological ones determining at the same time the role and purpose of the myth in John Updike’s novel The Centaur.
Chapter 1
Myth and Its Role in John Updike’s The Centaur
Myths represent a collected group derived from mythology which is very important in every civilization. One of the theories that put the myth into light is the fact that it represents real historical events, and other theories argued the fact that myths began as allegories.
The myth can also provide many religious experiences and the Greek mythology is the one who provides Updike with a lot of characters and events. As it is already known Greek mythology is embodied in many representational arts such as vase-painting. The myth’s function is to explain the origin of the world and of the variety of Gods, heroes and mythological creatures.
A fundamental feature of the Greek mythology is the Gods’ immortality that differentiates them from the normal people. This feature is also found in John Updike’s The Centaur through the noble centaur Chiron; although he has immortality he wishes to give it away, put an end to his suffering and gain his desired peace.
Another important feature is the father-son relationship between the protagonists of Updike’s novel, George Caldwell and his son Peter. From the Greek mythology we find out that Chiron was the son of the Titan Chronos and that he was the half-brother of Zeus. The centaur’s story is tragic and painful and it’s parallel with the novel makes it more interesting.
John Updike tried to put into words his entire vision about life and about people and their character in general. The main theme of the novel is the Greek myth and its role in the novel.
By myth one is trying to understand the diversity surrounding it and to work up the concept of mythological thinking and also of the mythological consciousness. This concept has become the central phenomena in history and culture and attracted many philosophers of different epochs to try to decipher it.
According to some philosophers the sphere of the myth has a lot of motifs which go hand in hand with the plot of the stories concerning it. According to Plato myth can be considered as a “living creature.”
The Centaur contains mythic elements which combined with the real world or real events can form a complex novel or a novel which attracts the readers into discovering more and more each time. The structure of the myth can have many definitions or features but the most important one remains the problem of life and death. In John Updike’s novel, myth is created by the constant return to events or to past in general.
Philosophers elaborated many theories and thought that they were the manifestation of human spirituality and that they represent the society’s dream. John Campbell mentioned in one of his writings that the more scientists learn about Earth the more mystical their knowledge becomes: “Today we tend to think that scientists have all the answers. But the great ones tells us, “No we haven’t got all the answers. We are telling you how it works – but what is it?” You strike a match, what’s fire? You can tell me about oxidation, but that doesn’t tell me a thing. (Campbell, 1988)
Furthermore myth’s cosmology is responsible for the description of people’s environment and seeks to restore the cosmological image with the mythological references.
In John Updike’s The Centaur myth plays an important role which is put into light by two major plot links, that of the classical myth and that of the modern narrative. Another important aspect that is present here is that myth and reality engage into a dialogue, making the novel more appealing to the readers.
One main distinction between the proper myth and the occurring myth is the fact that Peter or Prometheus is the son of Caldwell or Chiron. In the novel we can see the importance the bound father-son has along the story and the sacrifices made so that everything goes well.
One of the important theories that can be found here is the one of the chronotope which is exemplified so that we can understand much better the structure of the myth and its role in John Updike’s novel. This chronotopic theory combines real, mythological and religious elements to provide a complex structure and to explain the plot better. We can understand that Updike used ancient mythology in order to make it his leading role and to reflect real characters and real events with deep significance.
In the novel’s structure Updike himself created a key to cipher the index in order to better render what he wanted to put into light. A simple key was meant to decipher the mystery surrounding his characters, a key which is easy to get if you’ve known Updike’s tricks. Also the connection is quite simple because we can see that the real names of the characters begin with the same letter as their mythological counterparts (Peter-Prometheus, Zimmerman-Zeus). This detail makes the novel more mysterious and easy to decipher if you’ve read some of Updike’s novels because from it, you can get a better view of his writing which is full of tricks and mysterious events.
Updike is a man of letters who tried to make the myth more present in his novel by combining humans which were known as the mortal species with the supreme creatures known as the immortals. He tried to make the story more mysterious by making a parallel with the Greek Gods from Olympus who in ancient times were considered much more important than God and were feared by many mortals who brought them offerings so as to be forgiven for the sins that they have committed.
George Caldwell, Updike’s main character is the one who resembles and reincarnates Chiron the noble centaur and he gets all his good and bad points, also in the human world he is, just like Chiron, a teacher from Olympus. Although the myth is incorporated, here we can easily see some differences between the original myth where Prometheus is not Chiron’s son and the occurring myth where this thing is true. By adding some details from the Greek mythology to his own characters Updike also tried to turn George Caldwell, his protagonist into the centaur by emphasizing the importance of self-sacrifice and the pain gathered along his life and career as a teacher.
John Updike used the myth to give a more detailed view on life and he also tried to demonstrate that the nature of the human being can have a lot of faces, some good ones that make you a better person and some bad ones that cannot assure you a better future.
Chiron the noble centaur, is described as an intelligent creature who is half man half horse and who possesses immortality but also who is ready to sacrifice it for anything that can bring him happiness and the peace that he dreams of. He seeks mortality because he is tired of the things that happened to him all his life and because the wound that he suffers from makes his life a living hell. He also thinks that if he disappears he won’t be hated anymore and everyone will be happy without him.
Besides the myth and its role, Christianity also has an important part in the novel because it reveals that God is present there but not every time and also that he isn’t perceived as an ordinary divinity. Chaos is omnipresent in the novel and throughout it reality is juxtaposed with the myth’s world. Zimmerman the principal of the school where Caldwell teaches is the main reason of the protagonist’s suffering. He is a cold man who does not care about Caldwell and about the fact that he might be suffering from all the atrocities brought to him by his students and by him as well.
The parallel between the mythic world and the human world makes it clear that Caldwell and the centaur Chiron are quite different regarding their teaching methods and that both of them have something that they would like to improve at their teaching technique and to change their students’ behavior. Both of them desire this change because the students’ behavior can sometimes be very naughty and this conduct is not right in an institution where one must be taught how to become a good man. Another important resemblance between Chiron and Caldwell is the fact that they both have their children into the class in which they are teaching. By merging the real world with the mythological one, Updike made the novel more captivating.
Also by adding the chronotopic theory to Updike’s novel we can understand that he wanted to tell the reader or to make him see that reality in all that it has, being combined with mythology takes another step into creating what the author wanted, a world of mythological creatures and humans as well but with less science and more creativity and imagination.
Updike used many features from the Greek mythology to create such a parallel world, as the author focuses on both humans and Goods at the same time and this characteristic can be made by one who can manage to see well the real world and the fantasy world and not to confuse it. By adding some of the essences of the myth, Updike tried to prove that his work isn’t as easy as one must think and that it requires knowledge to seek the real truth behind it. John Updike is one of the few writers who possess a technique full of uniqueness and his manner of writing about mythological features is the right way into creating a world where everything seems real and without flaws.
Reviewing Myth in the 20th Century Literature
Regarding the 20th century myth and its evolution, many theories have been speculated which tended to see myth as another form of mystification. Furthermore modern society researched the idea that myth has worked itself into the modern discourse and thus the result is that we can find mythical elements nowadays even in television, video games and also cinema.
Myths existed before art and before the written world and were of great inspiration for the literature of the time which had many novels based upon mythic stories and themes. Concerning twentieth-century artists, they have continually drawn on classical mythology in general and certain myths in particular, for humanistic reasons.
Even in antiquity myth played an important role because it had roots all over the course of history; even in Shakespeare’s plot “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” the love potion is connected somehow with Cupid’s arrow.
John Updike’s The Centaur is different from the rest of the books because most of the novels that contain Prometheus as a character fall into the category of science and fantasy but Updike employs those fantastic elements and he does not exhibit the conventions of genres. A culture’s mythology is a useful tool to psychology, because we can understand much better a culture by knowing its mythos and dreams.
The mythic mode, in which a writer appropriates an earlier story or tale which has achieved mythic dimensions, has long been predominant in Updike’s fiction, though critics have failed to recognize its importance except in The Centaur.
Homer, the first and the greatest of the epic ancient Greeks wrote two important works Iliad and Odyssey, which are considered to be two of the oldest works in Greek literature. John Updike used Homer and his conceptions in The Centaur giving the fact that he used mythology and mythic creatures to give a different charm to his characters.
Through the course of history, myth found reasons to live into the modern world as well, by borrowing different references from many contemporary words and expressions, such as the Oedipus complex and Pandora’s Box. From mythology many words were derived and this process made it more interesting and easy to understand by the modern reader.
Mythology is very important nowadays as well, because it is a part of one’s heritage and it helps us remember who we are and where we came from and also this distinction is quite important. Another important aspect regarding the myth is the fact that it is omnipresent everywhere. Modern literature is the living fact that the popularity of myths and the idea that they are still read nowadays makes clear the fact that myths are much interesting than stories and play an important role in today’s world, just as they were important in ancient stories long before our times. Throughout history, myths served many purposes and they were the passage through which stories were passed from generation to generation.
