An Analysis of John Updike’s Artistic Expressiveness in The Christian Roommates.docVIP

An Analysis of John Updike’s Artistic Expressiveness in The Christian Roommates 　　Abstract：As a famous American novelist， John Updike shows his great artistic expressiveness in The Christian Roommates in three aspects： polarized characterization， psychological description and scenic description and the use of empathy. 　　Key words：John Updike； Artistic Expressiveness； The Christian Roommates 　　中图分类号：I106 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1672-1578（2016）011-0004-02 　　John Hoyer Updike was an American short story writer， novelist， poet， literary critic， and art critic. 　　His short story The Christian Roommates？first appeared in the April 1964 issue of the New Yorker？magazine and has been collected in John Updike： The Early Stories （Updike， 2003.）？and anthologized in American Short Story Masterpieces（Carver， 2008）. Here we attempt to make an inquiry into his artistic expressiveness in his short story The Christian Roommate. 　　1 The Story Analysis 　　The story is about several roommates on a first year residence hall， but focuses on the experience of two distinct roommates. Orson Ziegler came straight to Harvard from the small South Dakota town where his father was the doctor. His future was firm in his mind： the pre-med course here， medical school at Harvard， Penn， or Yale and then back to South Dakota where he had his wife already selected and claimed and primed to wait. 　　Because Orson was a Protestant Christian （Methodist） from west of the Mississippi， the authorities had given him as a freshman roommate a self-converted Episcopalian from Oregon， Henry Palamountain. 　　Hub， as he liked to be called， was 20， had worked in a plywood mill， was a conscientious objector. This last was significant because the Korean War had begun that summer. He would spin for half an hour each day after Yoga. 　　He considered himself an Anglican Christian Platonist， strongly influenced by Gandhi. This [story] is an account of Orsons clash with Hub during the year [and] descriptions of the other ro