John Updike’s novel “The Centaur” has become already a sign book, without which modern postmodern prose might not have acquired its completed form, as it was among the notable American books of its generation which developed a method of semantic complexity. The name of the novel is not accidental and is a direct allusion to Ancient Greek mythology.
The story begins with the fact that the teacher of biology (the centaur Chiron, the son of Kronos and Filira), during the lesson gets an arrow piercing into his leg. Then for a long time, but very interestingly, the path of the hero is described behind the means of getting rid of pain and the process of returning back. While trying to understand what is happening, the brain begins to independently generate ideas.
We see an image of the unhappy man who works as a teacher and is forced to endure the mockery of children. He is used to living not for himself, but for others, he does not feel sorry for anything. He sees that the world around him is falling apart, he does not like it, but he is powerless before the universe and knows that he is doomed.
The novel is about a rare, worthy of respect, but underestimated devotion of a teacher George Caldwell to his profession. To each student he has an individual approach. The inexhaustible kindness of the teacher accompanies him outside the school: whoever he meets, he is attentive to everyone, always caring and courteous. Pure heart. The author of the book compares the main character with Chiron, the selfless centaur suffering from the tests sent to him.
Dialogues, monologues and actions - all this seems completely incompatible and at the same time incredibly logical. The sharp plot does not allow to relax, and in each chapter you can find something wise and philosophical. The book is so unusually written that everything described in it seems real (probably, in the first place, this is due to chaos), but, frankly, at the same time everything written may seem like complete nonsense. Updike did a brilliant thing: he turned an ordinary story into a mythological story and drew the attention of readers to a huge number of hidden and obvious problems.
