preview

John Updike's Separating

Good Essays

Life is complicated, every day people face ups and downs and everyone reacts differently to these challenges. One couple facing a major challenge is Richard and Joan Maple in “Separating”. This story centers around Richard and Joan Maple who plan on living apart for the summer. Throughout this story, Richard struggles to tell his children the truth about their marriage. While Joan wants him to tell each child individually, he ends up blurting the secret out to all but one. The reaction of his kids varies greatly but each one of them breaks Richard down further and further. Finally, when he informs his eldest son, he loses all control over his emotions and can not remember why he ever wanted to break up his family. John Updike’s “Separating” demonstrates the different realization and action of those in different …show more content…

Throughout the short story “Separating”, Richard’s wife, Joan, resides firmly in stage four of Vico’s mental stages of life. Readers can infer that she has progressed through the first three stages prior to the beginning of the story because of her nonchalant attitude towards Richard and the separation. In Stephen Bonnycastle’s In Search of Authority he explores each of Vico’s four stages. According to Bonnycastle, “Stage 4 is a matter of freeing yourself from an institution, which usually involves a process of deconstruction” (136). Stage four is the last of the four stages of Vico’s mental stages of life, one reaches this stages after falling in love, researching, and having figured out everything about a certain topic. By the time someone reaches this stage they are done with it and just want to leave and get over it. With this in mind, it is evident that Joan is definitely in stage four. At this point in the story, she no longer wants to work on the relationship and just wants to tell her kids that the marriage is over. By

Get Access