Twentieth century literature was named by some novelists “The Mythical Age” and it is said that it belongs to the modernism movement from the 19th century. Being concerned with the myth employed into the 20th century, one must draw an explicit line between a mythic novel and a mythological one.
A similar difference which can help us better understand what we are dealing with, is made by the fact that a mythic novel remains in the world of myths, excluding the fact that it is written with a modern tone. John Updike’s novel The Centaur is one of the best examples to demonstrate this theory of the mythological novels of the 20th century literature. By concentrating on the origin of the myth, many contemporary writers thought that this mythological feature could help them cure from the past and face their problems from the present with enough power so as to resist along the way.
Being used in so many ways, myth became the main topic of focus in the twentieth century literature, because it was meant to decipher the principles of the modern man’s mentality. An important reason, for which a lot of contemporary writers started using myths so frequently in their work, is the fact that mythological motifs can help them organize their own work material, useful in their novels.
There are many critics who think that by employing mythology into modern literature they are also making a dangerous move, because this process can eliminate those boundaries that stand between art and myth and art and religion. Nowadays myths can have a wide range of imaginative re-creations and are more complex, because of their nature and the possibilities that they offer to the reader. Mythology along the years varied from a dead and useless category to a useful one, which guided many writers into creating novels that were at the border between reality and fiction.
Modern times required plenty of work from authors who wanted to integrate in their novels the features of myths, because of their functional purpose. Myths can have many attributes and can shape modern national identities which are related to “The American Dream” and to the “American Identity.” The literature of the twentieth century created an important and convenient bound between myth and modernism.
Another two important theories of the myth came from the fields of anthropology and psychology and in other words the purpose of the myth itself was to provide a logical model so as to overcome a contradiction. Those traditional approaches which study the relationship between folklore and literature cannot deal with the presence of the myth in modern works. Myths are considered to be a system of communication from which one is able to perceive them as a mode of signification. Regarding the 20th century literature, it is obvious that the myth is perceived as a form of speech which is suitable for communication.
The Allegorical Quest for Identity and Change
The Centaur is not just a caricature of the modern world used to put into light the Greek myth of Chiron but it also represents an allegory of a Christian soul which struggles for love and legitimacy in a world filled with indifference and hatred. John Updike’s willingness to attach tremendous significance to his childhood memories and also to his hometown reaches an important step in The Centaur and a very powerful pursuit towards the mythologization of the artist’s portrait.
Beyond all the other characteristics, Chiron as a centaur represents a hybrid creature that has the task to reconcile man and animal, body and soul and earth and heaven as they were before in ancient Greek mythology in the Golden Age.
Although Chiron’s illness is not terminal it represents the symbol of his crisis in faith because the agony that he had to face was real and made him suffer day and night. Furthermore there is a moment when he succeeds to get away from that unbearable pain and because of this he sees the world and the human joy from a different perspective.
All these parallels are made from the mythological point of view and retell the story of goods and goddesses together with the adventures that they come with. Peter and George’s characterization is subordinated by Updike into the Greek mythology and also into the Christian allegory.
John Updike upholds the Christian belief in the presence of God and sustains that the tendency of modern salvation through science has made their lives meaningless, because Updike’s characters reach a state of total insignificance where they desperately need a clue to the presence of the supernatural power in their scientific universe.
Chiron is a wise man with a merciful heart because he is able to look for many excuses for his mother’s behavior and rejection of him. He believes that she was not in a very stable condition and that is why she thought about abandoning him while he was a little baby. With this conception he succeeded into transforming the myth of his mother’s rejection into one of protection and compassion.
The same matter of the tree which tried to make Chiron’s mother abandon him and which now represents the “tree of maternal rejection” appears as one of the symbols of Christianity and puts his footprint on Peter’s sexual dreams meaning that this tree gathers the full cycle of benevolence from hate and despair.
The Centaur’s narrative is based on Christian allegory because of the triumph of goodness over death, because furthermore Peter will reminiscence his past adventures and will try to understand his father’s actions much more. Although those actions led him into despair he struggles on and on so as to guide his pupils forward. Being wounded by that poisoned arrow, Chiron/George seeks refuge at the smith of the gods Hephaestus or Hummel who helps him get away from that unbearable pain. Another important aspect which appears in the novel represents the falling of snow because it is an important matter which marks God’s infinite grace and his “walking on Earth.”
In one of his interviews, John Updike had the chance to make a parallel between the teacher in his novel and the biblical image of The Messiah: “It is true that his [Chiron’s] life had become unbearable to him in a way that the life of Christ or any Christian martyr has not. In other words it became a convenient thing to do – it’s almost a thrifty thing to do, to give up a life that’s become sheer pain and at the same time bail somebody else out” (Campbell,1988). Regarding this comparison it is clear that it illustrates a different reasoning behind all these mythological and also religious chronotopes.
Another concept reflected in the novel is the one of supervision which includes the notion of Zeus’ disgrace towards the Christian concept of human sinfulness. This idea of supervision is fortified by some spatial markers which throughout the novel are replaced by the word “eyes” meaning that the text watches the readers while they follow the characters of the novel. The meaning of these “eyes” appear through the novel placed on some posters and one of them is right inside Al Hummel’s garage and it signifies the idea that people are watched through the garage window.
Another remarkable appearance is towards the concluding chapter of the novel where Chiron asks himself if he must: “wander forever beneath the blank gaze of goods…” (Updike, 2005)
John Updike is indeed ethically allied with Emmanuel Levinas the rebellious phenomenologist who attacks Heidegger for falling sufficiently to consider the infinite otherness of the other. Furthermore Levinas’s struggle is illustrated in his great work “Totality and Infinity” where he tries to introduce the real notion of “infinity” of other infinitely different and separate from the “same,” the confined, and self. He’s schema although radical is identified in Updike’s The Centaur as well because of the fact that Updike is not the neatly realistic writer that many consider him to be. This novel is considered to be the one and only that adopted the most classically self-oriented artistic posture. It is said to be a subtype of the Bildungsroman called the “Kunstlerroman” which is the most monistic of all the narrative types: an “artist novel” which usually represents a record of one consuming creative ego taking all the things of its life and turning them into a personal myth. However even with all this growth, Updike still managed to open up a dualistic universe in which from Levinans’s perspective, The Centaur invokes not totality but infinity.
Moreover, superficially The Centaur seems to be safely in his tradition and the narrator of several chapters, Peter Caldwell can be identified with David Copperfield and so on because as a grown-up artist, tells the story about his childhood years.
Some of the critics who have read the book are quite sure about the fact that The Centaur emerges from Peter’s consciousness and that for them the book is seen as an entire record of Peter’s own ritualistic recreation. Furthermore they believe that those chapters that are not narrated by him are according to some critics explicable as “the dreams that come to Peter between his periods of narration, or the meanderings of Peter’s semi-conscious mind.” (cf. Vargo, 1992)
Another critic, George Hunt had many questions regarding the novel’s perspective as a wholly concurrent with Peter because he preserves the book as a whole regarding the artist – Peter’s own “Promethean” narrative aspirations.
Given all these facts it is clear that this is George Caldwell’s story and not Peter’s because of the employment of an external frame in which a 35 year old Peter recalls some parts of the story but his artistic tendencies occur because of the period of the narrative.
Many opinions whether the book belongs either to George or Peter have been speculated. There are some critics who think that it is George’s novel because of the traditional thematic terms and on the other hand there are some critics who claim that Peter is the sole narrator.
In John Updike’s The Centaur the allegorical quest is omnipresent in situations where the protagonist George Caldwell needs a motive to continue his life throughout all the hardships that he had encountered along the years. It is an allegorical novel, at least in one potential reading – a point driven home by John Updike’s inclusion of an index to the pages on which appear figures out of Greek myth.
The characters are trying to understand the situation and the motifs that made them what they are and also they try to understand themselves better and to know what they are capable of and if possible to change their behavior if necessary. The noble centaur, Chiron is unable to find his own path, which can make him understand better the world around him and the same confusion applies to Caldwell his “twin” because both of them are trying their hardest to change themselves and to be respected much more by the people surrounding them. Updike struggles to turn a modern and common scene into something more enlightened, and to make the reader better understand man’s relationship with nature and eternity. Nature plays an important role into the quest for identity because it is a part of one’s being and it also represents a shelter in which everyone can find peace and can be sure that no one can disturb their peaceful time spent in solitude.
Although Chiron is a very excellent teacher and he likes his job he can sometimes fall into depression seeing that some of his students don’t appreciate his own value and that’s way he is ready to find peace even by giving up his own life. This action is perceived as a cowardly way of getting away from all the problems and Chiron knows that but he is unable to find another way.
