Case study of John Updike's fiction

Lucrare de licenta despre Case study of John Updike's fiction
In this chapter we aim at exhibiting the simulacras of initiation that the characters undergo and the way they integrate in a society where meaning seems to have disappeared. We have followed Baudrillard's argumentation in Strategiile fatale, according to which society has entered the stage of the transpolitical which is the transparency and obscenity of all structures in a destructured universe, a place of catastrophe, no longer of crisis. It is still Baudrillard's thesis that there is no longer any end, that history itself has become interminable and everything will continue to take place in a show, fastidious, recurring hysterical manner.

Clarence has the intuition of this loss of meaning and arbitrariness of the world. He sees destructive violence to rule all over and he understands that religion has lost its strength and meaningful point of reference. Movies and television, ubiquitous in the novel, are the expression of the ecstatic quality of life, that of narcissistic self-reflection. Teddy is a resigned conformist who is content " to sleep in his own element" as Bachelard said. Essie is the winner on the outside, the winner that uses and is used by the world. Her totally egotistical attitude is interpreted in the spirit of Baudrillard's thesis that we are all gamblers, ready to pay any price for the seduction of the others, for the ecstatic quality of our life. Her son Clark refuses to be a victim the way Girard defined it: innocent, weak, ignorant.

Lucrare de licenta despre Case study of John Updike's fiction

Cuprins

Chapter I. Introduction........................................3

Chapter II. Rabbit, run - The quest and the absurd...................8

Chapter III. Rabbit is rich representations of America between idealism and conformism.................................................26

Chapter IV. In the beauty of the lillies - narcissism and simulacras of initation.................................................44

Chapter V. Of the farm - spaces of non freedom.......................69

Chapter VI. Conclusion.....................................77

Bibliography...........................................79