The Country Girls, by Edna O'Brien

Obituary

BIOGRAPHY & SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

Josephine Edna O’Brien was born in 1930, in Tuamgraney, County Clare, a small rural village in the west of Ireland. The youngest of four children, she grew up in the atmosphere of Irish National Catholicism of the 1940s, marked by an alcoholic father, who was a farmer, and a strict mother in religious practice who considered writing “a path of perdition”.

After finishing primary school in her village, she was educated at the Convent of Sisters of Mercy, a boarding school in Galway.  In her 20s, she went to university in Dublin where she graduated in Pharmacy in 1950 and where she worked briefly as an apothecary. In 1952, against her parents’ wishes, she married the writer Ernest Gebler, with whom she had two children. They settled in London, where O’Brien turned to writing as a full-time occupation. Ten years later, in 1962, she escaped from a loveless marriage and moved to the desolate suburban London where, at least, she felt free to write.

Her life has been divided between England, where she has lived for more than 50 years and where she writes, and Ireland, where her writing comes from and where it endlessly returns, exploring her home country from a more detached perspective.

Edna O’Brien has publicly acknowledged that James Joyce’s works, especially A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, were her main inspiration and led her to devote to literature for the rest of her life.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, written when she was 30, was published in 1961.  It is the history of two girls who live in a backward and repressive country, especially in rural areas of Ireland. They grow up in their strict homes, attend a convent school from which they are expelled and travel to Dublin and London in search of imaginary opportunities, love and sex. This book was considered a scandal in her country and she was labelled an enemy of Ireland. Her family felt humiliated by this book. It was the first instalment of a trilogy, written in autobiographical style, completed with The Lonely Girl, later published as Girl with Green Eyes, and Girls in the Married Bliss. Now, these two books are set in London, and there the protagonists become disillusioned with marriage and men in general.

She has written more than twenty works of fiction where the main themes are Ireland and women. Some of them are: The High Road, Down by the River, In the Forest, The Light of Evening, The Little Red Chairs, and the last one, written in 2019, Girl, which was inspired by the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by members of Boko Haram.

Other notable works include a dramatic work about Virginia Woolf, two important biographies, of James Joyce and Lord Byron, and an autobiographical essay called Mother Ireland.

She also has published nine short story collections where their setting varies, although Ireland appears in several of them. One of them is From Mrs Reinhard and Other Stories, where In the Hours of Darkness is included.

She has died recently, in London, on July 27th, 2024, at the age of 93.

THE COUNTRY GIRLS

Following the plot of the book, it’s easy to divide this novel in three parts.

First part and first chapter. Last day of the school.

Edna O’Brien writes in first person, remembering her real life when she was fourteen years old, the story of Cait and Baba, two young Irish country girls. They live in a rural area of Ireland, (County Clare), a backward and repressive country. They grow up in their strict homes and they spend their childhood together, going to the same school.

Edna O’Brien presents the following characters:

Cathleen, “Kate” or “Cait” (in Irish) Brady, the protagonist. She is a charming and naïve narrator girl who describes only one day of her life in this first chapter.

And the other ones in order of appearance:

The father’s absence. Cait begins to talk about the figure of her father with coldness, with some insinuations: “The old reason”, “He had not come here”. We will understand later her father drinks too much, has a terrible temper, and a tendency to go on benders and then returning home to beat his wife.

Deep love for her mother, called Mama in the story. Cait says, “She was the best mama in the world”. What happens to her mother along the story? There is a premonition when Cait pronounces these sentences: “She straightened the cap on my head and kissed me three or four times”.

They are the poor Brady family.

 

Bridge, “Baba” Brennan, Cait’s best friend, is the novel’s deuteragonist. Despite being opposites in most respects, because Cait is dreamy and kindly romantic, and Baba is a lying and jealous girl who wants to dominate many times Cait’s behaviour, they are sometimes allies, and sometimes enemies. She is the daughter of the rich couple Brennan.

Baba’s parents would appear frequently throughout the story.

Hickey, he is the underpaid farm labourer who preserves the family’s fields and animals, and keeps the place going. Cait says “I love him”, but later she changes the word “love” saying “what I really meant was that I was fond of him”.