The central motif from which John Updike depicts all the adventures of Peter and his father George are the ones that make this allegorical distinction between them and Chiron’s myth. That motif holds no religious or cultural relevance but it is important because it reveals the idea of sacrifice. Inside the story we have the character of Prometheus that is represented by Peter Caldwell, a teenage young boy with many aspirations and “scars” as Prometheus had. To see how this allegory comes to life, the epigraph below, explains all the things that we are searching for: “But it was still needful that a life should be given to expiate that ancient sin, – the theft of fire. It is said that Chiron, noblest of all the Centaurs (who are half horses and half men), was wandering the world in agony from a wound that he had received by strange mischance. For at a certain wedding-feast among the Lapithae of Thessaly, one of the turbulent Centaurs had attempted to steal away the bride. A fierce struggle followed, and in the general confusion, Chiron, blameless as he was, had been wounded by a poisoned arrow. Ever tormented with the hurt and never to be healed the immortal Centaur, longed for death and begged that they might be accepted as an atonement for Prometheus. The gods Heard his prayer and took away his pain and his immortality. He died like any wearied man, and Zeus set him as a shining archer among the stars.” (Peretti, 2009: 43)
We already know that the novel’s narrative ends with the same event as Caldwell/Chiron which is made into Sagittarius by Zeus himself and this process is perceived as a straight allegory, which retells the myth in a modern environment.
Identifying Elements of Myth in John Updike’s The Centaur
Along the centuries myths provided human beings with rhythm of meaning since they had a profound belief that the best days of humanity were far behind them, in the remote and mythical past. In The Centaur, John Updike tries to fuse together the Greek myth of the half-man, half-horse centaur Chiron and the story of George Caldwell, a science teacher. The string of the myth itself is woven throughout the novel as the chapters from father and son alternate taking the reader from “Mount Olympus” to “Olinger High School.” It is clear that each character has an Olympian counterpart and with the cooperation of the mythological index outfitted by Updike, the dual identities can be matched. It can be observed along the course of the novel that Updike’s way of writing his novel excludes right from the start the theme of adultery though some critics assumed that he is the one who glorified it but in fact he uses it as a negative example. At first The Centaur was thought to be the companion of Rabbit Run but then out of the blue Updike reconsidered his idea because he saw in Rabbit the flux of his inability to settle down for an ordinary life and the stability of his social world while George’s life was stable but his world was a catastrophe. Into defining myth and its roots a Romantic and post-romantic characteristic was put into discussion which made the historical explication of the myths more accessible by identifying their special objects and motives.
Much of The Centaur inhabits a thoroughly realistic mode alluding to a classical mythology without making the connection accurate. One of the chapters is exclusively mythological but not so much written as incanted and lacking any reference to the 20th century America.
John Updike has an astonishing grasp of human emotions at all ages that’s why the narrator’s hearts are meticulously exposed and the reader finds into it his own emotions, frustrations and aspirations: “Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe.” (Updike, 1991: 216); “We need the little clicks and sights of a sustaining otherness. We need the gods.”(Updike, 1991: 233)
The quotes above put into light the fact that John Updike thought that the modern brain of the American society is no longer opened to the old mythic process and that humans permanently need mythic sustenance. It is already known that Updike’s hunger for fiction and his need to use religion as an “antidote” in his works made quite a fuss into the literal society. This particular ideal is present as well in The Centaur one of his greatest works that was criticized because of the non-conformists elements used by the author.
The Centaur seems to engage a lot of fantastic elements which according to some critics represent the result of certain chapters which are the product of the narrator’s dreams and fears. Updike uses metaphoric elements so as to enlighten the mythic quest and their usage is not over throughout the novel because we can clearly see them in chapters I, III, IV and IX.
Setting is the most important, so as to discover all the mythic elements surrounding the The Centaur. By paralleling “Olinger High School” with “Mount Olympus” where the action and teaching of the centaur Chiron happened, the narrator tried to make it obvious that both the centaur and George Caldwell have their teaching careers surrounding them and this phenomenon makes it more appealing.
It is quite obvious that into The Centaur, Updike tried to draw on the myths of antiquity in an attempt to turn a modern and common scene into something greater and profound, which could offer a meditation upon life itself and upon man’s relationship to nature and eternity. Spatial chronotopic markers include small scale, reoccurring elements which can separate those spatial objects from the dominant chronotopes. Also through the text, the reader will have the opportunity to find many representations of the novelistic space. The symbol of the arrow is the most obvious in the novel because in the context of the myth of Chiron, it represents many sacrificial deaths of the centaur himself and of the protagonist as well. This unfortunate occurring event from which Chiron and George had to suffer joined together the mythological and the realistic chronotope as well.
A distinction between proper myths and mythological motifs happens when myths occur in a narrative work and in this case it is no longer possible to speak about them as myths, because they are set in a different environment. Regarding this aspect it is clear that myths which appear in modern literature are not called mythological motifs unless they are exact re-narrations of the traditional myths. And so according to John White: “Motif-patterns are more complex because they refer the reader not only to the archetypal patterns in the novel’s plot when it is actualized, but because they are represented in such a way as to generate in the reader’s patterns of hypothesis, conjectures and illusions concerning what is going to happen to the fictive characters.” (cf. White, 1974)
The sole association between balance and mythological goddess of force enlarges the presentiment of Caldwell’s death and the influences of the mythological chronotope. Another important aspect can be found in Chapter VII where George Caldwell meets Hester Appelton. Here she appears as a Latin and French teacher at Olinger High School, while in the Greek mythology she is the counterpart of Artemis, the goodness of haunting. Characters appearance and their way of dressing themselves serve as a key so as to decode them. The narrator offers a distinctive description regarding Artemis “gold claps shaped like an arrow” (Updike, 2009: 191). She was venerated as a goddess of hunting in ancient Greece but according to the plot of the novel Chiron chooses to help people as a goal which he tries to accomplish to the end and his friends Apollo and Artemis are there to guide him. Regarding the realistic chronotope, it is visible that Miss Appelton is quite affectionate towards George Caldwell and during one of their discussions he as well admits that holds some feelings for her and that he should have married her instead of his wife Cassie. This romantic involvement of the two is bestowed between the mythological counterpart who is represented by Chiron and Artemis. Another important scene between Peter and his father George is visible when the two of them spend a night at a hotel in Alton. Peter is seen looking at the window at the street lights. The arrow also indicates Caldwell’s adventures on the road and their necessity to continue the journey towards home. The novelistic chronotope functions as a signifier because George Caldwell’s car represents the fragility which the main character possesses. In the first instance the car is mentioned in the text as it refuses to start: “the resurrection felt impossible” (Updike, 2005). Another important quality which the car possesses is indicated by the mortality and the imminent closure which premeditates the ending of George Caldwell’s life and also the ending of the novel. To make it more realistic the motor of the car is described in terms of human anatomy being compared with the human heart: “Twitched out of tune, the motor missed one, two beats, and died” (Updike, 2005). This circumstance foretells Caldwell’s death and it also highlights the value of movement because just when the car loses its ability to move, Caldwell’s dispossess of it too. Even if all these bad things happen, George is unable to accept that his car died and he searches for any possible way to bring it back to the way it used to be. When the specialist tells him that the car is not the reason for the problem: “it’s something in the body” (Updike, 2005) he still refuses to give up. Concerning this scene Caldwell thinks at the fact that the poisoned arrow that someone shot at him may be the result of his student’s hatred towards him. The novelistic chronotope and its comparison with the painting seem smaller and insignificant while other signifiers mentioned in the novel serve as a mean of communication.
Another important chrontope is the one of temporal dimension which is closely associated with space. The presence of these chronotopic influences maintains the exact characteristics of time which are merged with the chronotopic shifts that seem to follow its own logic.
One of the philosophers which distinguished between all these chronotopic laws was Bakhtin and according to his theories the cyclist mode is not equal with the independent actions in time and thus the characters do not age and also do not change their beliefs maintaining their own values.
Mikhail Bakhtin thought that the biographical novels do not experience the real importance of the historical time because they focus only on the dynamics within a given society at a given historical moment. Also according to his studies ancient biography does not portray the character’s growth. In The Centaur the temporal dimension has two levels: Peter’s present and Caldwell’s past.
In one of his interviews regarding his novel, John Updike affirmed the fact that through his book the reader does not experience the presence of grown-up Peter’s life until Chapter VIII, where he addresses his mistress. Furthermore the reader finds out that the novel’s story is not being told by a young boy, but by a mature man who tries to put into order the memories of his father.
The presence of an omniscient narrator creates a temporal focalization of Caldwell’s point of view and the novel transforms into a biographical narrative interrupted by a myth. George Caldwell’s life appears quite independent from the environmental factors and the absence of evident cause-effect relations between his teacher life and his discouraged altruism can be exemplified in close association with Greek mythology.
From John Updike’s perspective, time in his novel has some exaggerations because of the fact that he at that moment had had to “compress a lot of boyhood memories into just three days” (Dispenza, 1994). All these processes regarding the function of time and its growth into Updike’s novel had demonstrated that the main protagonist’s portrait is detailed to its maximum and that a certain distortion in the narrative is inevitable.
