John Updike Imagery

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.”(Gaiman) As told by Neil Gaiman who claims writing is not something anyone can tackle when nothing comes to mind. But, John Updike consistently beat the odds and wrote masterful works of literature to the point of even being considered one of the greatest of his generation, which included Tennessee Williams, J. D. Salinger, and countless other authors. He got this trait through the quality of his writing, which incorporated, but was not limited to, a surplus of imagery, metaphors, and similes. He typically focused upon the themes of death, the United States and sex allowing for many

As from this excerpt, “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs (Updike),” he put emphasis on particular parts of the girl’s body, such as her buttocks having a partial tan. Updike also uses sentence structure to make the short story “A&P” seem more laid back and coming from person’s thoughts as represented in this sentence “in walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.”(Updike) Updike purposely uses walks, and not the grammatically correct “walk”. This use of the main character Sammy is to connect to the younger generations with the theme of sex as it is one of the major themes in “A&P” as well as many other novels by

Updike’s themes there is reasoning behind why he uses them whether it is to inform, persuade or give life lessons to his readers( Moyer). While not all of his books and poetry are serious in nature, Updike makes sure there is a point to all of his works. Updike wrote about America with a certain nostalgia, reverence, and recognition and celebration of America's broad diversity. ZZ Packer wrote that in Updike, "there seemed a strange ability to hearken both America the Beautiful as well as America the Plain Jane, and the lovely Protestant backbone in his fiction and essays, when he decided to show it off, was as progressive and enlightened as it was unapologetic."(Packer) The Rabbit novels in particular can be viewed, according to Julian Barnes, as "a distraction from, and a glittering confirmation of, the vast bustling ordinariness of American life."( Barnes) But as Updike celebrated ordinary America, he also alluded to its decline: at times, he was "so clearly disturbed by the downward spin of