Jack Holland, owner of the local grocery store who claims loving Cait and says that he wants to marry her. We know he has always been attracted to Cathleen’s mother, but now he is showing his love to Cathleen.

Miss Moriarty, the teacher. As it is the last day of school, Cait and Baba are going to say goodbye to her, and Cait brings her a bunch of lilacs.

The only one character that doesn’t appear in this first chapter is Mr Gentleman, (her real name is de Maurier), a rich French lawyer, much older than Cait. He lives in a nearby manor house with his wife and several children. He has a very important role in the novel. Cait feels attracted to Mr Gentleman, and she imagines her future life with him. Mr Gentleman will be her protector and...

If you read the book, you will know about the relationship between Cait and Mr Gentleman.

Edna O’Brien also describes the rural landscapes of green meadows and wild flowers of Ireland. We are in the poor Brady’s farm, near County Limerick, where fields must be ploughed with effort, and we’re going to discover the daily habits and the atmosphere of Cait’s home when she gets up in the morning and has her breakfast. She describes an Irish village with many small details as the names of trees, flowers, birds…

At the end of this first part, Cait, rushing home to tell her mama she’s won a scholarship to go to a convent school, something very significative happens...

Second part. The oppressive forces of the religious education.

Cait and Baba attend a convent school. They discover that life in the convent is terrible: only prayers, hours of study, and punishments. Cait feels very sorry and sad, but she shines academically. Baba gets into trouble because she hates this school so much, that on several occasions she considers running away. And according to a plan that the manipulator Baba develops, they are both expelled. Their life will change.

Third part. From repression to freedom.

After their expulsion, they move together to Dublin. Baba is sent to a secretarial college and will follow her studies, but Cait will work in a grocery store. They will go to London in search of imaginary opportunities, love and sex in the big city. They struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship. At the end of this part, the two girls are 18 years old. And someone who appears along the story clams to find “his country girl” but…

Do you imagine how the book could finish? A happy new life in Dublin, London or another place? Or a sad ending?

SOME REMARKS

I hope to encourage you reading this sensitive book because I think:

Events, people, feelings, emotions and landscape are very well described.

It’s a realistic portrait of Irish people.

The book talks about the discovering of sex without any taboo. This frank treatment of sex and the sharp critique of Irish society in the post-World War II period was considered scandalous at the time in Ireland. But I have not found the obscenities they cite in some references.

Tender and sad book!

QUESTIONS

-What are the meaning of these expressions (page 6, lines 22), “A nun you are in my eye”, “the Kerry Order”, “two heads in one pillow”?

-In your view, using an alarm clock, is it a natural way of waking up? Timetables, are they a better way of organizing our lives, or they're only another way to control us?

-People usually reserve the best plates, tablecloth, cutlery... for visitors. What do you think it's the reason for this? Is it also your habit?

-Aren't you angry when you see an oppressed person happy with their way of life? What would you say to this person?

-In the story there's no much hygiene. In your opinion, does our society exaggerate with cleanness?

-Do you have a kind of talisman you put under your pillow (to sleep better, to have sweet dreams, to not snore...)?

-In your opinion, what is the best way to become your teacher's favourite?

-What is your point of view about religious education? Is it necessary to teach religion in the schools?

-What is the meaning of the last sentence, the maxim "Weep and you weep alone"? Is it true, or it's only an old wives' saying?

VOCABULARY

ankle socks, dew, hedge, canned sweets, turf house, beamed up, pullet, chicken run, he did his water, flag, flush, clippers, range, sharp, stingy, bog, simmering, paling, boulders, meal, moping, pick your steps, blackbird, fudge, sprees, bout

Why Be Happy, When You Can Be Normal, by Jeanette Winterson

The writer presents her book in a video

Mercedes Cebrián interviews Jeanette Winterson (video)

Conversation with Bel Olid (video)

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (film)

BIOGRAPHY

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959 and was adopted by a very religious family.

At 16, she discovered she was a lesbian and left home.

Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel, tells us her experiences of her childhood and adolescence in this family. (There’s an adaptation of this book for the television.)

She got a job as an assistant editor for a feminist publisher.

Besides writing and editing, she refurbished a house in Spitalfields, and there she opened an organic food shop.

Other books of hers are The Passion, set in the Napoleonic period, and The Daylight Gate, based on the 1612 witch trials in Lancashire.