Time plays an important role further developed in Chapter I, where George Caldwell has to explain the Big Bang theory and the Darwinian Theory of Evolution both important concepts when trying to translate five billion years of Earth’s history into an intelligible three-day process: “To make his pupils understand much better this process, Caldwell tries to compress the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras and guide them to the historical moment when humans appeared.” (Updike, 2005)
One of Caldwell’s students known as Diefendorf represents the prototype of a child with a childish and naughty behavior which corresponds to the mythical centaur’s description because of his beastly manners: “The girl’s mussed skirt was up around her waist. She was bent face down over the desk and Diefendorf’s hooves shuffled in agitation in the narrow aisle. From his sleepy careful grin he was covering her, the whole room smelled like a stable: Caldwell’s saw red” (Updike, 2005). The reference to the horse part of the centaurs is made through the words “hooves” and “stable and regarding the human part of the mythical creature it is symbolized through the word “grin.”
From a human’s perspective the centaurs were seen as brutal and lustful beasts and according to this it was said the Caldwell treated his student as a disobedient animal: “[Caldwell] picked the shinning arrow-shaft from the top of his desk, strode forward through the sickening confusion of books being shut, and once, twice, whipped, whipped the bastard beast’s bare back.” (Updike, 2005)
At the end of Chapter I, the historical and mythological time but also the biographical time meet into Caldwell’s closing remark: “One minute ago, flint-chipping, fire-kindling, death-foreseeing, a tragic animal appeared… called Man” (Updike, 2005). By this remark it can be observed that Caldwell does not only outline the Darwinian Theory of Evolution, but also he manages to explain from the metaphorical point of view the act of physical abuse.
Mythic elements introduced by John Updike into the novel offer a more unique pattern to the story making it one of his most interesting novels, but also one which captivates the reader into an unknown world full of attractive places and new people. Time is past realistic and involves Croons, father of the noble centaur, Chiron and the God of time. He is a God with little love for humans and does not have a parental affection towards his son. It would seem that Zeus loves him much more than Croons his real father, because he tries everything to make Chiron’s suffering less painful and also gives him a place among the stars after his death.
Chapter 2
Paralleling John Updike’s Characters to Mythological Ones
Greek mythology as it is, explains the environment in which mankind lived and John Updike used this theory as a mean to parallel each character with a mythological one, making their personalities more similar. The use of mythical figures and allusions underlines Updike’s belief that events of everyday life contain larger implications and this process draws attention to the human and heavenly boundaries. Updike helps the readers to fully grasp each character by describing them in different settings and by doing so each of them is paralleled with a Greek mythological character. One example is represented by George Caldwell, the main character who is a high school science teacher and a father and who is paralleled to the Greek mythological character Chiron the centaur. Between the two characters only one difference exists and that is represented by the setting in which they are put in because George Caldwell lives in modern times while Chiron the centaur lives in ancient times.
John Updike used the Greek myth as a disguise to organize a plot inspired from his youthful years as a student at the school at which his father taught. The mythical distortion in The Centaur allows the author to get away from the mask of narrow-minded bourgeois idols of contemporary life and to put into light the real symbolical sense of the existential distinction in the book. Moving back and forward between Chiron and Caldwell, the author produces an ironic tone which is regarded as something tragic. Using this ironic tone John Updike tries to make a comic and at the same time epic catalogue by making Chiron immune to Aphrodite’s harm and by refreshing her mind against the names of the gods. Just as Chiron, Caldwell must resist the temptations of the gym teacher which is represented by Aphrodite and also he must face the antagonistic principal represented by Zeus. Moving between Caldwell and Chiron, Updike produces a sarcastic tone that often is tragic but humorous as well.
George Caldwell represents Chiron’s analogue, which instructs the young and gives up immortality in order to end Prometheus’s pain. John Updike’s technique of alternating chapters that take place in Olinger with chapters set in Olympus displays the gap between gods and men, but it also conveys the fact that Caldwell’s suffering and struggles are no different from the mythic centaur’s pain.
The Centaur is a mythological novel set into the modern world and containing many patterns of reference running through the work. Mythology plays a very important role here and gives a unique allusion to the characters which are put into light by the fact that they resemble or are the incarnation of the mythological Gods and Goddesses. Right from the beginning of the novel we are engaged towards the Olympian world and its characters, but the one that stands the most is the noble centaur Chiron which is preoccupied at the beginning with the painful arrow that pierced his ankle and the unbearable pain that he has to bear.
By paralleling his characters with the mythological ones, Updike tried to make the reader see the beauty behind them and he wanted to give a very rare opportunity so as to put themselves into his character’s role and see if their actions towards the people surrounding them are good or bad for their own lives. Updike tried to put the narrative to another level of richness by interweaving the narratives of George Caldwell and his son Peter with the myth of Chiron, the centaur who by his immense love for humans and gods as well sacrificed himself for Prometheus and the good of man.
In the last chapter Chiron kills himself to protect Prometheus, and this action led early reviews to conclude that Caldwell had killed himself as well. Even so Updike has insisted that Caldwell metaphorically dies daily by working for his family’s happiness thus Caldwell like Chiron sacrifices himself for others.
Moreover the story of Chiron, the centaur is thought to be Updike’s paradigm of irrelevant erudition, which his epigraph, taken from a school book on myth is intended to dislodge, and it represents a necessary parallel to Caldwell’s story. From the Greek mythology we know that Chiron has instructed Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and brought it to man in the form of knowledge, and then sacrificed himself for Prometheus so as he could stay alive. For Updike this sacrifice left a very profound impression because it was meant to parallel Christ’s sacrifice.
John Updike used this kind of parallel with Christ and also with mythological characters because he wanted to see the world as larger than life and also because from a child’s perspective the world of adult actions always seems enigmatic to them. Chiron this Christ-like creature represents for John Updike the humanistic principle who takes an important step into standing in front of sadism, hypocrisy and degradation. This poignancy of Updike is similar with James Joyce’s Ulysses and this process underscores the complication of the twentieth-century mystification.
In his most extended use of myth, Updike alternates between humor and seriousness in paralleling ordinary people of Olinger High School with Greek gods. Joyce covered up things that Updike preferred to reveal: in some chapters Updike simply inserts myths with no reference to the realistic plot. The Centaur illustrates all the elements of ritual to bring its protagonists to a new reality: “In these novels, ritual serves to fulfill the great desire of capturing the past, to make the present meaningful through connection with the past, to overcome death, and to grasp immortality. For John Updike, ritual leads to resurrection, to a foretaste of eternal life. In a decadent society, however, in a society that has lost all sense of the transcendent, ritual degenerates into an empty form, to fill the void with meaningless, unthinking activity. Or it must discover new patterns, new myths, new ways to reintegrate man and to celebrate his vital yearning for the transcendent.” (Campbell, 2007: 27)
Joseph Campbell believes that every hero must follow his or her own path, because there is a path for everyone; one must find it and follow it so as to get where he or she wishes to. He also has a rare vision towards the myth: “Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.” (Campbell, 2007: 3)
Another important aspect that some critics forgot to take into account is the eye-catching parallel between John Updike’s The Centaur and Eliot’s The Waste Land. This parallel is being made because of the fact that The Centaur has gained intimate and inter-textual connections with T.S. Eliot’s poem and because Updike’s novel has reworked an American wasteland which pursues similar solutions to the current human predicament found in Eliot’s poem. All these affirmations are based on the fact that although, Eliot was considered one of the most dominant figures in poetry, he still managed to pass on some of his knowledge, which is found in Updike’s novel and his influence lasted upon American novels in the postmodern period as well.
T.S. Eliot’s story uses the medieval myth of the Fisher King as the base for The Waste Land whose implications may represent a possible remedy for a healthy human survivor during modern times. Just like in Updike’s novel, the Fisher King suffered from an incurable wound while his land suffered from persistent aridity. All these problems could have been resolved only with the help of a pure knight so as to lift the curse. These similarities appear in The Centaur as well, because John Updike uses the Greek myth of the noble centaur Chiron to show spiritual chaos and also to seek a permanent solution regarding the human conditions in contemporary America. Chiron the noble of all the centaurs was wounded by a poisoned arrow at a wedding feast and he accepted his death as atonement for Prometheus. This description between the two outlines some similarities regarding Chiron’s myth and the Fisher King. As it can be seen right from the start both central characters suffer from incurable wounds.
The Centaur also presents a fragmented structure without a sequential order of cause and effect because TIME seems to act as an “erosional agent” both in the lives of Peter and George but in the text as well. Another important aspect is the idea that the past and the present are either juxtaposed or are just pointing to the human affairs in America. Therefore Eliot’s connection places John Updike in the first line with the wasteland classics of America such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
Although the story of The Centaur revolves around George Caldwell and his actions towards his students mostly, along the way the reader will find several instances that put into light some of the mythological elements that make the novel more interesting. It is clear enough that” Chiron chooses death not so much because of the pain he suffered as because he had grown weary of his long life” (Graves, 2012). George Caldwell is created by Updike as the modern counterpart of Chiron who as well is able to sacrifice himself for the good of the people around him.
