The Alligators by John Updike, 1958
The magic trick:
Leaning into the author’s tendency to imbue the young protagonist with a writer’s talent for social analysis
Some early – probably minor, if we’re being honest – Updike for you today.
It’s a story about sixth-graders in Pennsylvania. Charlie is lonely for friends. Joan is the new girl from Maryland. Charlie thinks maybe she’s his ticket to social status.
There’s always something strangely out of place when authors attach their own particular gifts to their characters. Why do all of Oscar Wilde’s characters talk with such remarkable wit? Why is an Alice Munro’s normal everyday protagonist blessed with genius-level powers of observation? The same issue arises here when we find that Charlie, for an 11-year-old, has a remarkably analytical eye for the behavioral tendencies of his peers. Almost Updike-esque, you might say.
Ah, but perhaps this is a case of feature-not-bug.
The story doesn’t necessarily ignore the fact that the protagonist has an author’s obsession with organizing principles. The story is about this boy’s obsessive cataloging of society. That’s the whole point.
And that’s quite a trick on Updike’s part.
The selection:
The children, Charlie among them, laughed, and Joan, blushing a soft brown color and raising her voice excitedly against the current of hatred, got in deeper by trying to explain: “Like there, instead of just reading about plants in a book, we’d one day all bring in a flower we’d picked and cut it open and look at it in a microscope.” Because of her saying this, shadows, of broad leaves and wild slashed flowers, darkened and complicated the idea they had of her.
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