She had a relation with Pat Kavanagh, Julian Barnes’s wife, but it didn’t last, and Pat went back to her husband.

 

INTRODUCTION. The Wrong Crib.

This first chapter of Why Be Happy... is a sort of introduction to the book and presents some questions that are going to appear along the narrative: her adoption, religion, lesbianism, literature, feminism, parental and filial love. But sometimes you think it’s a kind of revenge against her foster parents, especially her foster mother, an authoritarian person obsessed with the biblical religion.

But all in all, the story is about the research of the protagonist’s biological parents and her own identity. And also trying to discover why she was an adopted girl: was she a desired child, was she given in adoption because her mother didn’t have any money? Because she was very young? Because was the fruit of a non-consented relation? But it seems there was another child to be adopted: why was she the chosen one?

She starts telling us she wrote Oranges and that when Mrs Winterson (her foster mother) finds out she got very angry. Jeanette now describes her appearance and personality: a tall, big woman with a paranoic obsession with religion and strict morality. But she has other peculiarities apart from going to church almost every day: she never sleeps with her husband, she keeps a pistol in a drawer, she believes in spirits…

And Jeanette herself is a very singular creature: she can be violent, she deceives her friends, she keeps a part from the rest of schoolmates, she likes reading…

 

And in the next chapters she is going to tell us how she learnt English Literature reading all the books of the library in alphabetical order, how she bought second hand books, and she had to hide them, how Mrs Winterson found them and burned them, and thus she decided to write her own, why she left her home at sixteen, how she earned some money working in a market, how she lived in a Mini, how she felt in love with a she-schoolmate, what were the working-class lives like under Margaret Thatcher, what were her opinions about her, how her Literature teacher took in her house, how she could go to Oxford to study Literature…

What kind of people were Mr and Mrs Winterson, what kind of relationship they had, why they didn’t sleep together, what kind of religion was the Pentecostal church, what kind of books she read…

There are also very interesting remarks about literature: i.e., people who read King James’s Bible could understand more easily Shakespeare because they were written in the same 17^th century English.

But the big part of the story is the research and finally, after a long process and innumerable bureaucratic hurdles, finding out who her mother was, meeting her and tying to accommodate herself with her new relatives.

 

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you think there’s always something missing in an adopted child?

-What would you say if a writer used your person as a character for a novel?

-What is for you to be “normal”?

-What can you tell about the story of Philomel?

-The narrator mention “stammering” when you have had a kind of trauma. What do you know about the causes of stammering?

-What can you tell us about these films: Secrets and Lies, by Mike Leigh, and Rosemary’s Baby, by Roman Polanski?

 

 

VOCABULARY

crib, McCarthyism, flare, Pentecostal, bare-knuckle fighter, copperplate, be borne up on the shoulders, duffel-coat. Shift, cover story, flash-dash, terraced house, tick-box, catapult, misfit, forensically, shot, Philomel, blotted, vale, thug, seances, poodle, larder, cap-gun

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

There’s no much information about Austen life, mostly because her sister Cassandra burnt or destroyed all her letters; she said Jane told so many personal things about their family and friends that it would be indecorous to know their content.

We do know she was born in the rural Hampshire (or Hants), a county in the south of England, that she was the sixth of seven children in a clergyman’s family with a big library, and that this library had a wide variety of books, even Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy, novels that in that period weren’t very appropriate for girls, and less for clergyman’s daughters.

She was educated mainly at home and only went to a boarding school for a year in Reading.

She started writing stories that she read for the family and plays that they perform at home.

When she was 26, they moved to Bath; then, five years later, they went to live in Southampton, and three years later to Chawton, also in the same county.

She never married, althought she had a relationship with a man who died young.

Her novels narrate “the rocky road to a young woman’s happy marriage”, and she said she needed only three or four families to develop their plot. So, what is there in her novels?

She published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814) anonymously. In 1817, after her death, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published with the name of the author.

Jane Austen official web

Becoming Jane

Lost in Austen

 

MANSFIELD PARK

 

This is the story of Fanny Price, the eldest daughter of a very poor and crowded family. But she is nine years old when she is adopted by her rich uncle sir Thomas Bertram, of a well-to-do family, and her living prospects change radically.