2.1. George Caldwell and Chiron – The Vision of a Teacher
John Updike used a lot of motifs and cliché ideas to make The Centaur one of the most interesting and useful one into discovering another version of a world, dominated by myths and their consequences. He thought that by employing Chiron’s myth and the Greek characteristics, the novel would have another reason to inspire the reader and make it more curious so as to make him read much more.
From the novel’s first paragraphs which depict a metaphorical birth, the centaur Chiron and George Caldwell are paradoxically “deliverer” and “delivered.” The story begins with Caldwell’s own consciousness of pain which is associated with concurrent consciousness of the birth of the universe.
George W. Caldwell teaches general science at Olinger High School, where his son Peter attends. Right from the first chapter George lectures on cosmic and biological evolution which led to the arrival of man. He claims that man is a tragic being because of the fact that he can foresee death, and throughout the narrative death is the one who haunts Caldwell. His fears start from the fact that he thinks that he has cancer and are strengthened by a proverb that haunted him all along: “Time and tide wait for no man.” His adversary the principal Louis Zimmerman is the first one who writes his premature obituary. Although George Caldwell is not taken into account by his students and for his son this represents an embarrassment he still concerns himself with their fate and actions. George is kind to the point that he is ready to give away the answers to a geology test to a student not so clever so as to help him pass the exam and he succeeds into transferring his teaching career to another student. After being injured in his ankle and with blood streaming out of it, George departs from the classroom and enters in a kind of birth canal: “The dim walls of the ochre hall wavered; the classroom doors, inset with square numbered panes of frosted glass, seemed experimental panels immersed in an activated liquid” (Updike, 1992). All these organic images are increasing and out of nowhere George Caldwell pushes through, into the outside world, into the novel: “In a tumult of pain…he threw himself down the short flight of steps to the concrete landing… Caldwell gripped the brass bar and, his mouth thin with determination beneath his pinched and frightened eyes, he pushed into the open” (Updike, 1992). To draw the reader’s attention and to make him see that this is a birth metaphor, Updike uses near the end of his description an amusing clue where he tells about a student who has inscribed the word “FUCK.”
During his teaching class, Caldwell elaborates a theory on the origin of mortality into the existing world: “Third…, the volvox, of these early citizens in the kingdom of life, interests us because he invented death. There is no reason intrinsic in the plasmic substance why life should ever end. Amoebas never die…But the volvox, a rolling sphere of flagellating algae organized into somatic and reproductive cells… by pioneering this new idea of cooperation, rolled life into the kingdom of certain – as opposed to accidental – death. (Updike, 2005)
In the paragraph above the protagonist tries to compare the accidental deaths with some mythological and realistic chronotopes emphasizing the realistic chronotopes which define the human life. Moreover in chapter VI the main protagonist explains a chemical reaction using some metaphor so as to illustrate the notion of death and life together: “Energy. That’s life. That little extra E is life… [Without it] you become a worthless log of old chemicals” (Updike, 2007: 187-188). Additionally George Caldwell’s idea of death becomes a source of tiresome psychological strain. When his son Peter realizes that all his life he has depended on his father and that he may die he starts to think at the possible consequences regarding his father’s imminent death: “My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to me from him, and for the first time his death seemed, even at its immense stellar remove of impossibility, a grave and dreadful threat.” (cf. Updike, 1992)
Along the course of the novel Peter suffers from his father’s actions when he goes out of his way to help a hitchhiker and when he mishandles the car twice. John Updike presents Caldwell in for ways: as a character modeled by his own father’s figure, as a teacher, as a father and lastly as a “centaur.” In many interviews Updike had said that the creation of George Caldwell was due to the fact that he wanted to create his first novel as a family one where he would describe the family members, starting with his maternal grandfather. Secondly Caldwell’s peculiar teaching devices have become part of the school’s oral tradition, and his students recognized his teaching as a mixture of knowledge, caring and common sense.
From many perspectives it seems impossible to claim that George Caldwell exists in the novel just from his son’s Peter perspective and another important fact regarding this theory is rather conventional because it points out John Updike’s conceptual use of Greek myth.
Furthermore everyone knows that the plot and storytelling of The Centaur is being told by Peter Caldwell, son of George Caldwell and it is obvious that he is trying to make the reader understand the struggle and pain that his father endured along the way but also his burning desire for him to teach his students all that he has gathered along the course of his years as a teacher.
George Caldwell and Chiron represent the prototype of a man’s courage and both are trying to endure the results of a world full of two faced people and their attempt to take it all as it is and do not let them be consumed with hatred towards humanity. Their teaching careers put them face to face to many obstacles but they managed to pass them even though the students they were to teach did not value their effort.
Chiron represents the twin brother of George because, John Updike thought that by employing both the myth itself and Chiron the noble centaur then his character will have a new image upon himself renewed by the actions of the centaur who as well as George teaches sciences but this time not for human beings but for goods, goddesses and so on. The entire narrative story is being told by Peter who from the Greek myth’s point of view represents Prometheus a very good friend of the centaur, Chiron. Further in the novel one reads “He tried to keep his leg from touching the floor, but the jagged clatter of the three remaining hooves sounded so loud he was afraid one of the doors would snap open and another teacher emerge to bar his way” (Updike, 1963: 8). Here, the reader is aware that Caldwell is simultaneously the centaur Chiron and this process makes Updike capable of obtaining a close contexture of myth an reality in the novel The Centaur.
The centaur Chiron is a nature lover knows pharmacopoeia and instructs Greek heroes like Achilles and Asclepios. Updike explains in his novel that Chiron, unlike any other centaur, taught peace but his resistance to Zeus’s domination brought him to challenge the new creation man and thus to be forced into suicide. Just like Zeus offered a place among the start to Chiron, Caldwell’s son Peter offered his father an immortal place in his novel.
This parallel between Chiron and George illustrates the fact that both of them perceive the idea of sacrifice for someone close to them as something natural and without regrets. Both of them love to teach and stir their students’ imagination with new things that they have gathered along their life and they also try to pass on, this creative career to students who are capable of seeing the world from a new perspective.
George Caldwell remains a very kind person although his own pupils “betrayed” him by shooting a poisoned arrow into his ankle and this behavior of his tells the fact that his kindness as it may seem surpasses all the goodness that one men may have because others in his place would have taken measures so as to punish the one who did that to him. Right after he is helped by his old friend Hummel to get rid of the arrow, Updike introduces a passage that allows the universe to reveal itself: “Before entering the school building, gasped fresh air and started sharply upward, as if in answer to a shout. Beyond the edge of the orange wall the adamantine blue zenith pronounced its unceasing monosyllable: “I”. (cf. Updike, 1992)
From Peter’s perspective, Caldwell is so much larger than life and he thinks that his own father represents an impediment to his own growth. Also seen from a child’s perspective, Updike has noted that people surrounding a child seem “god-sized,” yet Peter is made uncomfortable by the disrespect directed to his father and by his own father’s willingness to befriend unworthy strangers who always take advantage of him.
Peter is quite blinded by the fact that all the things that his father does are wrong and he starts to think that his own father represents an obstacle into his happiness with his mother and girlfriend. He even gets to fantasizes that his family would have been happier if Caldwell was dead. The narrative composed by his loving son Peter re-creates three days in the winter when Peter felt extremely confused and afraid of his father’s suffering.
John Updike tries to make a little distinction between George and Chiron’s way of teaching by showing those differences that mark their own ways of teaching. One is represented by George’ s class which is a realistic counterpart of the novel where he tries to explain the “Creation Clock” leaving aside the fact that his students are not interested whatsoever in his lesson and the other is described by Chiron whose class is a summer arcadia taught by him to some attentive students like Achilles.
The novel’s chapters illustrate some development into the character’s behavior because Updike uses the first and the last chapters as a mosaic mixed with mythical and realistic elements combined: in the first one George Caldwell is transformed from man to centaur and back, while in the last chapter he is somehow linked with Chiron and with Prometheus as well because of his protection through suicide.
Additionally John Updike’s novel combines tragedy and comedy. It is a comedy because it uncovers the absurdities of an educational system that harnesses adolescent energy and it represents a tragedy because of the fact that good people are misinterpreted and men obviously fear nature’s power. George Caldwell symbolizes the prototype of tragedy embodied in men because of his fear towards his inability to please his wife and because of his power to foresee his own death. It is quite stressful for him to lead a life where he must please everyone else and put himself on the last place. His son Peter sees his own struggle and although at first he believes that his father is weak and foolish he gathers the necessary strength to understand his actions because they are made just for his son’s wellbeing.
