Short Story Collection, Essay Example

Morocco

The first story, “Morocco” represents the nature of the narrations, which is retrospective. Seeking to escape completely from a dull month of April in England to the sun, a family unit of six starts a road trip. The six arrive in Restinga with just the pounding wind and a worthless sun. The father remembers the occurrence as one of the utmost compression of the family, the previous time there was molding of the family, and it appeared, forever together. There are times in the life of a person when he discovers that he is glued in a different section of the earth, like the family described by Updike in ‘Morocco’. The narrator tells this story in flashback, remembering sorts, regarding the dismay that appeared usual in Morocco, realities that this enlightened family did not have knowledge of, and what was awaiting them in this paradise (Updike 10).

Updike acts coldly with his delivery of a dead girl underneath a lorry, or a masturbating man at the beach. The description of the image cannot be considered in any other manner, particularly when Updike narrates the occurrences that have happened on his storyteller at this story’s end. The family is stranded; money is wired to the father from London to take out his kin from the fire, but he is looked at with surprise as his notes are counted to him at the local bank (Updike 20). Tangier’s visit there is being spoken about, which makes him remember the diversity between America and the third world, something that is taken for granted here, like paved roads and hot water, which are not prioritized in Morocco, and locals do not care about it.

Varieties of Religious Experience

This story responds to 9/11 written from many characters’ points of view, one of the terrorists included. This is a great re-imagination of 9/11’s events from four different points of view. The story is a consideration of four wild characters that are diverse and how they react to 9/11’s events, when, as sudden as a lady letting her linen gown fall, the whole skyscraper plunged its cover and disappeared, with a rippling noise that is silvery. I like the lawyer character because he drops his faith and later on saddened by the ugly and deplorable sight of a huge current nation. The country tries to cure itself by this old magic candles and flags that are tired, the spirit of humans inflexibly dripping its vain gestures that are colorful into the void (Updike 129).

The tale then wonderfully moves to Mohamed, one of the Muslim terrorists, who considers America as a society, which is not clean, mutilated by an awful carelessness of rules and an electronic hallucination of imaginary pleasures and opportunities. Jim Finch’s office is situated high up at the World Trade Center, and he is speaking with his wife through the phone when he comprehends how enormous his predicament is. Carolyn is the fourth character. She is aboard the aircraft that was compelled to plow Pennsylvania’s earth instead of the White House, by a scrum of travelers. Carolyn was able to cry manifestly in her throbbing head and asking God to have mercy (Updike 156).

However many people may have a high regard for the writing, the brilliance of the story and the observations’ acuity, they might not be greatly moved. This is for the reason that anyone can access news about an occurrence like 9/11, and putting it down fictionally in a manner that brings about fresh emotions is difficult. Here, fiction is defeated by nonfiction, at least until people’s Tolstoy is found. Further, only an author who completely commands his craft could even try a demanding story as this one.

The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe

This story vividly embraces the unforeseen elderly man’s response to a violent act within the existential queries that afflict him. The accumulation of knowledge is put to test by this in order to question God’s ways to man or even the likelihood of God in scientific inquiry’s manifestation and life’s randomness. It is astonishing how the tale is involved in foreign post-retirement travelling, and gives a description of a source of pleasure that is unexpected. Martin Fairchild, chased to the streets when the purse of his wife is seized in Seville, ends up considering himself less vulnerable, and instead feels more alive. In his speeding up world, Martin did not enjoy supplementary contact (Updike 187).

A grandfather questions why he holds onto ancient times, items that were owned by his mother. These people are survivors of a lifetime where the grandfather was the last witness who was caring, remnants that did not have the will to desert. The memories evoked by these things are sweet but are dangerous too. At the conclusion of the story a few old doors being saved by him, fall on him. Symbolically, then, being obsessed with the past can be lethal. These stories are made so good by the openness of the meaning of experience, and the reader is made to appreciate small fiction at its top. This tale is an experience that is captured satisfyingly (Updike 216).

The tale is like an ontology philosophical dissertation. If that appears as daunting, it is theoretical instead. A fiction writer who can lead his reader to such psychological tangles while making connections that are incontrovertible with his subject’s sensibilities is a demonstration of how deep human faith and perceptions of fear are, or its absence. Many writers will not dare follow such paths.

The Full Glass

In this story, there is a reflection by an old man on why he always wants his bedtime glass of water to be filled to the brim. He makes a decision as he wants to take his medicine or since water is helpful to him. He reflects back over the fountains of drinking and springs that were ice-cold during his youth that led him to be enthusiastic for the next second of life, one moment that will be brimming after another. That enthusiasm is what makes up John Updike’s writing, not at least this last edition, so splendidly celebrates (Updike 267).

Updike articulates that spidery striders, which strolled on the surface of the water and golden-brown inter-locking rings were thrown by the dimples around their feet onto the bottom that was sandy. This description is unassuming and thus far miraculously precise. Updike observes the shades cast by the alignments made by the feet of the insects, and those shadows’ shades are seen on the ground texture where they drop. The ‘tin dipper’ used by him to take water from the spring joins back to the filled title glass and later on in the tale the storyteller, sleeping with his wife, cannot go back to unconsciousness, like the strider of water held up on the tension surface of her beautiful immobility (Updike 279).

The story displays the fundamental qualities of an author who bestrode the literary landscape of America for a long time. This is a talent that is virtuosic for sensual account, the weaving of theme and image, which are seemingly effortless, and a capacity that is almost Proustian to soak up the reader in adolescence childhood quiddities. The tale certainly condenses the happiness of a lifetime into one moment that is brimming of the bedtime routine of an old man.

Work Cited

Updike, John. My Father’s Tears and Other Stories. Melbourne: Random House LLC, 2009. Print.