The narrative starts telling us about the three sisters Ward. The eldest and more beautiful, although very apathetic, indolent and trivial, marries Sir Thomas Bertram and gets a comfortable position in the world.

The second sister marries a clergyman, reverend Norris, who has a benefit in Sir Thomas parish, the vicarage being very near the country house.

The youngest sister, Frances, fared worse, because she married for love to the poor navy lieutenant Mr Price, and so got estranged from her sisters; and, to make matters worse, he is been licensed because of an injury and spends most of his time at home or with his friends, but not working. The family Price, besides of being poor, is numerous. But when Mrs Price is about having her ninth child, she asks for help to her sisters. Mrs Norris, a busybody bossy childless woman, suggests that Sir Thomas could adopt a Prince’s child. So Fanny got to live with sir Thomas, her wife and their children, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, all of them older than Fanny.

These children, although they have an excellent academic education, are spoiled because of the indulgence of their parents and their aunt Mrs Norris. Fanny, who is very shy and honest, feels a bit uncomfortable in this house, because Sir Thomas is so serious, Mrs Norris so bossy, Mrs Bertram and her daughters so indifferent; but in the end she gets used to the Bertram’s family ways. The only person who shows some sympathy to Fanny is Edmund, who wants to be a clergyman, and whom she would fall secretly in love with.

Some years pass without any novelty. Then, Mr Norris dies, and reverend Mr Grant and his wife comes to live in the vicarage.

Mr Bertram has to go to Antigua to manage his plantations because there have been some problems. While he’s away, a friend of Tom visits the Bertrams, full of enthusiasm about reforms in the countryside. He’s a very rich man, but not very clever. He falls in love with Maria.

More or less at the same time, there are two more visitors: Mary Crawford and Henry Crawford, Mrs Grant’s step-sister and brother. There are some flirtations between Henry and Julia, Henry and Maria (although they know she’s engaged to Mr Rushworth) and Edmund and Mary.

After some days, another guest arrives. It’s Mr Yates, with his head full of acting. He infects the group with the craving of acting and theatre. And after some debate, they decide to prepare a play to perform for all the family. But when they are rehearsing for the last time, Sir Thomas arrives from Antigua and all is cancelled.

Now the novel changes its tone. Until this moment, there has been a lot of action; now, it moves to a more psychological ground. Sir Thomas has changed: he understands and loves better Fanny, he sees he has indulged too much his daughters and his son Tom, and that he has given too much power to Mrs Norris over his family.

Maria marries Mr Rushworth, and the couple and Julia go to London.

Henry Crawford tries to break Fanny’s heart, but in the end it seems that he’s fallen in love with her. He approaches her, but she rejects all his advances, even when he helps her brother in a promotion.

Edmund is indecisive about proposing to Mary Crawford, because perhaps he thinks she wouldn’t be an ideal wife for a pastor: she is trivial and wouldn’t like to be married to a clergyman.

After her refusing Henry Crawford, Fanny is sent for a couple of months to visit her family, and Tom fells very ill, almost to the point of dying.

Henry Crawford, after visiting Fanny in Portsmouth with her family and showing one more time his love, goes to London to visit the married couple. 

But we’re not going to give away any spoiler.

So some questions can be:

Is Fanny going to stay with her family forever? Is she going to get married to Henry Crawford? Is she going to go back to Mansfield? Is Edmund going to get married to Mary Crawford? Is Tom going to recover from his illness?

Mansfield Park film, 2007

Mansfield Park film, 1999

 

Mansfield Park. Volume One. Chapter XVIII

SUMMARY

 

We are at the last chapter of the first volume, and Jane Austen is going to offer us a very dramatic ending after a very dramatic climax, so this way the readers will be anxious to follow reading the second volume.

We have a group of people wanting to do the rehearsal of three of the five acts of Lovers’s Vows has, so all of them are very excited, or very nervous.

Tom, the eldest of the Bertrams, who had given up his preference for a comedy and accepted playing a drama instead, would perform any character, doesn’t mind which, and is very impatient for the rehearsal.

Mr Rushworth, Maria’s fiancé, isn’t able to learn by heart any of his speeches, and all the time needs a prompter, and, moreover, he is very worried about his dress.