The precursor of self-sacrifice, this questing teacher whose actions are without effect and purpose, but whose character and competence are unquestioned by the novel, is basically the hero in the novel. However The Centaur has the possibility to offer the teacher a modern guardian of knowledge and also of moral virtue which are beneficent for the teacher’s effort so as to bring into light the children out of darkness. Precisely because of these characteristics Caldwell’s suffering derives, because now his life is committed to the happiness of others rather than his, without a grounding in belief in knowledge. Given all these psychological and thematic interpretations of the novel’s mythic dimension one cannot detail for the reader’s bothersome experience of George as a teacher and George as the centaur.
So far the hero of the novel has been established by a series of transformations and therefore Updike accepted the idea that he has to separate these two processes and make the mythic and the naturalistic have their own separated meaning.
George is aware that he cannot die because he admits it in front of his doctor’s wife Hester Appleton, thinking that he has many obligations to fulfill or rather his own sense of responsibility does not let him die before succeeding into making himself respected at his true value by his pupils. Although his own father tried to withdraw him out of this teaching career, George continued to move forward admitting the fact that this is the job that only he can do and also is the one and only job that he likes admitting that he cannot quit it until he finds the answers at his impenetrable mystery of the world. After being diagnosed by his doctor Doc Appleton for his physical complains as a learner not as a teacher, George remains tormented by his words.
From the ethical perspective George Caldwell seems as a man who commands others to command him this process compromising his own safety because he teaches others that this sense of authority and morality exists just as an essential part of creation made by a deliberate choice.
All these aspects of George’s behavior make him more alike with the centaur Chiron who as well as he chooses to die for someone dear to him meaning Prometheus and this process makes clear the fact that he chooses death for the salvation of others. From many perspectives John Updike has chosen the myth of Chiron because he wanted to illustrate the spirituality of his teacher, George Caldwell making a parallel between the two in the final chapter as well where he fuses the death of the centaur Chiron with the one of the teacher George Caldwell.
Despite Caldwell’s personal doubt and his own recognition that there was no Golden Age and also regardless the disoriented and earthly nature of his own classroom, he succeeds into illustrating the myth- like nature of the modern teacher. In the novel The Centaur it is quite clear that the teacher does not achieve divinity by his work because he does his work because of the fact that he is divine. Chiron does a very good work into teaching on Mount Olympus the children of goods and on earth George Caldwell, our modern Chiron teaches the children of Olinger’s citizens and their common goal is to bring the children out of darkness. In spite of the fact that in the novel there is no Golden Age, John Updike tried to infuse a skeptical and incorrect vision of a fallen world where everything seems profane but has a little glimpse of redemption. Updike portrays George Caldwell, our contemporary Chiron as the honorable guardian of a world where knowledge replaces faith and as the solely teacher who offers and also provides hope for others.
2.2. Peter Caldwell and Prometheus – The Budding Artist
John Updike’s novel The Centaur is thought to be a good story because it has a good man in it and because of the fact that Updike delighted his readers with a play who was between real and mythological resonance. This book has a very rare generosity because it offers its willingness to tolerate and different kinds of human behavior which throughout it make an extraordinary achievement. A very important aspect of the novel is Updike’s classification of his characters which includes some categories such as: searchers, finders, reality instructors and the trapped ones. In the novel George Caldwell and his son Peter are trying to understand nature and art and Peter also seeks to find the meaning behind his father. Peter Caldwell is the schoolboy hero, a very sensitive and troubled fifteen-year old who yearns to become an artist and he succeeds it by becoming a second-rate painter.
Peter Caldwell represents a dual figure, an Olinger High School student in a small Pennsylvania town, and also his adult like figure is represented by an artist living with a mistress in New York whose recollections of his fifteen-year-old self from the narrative. He recalls his father’s humiliation by a disorderly class, manipulated by a dumb student and denigration by the principal. Although he does not show it and keeps it all to himself, deep inside he is worried that his father might have cancer and throughout the novel he is haunted by his father’s imminent death.
Without having bad intentions George makes a fool out of Peter by revealing his secret concerning his psoriasis, a secret that he intended to reveal only to a girl as a token of his love. He is also ashamed by the stories that his father’s colleagues tell about him.
It can be noticed that Peter’s love for his mother is too strong and he wishes that his father would not place himself between him and his mother, and his oedipal problem is countered by fear of his father’s death and he pleads to him “Please don’t die!” Thus Peter is a typical adolescent with identity crisis and fears of abandonment while searching for true love. When they are stuck in a snowdrift because of his father indifference to his car, Peter becomes infuriated and this thing in a sense represents the fact that George, his father is the pilot to Peter’s Prometheus.
Peter dislikes his father for forcing into him all the substantial otherness but by the end of the chapter it can be noticed that his feeling of anger had metamorphosed into a touching human sadness based on a relaxation of the childish myth of self-creation and self-perpetuation. He manages to realize that he is George Caldwell’s son the science-teacher instructor who has been teaching for years to his students that a multigenerational species is predicated on the fact that the individual members of the species eventually die: “My father provided; he gathered things to himself and let them fall upon the world; my clothes, my food, my luxurious hopes had fallen to me from him, and for the first time death seemed, even at its immense stellar remove of impossibility, a grave and dreadful threat.” (cf. Updike, 1992)
The last chapter of the novel makes clear that Peter has been recalling his life in order to recover the reality of his father, both as he appeared through the adolescent distorting glass and as Peter has come to appreciate him. The mature Peter Caldwell can thus disclose the mythical teacher Chiron who had always resided within his father. Although a little bit late he manages to understand his father, symbolically, as a centaur. Regarding himself as an artist, Peter envelops his narrative with dozens of mythological references in order to rediscover the child’s perspective from the artistic point of view.
In The Centaur, Updike creates a mythical analogue for every character making George Caldwell parallel with Chiron, Prometheus teacher and Peter Caldwell corresponds with Prometheus which is also Chiron’s best student in the academia. Art is another important aspect which achieves unprecedented prominence in The Centaur because of Peter Caldwell who represents Updike’s alter ego and sometimes narrates the story in the first person, sometimes conscious of his adult identity and sometimes unaware of it. In the book the shifting perspectives which straddle the mythical and real worlds represent some moments in Updike’s life and development from a personal writer into an artist with a vision that goes beyond time and place. The novel’s mythological content demonstrates a central claim that Peter makes while trying to defend his youth to his adult love and regarding all these aspects the role of the artist as Updike conceives it is to reveal the metaphors that make those details significant.
Even though Peter is an artist he is not sure of his abilities but it is crystal clear that he is an abstract expressionist and his artistic influences are capable of standing in front of important authors of the Renaissance period such as Jan Vermeer. Peter may have recognized that he needed a mythical figure to suffer and become an artist and the recollection of his father represent for him dual suffering. All this represents a dual elimination for Peter because he discovers the godlike in all men through his father, and with this he manages to shape his own pain into art that transcends it.
The tension between father and son persists along the course of the novel and as his father drives them both to Olinger High School, the boy silently reminiscences on some great paintings from his favorite painter, Jan Vermeer and is captured by a feeling of sadness at the thought that while being in New York he was unable to visit the Metropolitan, where he could have entered into the sacramental place where all Vermeer’s paintings are held. He blames his father for all of the bad things that happened to him. Peter’s first person narrative is a bit private because it represents a record of a subjectivity broken wide open by the ability to contain more than it is possible to contain. As a whole the book goes beyond its multiple narrators and mythic layers and it remains quite valid that the Updikean art used along the course of the novel an autobiographical character.
Updike throughout the dual presentation of myth and realism redeems his pathetic father with George Caldwell which is frightened of death as a teacher and also manages to overcome death as Chiron when he dies for Prometheus. At another level of heroism, George Caldwell achieves his goal by working day and night for his family and also his adult son Peter accomplished his own dream about being able to write about the human feelings of both him and his father. Prometheus has some characteristics which are limited to fighting and to showing a bad attitude towards his school principal and this behavior of his make him quite different from Peter which is a very good and polite student towards his teachers. Peter at one point in the novel refers to himself as a person who is not sure of the explicit meaning of the world: “I was haunted at that age by the suspicion that a wholly different world, gaudy and momentous, was enacting its myths just around the corners of my eyes.” (cf. Olster, 2006)
At one point in the novel Peter gets to spend some quality time with his father but this has a bad result because he gets a fever that puts him into bed and leads him out of his innocence into a comprehension that an artistic role awaits him in the near future. Although sick he still manages to write of similar details that John Updike used in the “Dogwood Tree,” such as telephone wires and trees, translating them as any other artist would: “The trees took white on their sun side. The two telephone wires diagonally cut the blank blue of the sky. The stone bare wall was a scumble of umber; my father’s footsteps thumbs of white in white. I knew what this scene was, a patch of Pennsylvania in 1947, and yet I did not know, was in my softly fevered state mindlessly soaked in a rectangle of color light. I burned to paint it, just like that, in its puzzle of glory; it came upon me that I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent cavans upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.” (cf. Updike, 2005)
All this represents an epiphany about the role of an artist where Peter is attracted into fulfilling that assignment and bringing into world something that did not exist before and he must do it without destroying something else. Being at his youthful years, Peter it too entangled to appreciate his own artistic potential. Peter Caldwell represents the prototype of a young man who encountered a lot of misfortune during his childhood years but who now is able to narrate an entire story about himself and his father’s adventures as well. It is obvious that his father career affected him even if his recognition about this fact was yet to be fulfilled but even with all of this he managed to pass through it and succeeded into becoming a better man. The association with Prometheus is quite curious giving the fact that the two do not have a lot of things in common but regarding John Updike’s nature is not surprising that a parallel with little resemblance between the two is made.
