The Unbearable Pressure: The Life Of The Middle Class In John Updike's Fiction

The American writer John Updike is particularly good at reflecting the nature of the existing state of middle-class Americans through the description of their household details. The author walks into the life of middle-class Americans by the media of his novels that come out to entertain the readers endlessly. Updike calmly strips the peaceful exterior of their comfortable material life, and further digs into the core of their mental state—the sense of anxiety, fear, isolation, alienation and nostalgia. Updike's persevering effort to investigate this kind of phenomenon in life keeps infiltrating his novels of different periods.This thesis is organized on the basis of two threads: one is the mental state of middle class Americans reflected in the novels, and the other the different works of different periods. The aim is to testify the nature of the existing state of the middle class Americans. The Poorhouse Fair, created in the 1950's, demonstrates people's fear over the impending nuclear catastrophe and the anxiety that accompanies. Pigeon Feathers published in the 1960's is surrounded by a tense atmosphere of competition, which manifests the characters'sense of isolation and alienation in the seemingly comfortable and peaceful middle-class life. The"Rabbit Tetralogy", produced in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, has ever been honored as the classic epic of the middle class of American style, which furthers the pressure of competition that cannot be wiped away and depicts a world where people are mentally alienated from one another. So it can be anticipated that people choose this attitude of life to relieve those pressure and fetters imposed by life to seek for the reason for living. Likewise, it is not out of expectation that the author focuses on expressing the existing state in nearly all his major works from Pigeon...