Maria is going to have a very equivocal scene with Henry Crawford, a scene that allows them to flirt even more: in the play, these two characters (mother and son) embrace each other. Mr Rushworth starts being jealous. Henry Crawford is the best actor: he can play all the characters, giving them the exact theatrical tone.

Julia, the youngest of the Bertrams, is not playing because Henry Crawford has showed his preference for Maria for her part, although he previously had been courting her. Another role has been offered to her, but she has rejected them all out of spite.

Mrs Grant, the vicar’s wife, also has a minor part.

Mr Yates, a friend of Tom, is the man who has come to the Bertram’s home with his head full of acting, and has persuaded the rest to pass the time preparing a play. He has the main character, Baron Wildenhaim.

Edmund didn’t approve the idea of acting while their father was absent faraway and perhaps in danger, but, as Tom threatened to look for actors and actresses out of the family circle, he decided to act himself. He is going to play the part of a clergyman (in the real life, he himself is going to be ordained).

Miss Crawford plays Amelia, the Baron’s daughter, a young woman who is in love with Anhalt, the clergyman her tutor. She is who declares her love to Anhalt and persuades him to marry her; and so there is another couple in a compromising situation.

Mrs Norris is very busy with the curtains and the players’ clothes.

Lady Bertram is a bit anxious to see something of the play talked about so much and which causes so much bustle.

Fanny is required by everybody: Mrs Norris needs her help with the equipment, and the players need her to prompt them, and as sparring to try their speeches. Even Mary Crawford and Edmund need her as an interlocutor, a prompter and a critic.

All is now ready for the dress rehearsal of the first three acts, and all are very impatient, but, at the last moment, Mr Grant feels ill, and Mrs Grant has to stay at the parsonage to take care of him, and so she won’t be able to act.

In the face of this problem, they entreat Fanny —the only person who has always objected to the whole acting because she thinks inappropriate being Sir Thomas away, being some very embarrassing scenes, and being, although she doesn’t want to admit, jealous of Mary Crawford— to take the part of Mrs Grant, or at least to read it. Fanny refuses because she feels it isn’t right, but then the rest label her egoist, and stubborn; even Edmund begs her.

In the end, she yields, but, just before they start, Julia makes an astonishing announcement.

QUESTIONS

Why theatre can be viewed as something immoral, or at least as something not very appropriate in some circumstances?
What qualities must you have to be a good actor?
Henry Crawford is a very good actor. Why can this talent can be a flaw in his character, according to Fanny’s point of view?
Mr Rushworth says that Henry Crawford can’t be a good actor because is too short. How do cinema and art impose us the shape of our appearances?
Sir Thomas and Mrs Norris were thinking about the possibility that Tom, or Edmund, fall in love with her cousin Fanny. Marriage between relatives used to want permission from the religious authorities, and, in most of cultures, is a taboo. Do you think this proscription it’s something biological, or cultural?
Edmund and Mary have very different points of view about religion. According to you: can a marriage between two people of so different opinions work?
In which ways do you think plays are better than films? And films better than plays?
Why is it important (or not) for an adopted child to know their biological parents?

VOCABULARY

fret, trifling, rant, prompter, to her eye, tameness, was at little pains, deferred, catchword, forwarder, seams, trice, festoons, entreat, grate, obliged, in the aggregate, surmise, stand the brunt, had little credit with, yield

Chapter XVIII (Project Gutenberg)

Lovers' Vows

Sinners, by Seán Ó Faoláin

Biography

Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1900. He studied in a religious school and his primary school was in Gaelic. As he was born as John Francis Whelan, we have to suppose he changed his name into Gaelic. When he went to university in Dublin, he joined the Irish Volunteers, and he fought for the Irish independence. He got disappointed with the outcome of the Independence War and the Irish Civil War and he went  to study in Harvard, in the USA, and then he worked in some high schools and universities in England where he taught Gaelic. He only came back to Ireland in 1933 where he worked in his short stories, novels and in literary magazines.

His most famous book is Midsummer Night Madness, a collection of short stories about the Civil War.
For Irish people he’s a controversial figure, because some of his books were banned for indecency and because he wasn’t satisfied with the creation of the free Ireland as it was. He was very critical with some of conservative aspects of the Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church.
He died in Dublin at the age of 91.