From Greek mythology we find out that Prometheus was a very powerful titan and also that he represented the protector and benefactor of mankind. He was a kind man who helped humanity with a lot of things one of which was the gift of fire a skill which helped mankind to gain knowledge and wisdom. Although after that he was punished he did not regret a thing from it but it seems that he was saved from Zeus’s anger by the centaur Chiron who begged him to take his life and let Prometheus alive.
In the novel Peter recollects about his own past as a child and his adventures, his mornings with his mother before going to school and his relationship with his father George. Their bound was quite important and from another perspective this two characters father and son seem to exist in narrative worlds that are radically incompatible. Quickness, bustle and a cliché here are juxtaposed with Peter’s dreamy improvement and his father George is not quite satisfied with this cliché and he tries to deconstruct the deconstruction “I’ve been hearing that time and tide line all my life, and I don’t know what it means. What does it mean you ask? You ask anybody, and the bastards won’t tell you. But they won’t be honest. They won’t admit they don’t know… I was a minister’s son. I was brought up to believe, and I still believe it, that God made man as the last best thing in His Creation. If that’s the case, who are this time and tide that are so almighty superior to us.” (cf. Neary, 1992)
The artist’s vision is presented secondary throughout Peter Caldwell and primarily through the novel as a whole that originates from a belief in a relationship between a self and a real other, meaning that the art in this artist novel is founded on realistic, autonomous something.
Peter’s resemblance with Prometheus is clear because of the fact that they both are plagued by suffering, and Peter’s skin is being consumed, though by psoriasis rather that a vulture. By this fact it can be obvious that all the characters in John Updike The Centaur are hungering to connect with another human in some meaningful way. The Greek Gods are not like the Judeo-Christian God because they are flawed and also are capable of heartbreak.
John Updike’s scheme to make a parallel between Peter Caldwell and them would have failed if it weren’t for the emotional parallel which supports it. Peter lives in a world with little Christian belief and with no resources to choose a role model because all of them are deeply in some way or the other and this thing makes them hurt the others.
2.3. Hints to Mythological Characters through John Updike’s Work
The Centaur formalizes through its mythical mode and transfiguration of the daily into the sacred. The characters are put into light by the fact that Updike gives them a double identity which helps them develop throughout the novel and by adding some of the Greek motifs and characteristic the novel will gain another allure.
To be fully attentive towards the reader, this mythological matter must be observable so as to be put into contrast with the modern events of the time. Peter Caldwell makes a brief description of his father’s appearance: “He still had a full head of hair, barely touched by grey. Understand that to me my father seemed changeless. In fact he did look younger than his years” (Updike, 1963: 64). Although quite irrelevant this portrait of George Caldwell gains better significance when it is placed in the context of the mythological chronotope.
This feature regarding the fact that George did not show any signs of aging is because of the similarities with Chiron the centaur that was immortal and though, as a consequence death becomes utterly mysterious in Caldwell’s life.
The Centaur’s uniqueness is revealed in both the development of the plot and predetermined ending of the novel. Familiar with the myth about Chiron, the reader expects a tragic ending and George Caldwell’s death provokes the reader’s curiosity. In ancient times people believed in oracles, fortune-telling and this facts were taken into account by Updike, who introduced the scene of an eagle’s flight in Chapter III of the novel. This represents Zeus’s symbol and the fact that human’s fate depends on their gods and goddesses decisions. Clearly death and eternity do not depend on the essence of the body and thus mythological beings have earned the chance to trade immortality as well as mortality.
Mythological death does not always mean the end of life because it is said that the victims who were murdered because of an injustice were turned into objects of nature, such as tree, flowers and the most worthy ones were placed in the sky between the constellations. In mythological times a tragic death could become a token of the mythological chronotope which could be controlled be mischievous gods and their jealously.
Throughout the novel the reader encounters several mythological elements which have a deep influence on the plot and the portrayal of the main protagonist. Metamorphosis and corporality have an important role in Greek mythology because the body can be at the same time the source of a hero’s power but also their reason for vulnerability. In ancient Greek mythology, gods and goddesses could take form and body of an animal to conceive a baby and because of this the child’s appearance could suffer from their parents’ transformation. A reliable example in The Centaur is made by Zeus who once became a sawn to seduce the girl he was attracted to and as a result she laid an egg from which Helen of Troy was contrived.
George Caldwell’s description of pain plays an important role in the leitmotif of corporality and opens a series of bodily images into the text: “Caldwell turned and as he turned his ankle received an arrow…The pain scaled the slender core of his shin, whirled in the complexities of his knee, and, swollen broader, more thunderous, mounted into his bowels…The pain extended a feeler into his head and unfolded its wet wings along the walls of his thorax, so that he felt, in the sudden scarlet blindness, to be himself a large bird waking from sleep…The pain seem to be displacing with its own hairy segments his heart and lungs; as its grip swelled in his throat he felt he was holding his brain like a morsel on a platter high out of a hungry reach.” (Updike, 2005)
Regarding these preceding descriptions, the reader pursues the “itinerary” of the pain as it is perceived through the protagonist’s body and he does not question that some parts of the body depicted in the scene belong to a human being because the mythological chronotope has already distorted George Caldwell’s reality and the following paragraph depicts the duality of the main character: “[Caldwell’s] top half felt all afloat in a starry firmament of the ideals and young voices singing; the rest of his self was heavily sunk in a swamp where it must, eventually drown.” (Updike, 2005)
Given all these details it is quite clear that George’s lower body becomes suddenly heavy and hard to control because of the mythological chronotope that causes its transformation. Another important clue that must be taken into account is the fact that the main character has four legs: [Caldwell] tried to keep that leg from touching the flour, but the jagged clatter of three remaining hooves sounded so loud he was afraid one of the doors would snap open and another teacher emerge to bar its way.” (Updike, 2005)
The Rabbit books contain some of John Updike’s theological ideas regarding his theories about God and about human beings and their relationship with God. In these books, God represents the Barthian “Wholly Other” which humans paradoxically encounter his Other through providential repetitions within the temporal world.
The Centaur is identified as well with this process but their terms are phenomenological rather than overtly theological. This novel unlike the Rabbit books, in not about religion at all because it illustrates the relationship between father and son. Indeed, the Bildungsroman form signifies that the novel of formation is a partial example because the novel of education is always about a young person’s orientation within the world of otherness. Perhaps this world of otherness is of subordinate interest and it represents the real emphasis on the development of the self. Updike’s character Peter Caldwell and the protagonist of The Centaur had all the needed self-consciousness to dominate this kind of novel. Although his characters tended to have solidity or a kind of ontological substance their ability to encounter themselves in acts is quite visible and in other words Updike’s metaphysic of selfhood is dualistic rather that self-oriented.
Hummel the one who helped George to remove the arrow from his ankle functions as a counterpart of the Greek gods because as it is already demonstrated in Updike’s novel his garage as well as Olinger High School together with Zeus or his counterpart Zimmerman should be regarded as a realistic copy of Mount Olympus which represents the “watchtower” of the Olympian gods. Also during Caldwell’s adventures he describes at a given moment some uncomfortable stairs that he has to climb and those stairs are said to represent the mythological landform which are not accessible for an average person. While he was in Hummel’s garage, Caldwell observes something strange which has the body of a human but has one eye and this is an obvious reference to the mythic Cyclopes who during ancient times were known as master-smiths. Other important aspect that makes the connection between myth and reality is represented by the scene where Caldwell meets Vera, Hummel’s wife. Here she serves as Venus counterpart and once the two recognize each other, the realistic chronotope starts to crumble. Moreover in the series of some pages George and Vera connect as Chiron and Venus.
