Updike's human comedy: Comic morality in 'The Centaur' and the 'Rabbit' tetralogy

The comedy in John Updike's most important fiction--The Centaur, Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit At Rest--defines man's world and his morality. My dissertation begins with a brief survey of the chief Updike criticism to indicate the inadequate framing of this essential and informing element. I follow this with a taxonomy of the comedy in The Centaur and the Rabbit series and explain my focus on these novels as Updike's richest works. Next I review comic theory to demonstrate the ways Updike's comedy conforms to the recognized types and concerns of traditional comedy. I then devote a chapter to each novel to show that an awareness of the importance of the comedy in these works results in a better understanding of them.;Updike's farce helps create his fictional world of absurdity, uncertainty, and confusion. His burlesque and irony are sympathetic to humanity, undercutting pretension and vanity to establish man's proper place in the world. Updike's comedy, far from being peripheral or mere comic relief, illustrates and elucidates how human beings can come to a mature apprehension of themselves and others. In Updike's fiction, characters are mature when they recognize the comic nature of the human condition and yet accept their own place in it. In the morphology of Kierkegaard, the comic hero advances from the self-centered aesthetic sphere of existence to the altruistic ethical sphere.;In The Centaur, the Job-like George Caldwell represents Updike's paragon while his troubled son, Peter, struggles to assimilate his father's comic morality. In the Rabbit tetralogy, Rabbit Angstrom, the American everyman, through trial and error gradually matures; at last, he sacrifices himself for the next generation represented by his son and grandchildren. Ultimately, the Christian Updike locates the transcendent in the quotidian: "God rules reality." By accepting their generational and societal responsibilities, human beings lead meaningful lives. The conclusion of The Centaur, the book that Updike describes as his "gayest and truest," triumphantly proclaims; "Only goodness lives. But it does live." Updike's comic hero Caldwell " ... discovered that in giving his life to others he entered a total freedom."...