Seán Ó Faoláin the Wikipedia

Plots of some of his stories

SINNERS

This is a story about a religious confession of an orphan girl. She was picked up at the orphanage by Mrs Higgins as a maid. Now she has to go on confession because her patron knows she has stolen her boots and wants to recover them by the way of her avowal to the canon confessor. Mrs Higgins has told the canon about the girl and her pair of boots and asked him to elicit the girl’s “sin” and then make her to give the boots back to her.

But the thing isn’t going to be so easy because there is the secret of confession, and, of course, it’s supposed the confessor cannot know the girl’s sins through another person; and also, because the girl is a simpleton and the canon has no patience with her. The canon is an old man and, after a life of confessions for no good, he is already fed up with the mean spirit of the people, his trivial problems and their failure in improving their morals. Will the girl confess her robbery? Will Mrs Higgins get back her pair of boots? Will the canon be in peace at the end?

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters in the story:

The canon

Father Deeley

The girl

Mrs Higgins

What does the canon do to control his anger? Do you know other ways to calm you down? Which one do you use?

It seems that in Ireland there are (or were) a lot of orphanages: Why do you think there were so many? Have you seen “Song for a Raggy Boy” or “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee”?

What is a Freemason? What do you know about the Freemasonry?

Do you think is it possible not to commit a “sin” in 5 years? What is the limit between a small “sin” and a big “sin” for you? Can be there a general rule or does it depend of every person in particular?

Do you think confession can help people (like a kind of psychological therapy)?

And penance? Can penance help you when you feel you’ve made a mistake?

The canon is old and Deeley is young. What advantage has an old person to a young person, according he canon? Do you think he is right?

Ambrose Bierce said that a secret is something you tell only to one person. Do you think is it possible to keep a secret? Even for a priest?

What do you think of the confession in general?

VOCABULARY

grille, restiveness, sigillum, pettish, shade, prevarication, forestalled, gospel, lattice, shudder, slur, wisha, gasped, flaking, wan, prying, poking, prodding, picking at, lashings and leavings of, starved, immodest, blunty, whimper, urchins, spittle, gabble, cross, cosily, cokalorum, jade

Lifeguard, by John Updike

Lifeguard: review

Lifeguard: analysis

Lifeguard: academic task

Lifeguard: audio

Your next reading is Lifeguard, by John Updike (author of The Witches of Eastwick), page 539.

It’s a very difficult story for its vocabulary and its imagery. Also, it has no action, it’s only a meditation about God and saving lives and souls the young lifeguard does.

In order to help you in this reading I’m going to give some information about different people that appears on the first pages:

Tillich, Father D’Arcy, Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain are philosophers who speculate about religion, mostly about catholic religion and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Kierkegaard, I suppose you know; Berdyaev was a Russian writer with deep religious convictions; Barth was a Calvinist theologian; Cardinal Newman, a protestant Anglican converted to Catholicism. I can’t think it’s necessary to say anything about Pascal, Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Graham Greene are catholic writers in the Anglican world of Great Britain.

Biography, by Rafel Martínez

John Hayen Updike was born on the 18^th of March,1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He was the son of teachers, and he was raised in a white and Protestant middle-class environment, which influenced greatly his later literary work.

As a teenager, John Updike started to like literature and writing influenced by his own mother, who also instilled in him a deep love for art. His father was a high school teacher who, having suffered the adversities of the 1929 crisis, supported the whole family with great sacrifices and a meagre salary.

Subsequently, Updike studied at Harvard University thanks to a scholarship. When he finished his studies, he moved to the United Kingdom and started to study Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts in Oxford.

His work as a writer explores regularly  human motivations about sex, faith, the ultimate reason for existence, death, generational conflicts, and interpersonal relationships.

Updike's most important work were the series of novels about his famous character Harry Rabbit Angstrom (Rabbit Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest and the novel of evocations and remembrances of the same character, Rabbit Remembered). Of the tetralogy, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest allowed him to win two Pulitzer Prizes in 1982 and in 1991.

In his long and long literary life, he was the author of numerous works.

Apart from award-winning series like Rabbit, he wrote Henry Bech's books, 1960-1971, and also he wrote plays: Buchanan Dying (1974); novels: The Witches of Eastwich, (1984; made into a movie 1987), Scarlet Letter Trilogy (1975), The Asylum Fair (1959), Couples (1968), Coup d'État (1978); short stories: The Lifeguard (1932), The Same Door (1959), What I Have Left to Live (1994), Tears of Love (2001), My Father’s Tears and other stories (2009).