Time is an important counterpart which is present all along the course of the novel and also Bakhtin’s theories help the novel to emphasize its characteristic in a better manner. Bakhtin thinks that the adventurist time happens to the characters which take a passive role in such circumstances: “Moments of adventurist time occur at those points when the normal course of events, the normal, intended or purposeful sequence of life’s events is interrupted. These points provide an opening for the intrusion of nonhuman forces – fate, gods, villains – and it is precisely these forces, and not the heroes, who in adventure – time take all the initiative. (Bakhtin, 1981)
The road image according to Bakhtin is metaphorical and exists just as a rudimental folkloric literary past where: “the road is almost never merely a road, but always suggests a whole, or a past of, “the path of life’” (Bakhtin, 1981). Regarding the spatial markers and also the images of the clocks it is revealed that Caldwell’s family owns two clocks that are placed next to each other. One of the two belongs to George’s father-in-law, Pop Kramer whose mythological counterpart is represented by Chronos, the Greek god of time personification.
It is already known that in the mythological chronotope Chiron is the son of Chronos, however this characteristic is not related with the main character because his father is already dead and Pop Kramer is not related directly to him. Because of this inconsistency between the myth and the fictional biography the protagonist’s disconnection from the realistic time is represented by Kramer’s clock. Even if his father-in-law possesses these antique clocks, Caldwell prefers to live in conformity with his red clock which is seven minutes faster and this fact reflects that for Caldwell the exclusive perception of time is absolute.
After finding out about his illness, George engages himself into many extra-curricular school activities to overwork himself and this is the result from both his fear of death and also from his perception of time as something that continuously reduces. Moreover he believes that his life would be as short as his father’s who died at the age of forty-nine. He also thinks that by moving faster and doing a lot of jobs that are not related to what he knows, then time will slow down but although with all these attempts, his presentiment about his early death still remains.
The functions of the spatial-macro components have the role to create a map of Caldwell’s thoughts and thus the notion of movement is represented by the road as a spatial component. Caldwell’s development towards the tragic ending ponders about the notion of moving through different locations and it can possibly imply a race between death and time. Regarding these aspects the road itself can be seen as a reinterpretation of the mythological adventure because into the Greek myths the heroes had to accomplish different challenges to get to a particular place. This road challenges can be seen in Caldwell’s way through Hummel’s garage where he has to face Medusa one of the school’s teachers. Medusa’s description is quite unnatural and she represents Medusa Gorgona’s counterpart from Greek mythology which was considered to be a very dangerous monster. As if knowing that if he looks into her eyes he will then become a stone statue, Caldwell always avoids looking her in the eyes and this marks one of the indicators between reality and myth present in the novel, putting George Caldwell in a position of a hero that has to comfort a monster.
Many hints regarding the mythological characters and their counterparts are being made and the one who puts them into light is George Caldwell, the main protagonist of the novel. The description of his legs demonstrates his otherworldliness and throughout the novel the narrator exemplifies how thin his limbs are, making their appearance seem just like a horse’s leg meaning that, the lower part of the body, including his legs is that important part that marks the difference between a man and a centaur.
Throughout the novel the word “horse” allows the narrator to bring together the realistic and the mythological chronotpes even though the image of an animal soon obtains a different significance. After listening to his wife’s advices, Caldwell soon goes to a doctor for an examination. Going through all the necessary steps regarding his body’s examination the doctor explains his observation saying that: “You see, George…you believe in soul. You believe your body is like a horse you get up on and ride for a while and then get off. You ride your body too hard.” (Updike, 1992)
According to the temporal markers, time represents a condition of gradual deterioration where people grow older and because of these George Caldwell should as well age on account of the fact that this represents a sign of “deterioration.” However, Peter seems to describe him as a person who looks younger than an average fifty-year-old-man: “He still had a full head of hair, barely touched by gray… [he] seemed changeless” (Updike, 1992). A simple explication regarding this fact exists and that is represented by the fact that George’s Caldwell unusual appearance is because of the influence of the mythological chronotope, in which Chiron represents his mythological twin who possesses immortality.
Also during ancient times in the Greek mythology, people died in tragic circumstances not because of aging, thus their laws should not be the reason of the anticipated tragic ending of the novel because George’s body seems to exist in conformity with the mythological characteristics.
Every day routine starts to become rather difficult and his son Peter notices right from the beginning of the novel that his father’s frustration grows every time he goes to work: “I [Peter] began to understand. After every weekend, my father had to gather his nerve to go back teaching” (Updike, 1963: 48). George Caldwell believes that God created people from his image and because of this people must be superior to time: “I was a minister’s son. I brought up to believe, and I still believe it, that God made Man as the best thing in his Creation. If that’s the case, who are this time and tide that are so almighty superior to us.” (Updike, 1992)
The juxtaposition of both the realistic and mythological chronotope establishes the fact that the main character’s body can be for Caldwell a source of illness. Regarding all these functions it is clear that George’s body incorporates a scientific part containing the realistic chronotope which is not quite visible to the naked-eye. In chapter one an appropriation of the astronomical and scientific time which makes sense only in the myth’s context can be remarked: “Astronomy transfixed him [Caldwell]; at night sometimes when he lay down in bed exhausted he felt that his ebbing body was fantastically huge and contained in its darkness a billion stars.” (Updike, 1992)
One more obstacle that George has to overcome in his journey is represented by a drunken man who tries to extort him out of money by accusing him of pedophilia.
By employing myth into a contemporary novel some of the writers turn their vision to the mythological motifs as a way of helping them so as to organize the material of fiction. T.S. Eliot was the first one who remarked such a thing: “In using myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which other must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientists who use the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.” (cf. White, 2009)
Conclusions
The analysis of the American Myth in John Updike’s novel The Centaur demonstrates that the novel follows the exact steps into the twentieth century which was regarded as the “mythical age” due to the fact that many writers employed ancient myths in their own works. The Centaur is regarded as one John Updike’s best works in which the author shaped the novel and offered the readers a provisional parallel to the contemporary world.
Updike used his mythological material without fear and he corrected the myth of the noble centaur, Chiron with some characteristics from the Classical mythology. Although there might be some reasons for which the author deviated from the original myth, the most important thing remains the fact that he did not try to re-write Chiron’s myth and he used it as its backbone. Throughout all these basic theories Campbell’s theory was the one identified better with all that Updike’s novel contained. He identified the metaphysical myth that established the Christian background of the novel because even if Caldwell was identified with Chiron he also had some things in common with Christ’s sacrifice and suffering pain. Other sociological function of the myth was the one which provided social and spiritual chaos in contemporary America.
In John Updike’s novel many critics have tried to demonstrate the necessity of the myth in the 20th century where everything seemed possible with a little bit of imagination. The analysis of the chronotope in The Centaur establishes the organization of the novel which represents a predetermined ending. The novel’s plot gains an analytical function which demonstrates the reason for the tragic outcome of the novel’s plot. Spatial-temporal components become a very important source into the protagonist’s life because of his strong connection with all the chronotopic functions existent in the novel. The principal motif of mortality is introduced by Chiron’s myth and reveals the crucial importance of the chronotope into the plot’s development. Some components of these chronotopic features can help the reader but also the protagonist to identify the mythological character’s counterparts because with the help of this one can go underneath George Caldwell’s personality and seek answers for all the unknown questions that he has regarding his actions.
The Centaur inherited some of its characteristics from ancient novelistic forms because of the fact that the mythological epigraph predicts Caldwell’s premature death. In Campbell’s opinion this structure allows the reader to appreciate much more the mythological components present in the novel. Time represents a very important part into the temporal dimension being a major component of the leitmotif of mortality. Being occupied with experiments regarding time and space, Updike tries to reveal some important patterns from the twentieth century.
Rachel Falconer states in her essay about “Bakhtin’s Chronotope and the Contemporary Story” that one part of the twentieth century is striking because of the new consciousness of time. Also the leitmotif of mortality accentuates the evolution of the plot which exists as a symbol of expiring time.
Regarding the myth’s role in John Updike’s novel The Centaur it is obvious that it provides a lot of opportunities into creating characters that are beyond human understanding and which provide a unique touch to it. Some philosophers think that the myth’s role is to go hand in hand with the plot of the stories concerning it. Christian allegory is present in The Centaur and offers the chance to see the novel from another perspective and also to make a parallel between Chiron’s sacrifice and his resemblance to Christ’s suffering.
The mythological characters together with Updike’s characters make the novel more appealing because of the opportunities that they offer to the reader. It is beautiful to illustrate Greek mythological characters into a novel, and to have them right where it is necessary to make a good impression. The novel contains all kind of mythic elements which give a detailed vision about life itself.
George Caldwell, the main protagonist of the novel can be interpreted from some points of view as a portrait of an American who has faced the misfortunes of the Great Depression and also the nervousness of World War II. Also his eagerness to sacrifice for a better future for his son and for his family as well reflect the imminent fear of time that can be seen as a very frightfully thing that can happen to the people who had experienced the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore all this analysis does not refer just to George’s Caldwell’s character but also to the literature itself which seems to be connected to the “contemporaneity from which the author observes.” (cf. Bakhtin, 1981)
To conclude, the absolute function of the myth in The Centaur will always play an important role into teaching people about the importance that some ancient stories and characters can have in the twentieth century literature.
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