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    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time"
    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time"
    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time"
    Ebook42 pages33 minutes

    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535841467
    A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for John Updike's "Toward the End of Time" - Gale

      1

      Toward the End of Time

      John Updike

      1997

      Introduction

      John Updike's Toward the End of Time, published in 1997, is a mixture of science fiction, magic realism, and a journal account written by an older man who feels his world collapsing around him. The story is written as if it were the journal of Ben Turnbull, a retired financier who is living an economically comfortable life in New England despite the chaos and destruction around him. The majority of the story takes place in 2020, after a massive war between the United States and China. Despite the failure of the U.S. government, a depopulated Midwest, food shortages, and marauding teenagers who stone to death people whom they do not like, the self-indulgent protagonist enjoys sexual relations with young women and has time to golf and to play with his grandchildren. The narrator also drifts into fantasies which are presented so realistically they are hard to distinguish from what is real. Did Ben Turnbull really kill his second wife? Did he then have sex with a deer? Did he really witness Moses on the mountain? In the end, the protagonist, a man whom readers may not like, reveals a vulnerability with which they may identify.

      Despite Faulkner's roots in the South, he readily condemns many aspects of its history and heritage in Absalom, Absalom!. He reveals the unsavory side of southern morals and ethics, including slavery. The novel explores the relationship between modern humanity and the past, examining how past events affect modern decisions and to what extent modern people are responsible for the past.

      Author Biography

      John Updike was born on March 18, 1932, in Reading, Pennsylvania, located in what is known locally as Pennsylvania Dutch country. He spent the first thirteen years of his life, however, in the small community of Shillington, where his father, Wesley Updike, taught high school science. Updike's mother, Linda, encouraged her son's first attempts at writing in hopes that it might dispel Updike's tendency to stutter. She also supported his desire to attend Harvard when it came time for him to go to college. To their delight, Updike was awarded a scholarship to that university, an institution from which Updike and his parents realized many prominent authors had emerged.

      In 1954, Updike graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree and decided to pursue a second love, drawing. He attended the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts in Oxford, England. While in England, Updike's first short story, Friends from Philadelphia (1954), was published in the New Yorker, a huge accomplishment for any young writer. This first publication drew the attention of famed writer E. B. White, who helped Updike obtain a job at the New Yorker upon Updike's return to the States. While Updike

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