He also wrote poetry, essays and memories.

For several years his name was among the candidates for the Nobel Prize.

He remarried Martha Ruggles in 1977. His first wife was Mary Pennington. He was the father of two daughters and two sons.
John Updike died in Danvers, Massachusetts, on January the 27th, 2009, at the age of 76, after years of battling with lung cancer.

Analysis of Lifeguard

This work by John Updike was first published in the magazine The New Yorker, on June 17th, 1961.

Of the prolific work of J. Updike, I hope and wish to read some of his most recognized works. Because, in this work, the author shows the life, dreams and desires of a young man, with a rich and very literary prose, which when reading it seems simple, but which hides and speaks of the deepest and most complex thoughts of the human being, that they turn this short story into a literary work that looks like fiction, but is actually a living and existentialist story.

To begin with, John Updike seems to be playing with the word of the title LIFE-GUARD.

Life, (other synonyms): existence, being, entity, goods ...

Guard, (other synonyms): protect, cover, stand guard over, watch over, look after, keep an eye on…

For the author, the protagonist, in his two facets of life, always tries to see his fellow men as beings that need his help and his qualities to save them.

The boy who waits for the call, as he refers to at the end of the story, and who until then had not reached him and who had studied for 9 months the books and biblical texts, is longing for the day when he’ll be able to address his parishioners and transmit the word and work of God to them.

And, on the other hand, when summer comes, he has a job as a lifeguard on a beach for 3 months, and when he climbs to his watchman turret, he has thoughts that from his height he dominates all the beachgoers who depend on his vigilance and help, as if he was a divine entity who sees his acolytes from above and can observe and save them.

But he also feels sorry for the older people whose life is ending, and he feels sorry too for the women who lost their feminine forms after bringing several children to this world, and he cannot help being pleased and desired, when, with his skin tanned by the sun and with his athletic figure, the young women approach the stairs of his watchtower.

I admit that I have had to read the story several times to make sense of it, and I hope I have understood it.

It is not a work that I would recommend, but it has made me work hard, and for that I am grateful to have chosen this work.

Questions

What's a "student of divinity"?
What does it mean: "I disguise myself in my skin"?
What are "teenage satellites"?

What does he refer to with "umber anthers dusted with pollen"?

When do "theologians surmount the void"?

Do you know the story about "the man who on the coast of Judaea who refused in dismay to sell all the he had"? Look up Mark, 10.

Explain "a sheet of brilliant sand painted with the runes of naked human bodies".

Why "the humanism has severely corrupted the apples of our creed"?

"Scabs of land upon we draw our lives to their unsatisfactory conclusions are suffused by science with vacuous horror"?": What is it?

Explain the parable: "Swimming offers a parable..."

Where is the irony? "I'm not yet ordained, I'm too disordered."

"The cinema of life is run backwards..." Why backwards?

"brazen barrel chests, absurdly potent bustling with white froth." What's this "froth"?

Why when "children toddle blissfully into the surf" does he "bolt upright on his throne"?

Who "lift their eyes in wonder as a trio of flat-stomached nymphs parades past"? And why?

Can you imagine this: "a girl is pushing against her boy and begging to be ducked"?

What do you know about the "section aurea"?

Can you see "the arabesque on the spine" in a musical instrument?

Define "mesomorph, endomorph and ectomorph".

Why do you think that "to desire a woman is to desire to save her"?

What do you know about Solomon and Sheba?

Explain the image: "no memento mori is so clinching as a photograph of a vanished crowd".

"Is it as a maiden, matron or crone that the females will be eternalized"?

What is it the "Adjustments Counter"?

"Mankind is a plague racing like fire across the exhausted continents". What do you think of this pessimistic point of view?

Can you understand this image: "the sea itself is jammed with hollow heads and thrashing arms like a great bobbing blackwash of rubbish"?

Do you think is possible to obey this commandment: "Be joyful"?

Has he ever saved anyone? How do you know?

What do you think of philosophy? Is it something deep with difficult language or is it something trivial with difficult language?