Excerpt: pg 119-120
Alexandra walked to the tub edge, saw the water was about four feet deep, let her towel drop and slipped in. Hot. Scalding. In the old days, before burning her completely at the stake they would pull pieces of flesh from a witch's flesh with red hot tongs; this was a window into that furnace of suffering.“Too Hot?” Van Horne asked, his voice even hollower, more mock-manly, amid these sequestered steamy acoustics.
“I’ll get used to it,” she said grimly, seeing that Jane had. Jane looked furious that Alexandra was here at all, making waves, gently though she had tried to lower herself into the agonizing water. Alexandra felt her breasts tug upwards, buoyant. She had slipped in up to her neck and so had no dry hand to accept the joint; Van Horne placed it between her lips. She drew deep and held in the smoke. Her submerged trachea burned. The waters temperature was becoming one with her skin and, looking down, she saw how they had all been dwindled, Jane’s body distorted with wedge-shaped wavering legs and Van Horne’s penis floating like a pale torpedo, uncircumcised and curiously smooth, like one of those vanilla plastic vibrators that have appeared in city drugstore display windows now that the revolution is on and the sky is the limit.
While this excerpt did not have a huge impact on the understanding of the novel or on any of the major themes, it did represent the first sign of conflict within the triad of witches. It also in hindsight foreshadowed a further divide and change of character within Jane.
I chose this passage of the novel since it was one of the most compact examples of the author’s use of vivid imagery. In an interview of the author, John Updike, he claimed that description was one of his most prominent goals. He uses a lot of detail in his work, and I have also noticed that throughout the novel, he almost uses similes in his description of both the male and female organs. I’m not sure why however. When I looked back at the novel he did not seem to use this kind of rhetorical device as often in other circumstances. However, I think that it might be in order to further describe the character themselves. An example of this is in the line that describes Van Horne’s penis “like a pale torpedo, uncircumcised and curiously smooth, like one of those vanilla plastic vibrators that have appeared in city drugstore display windows now that the revolution is on and the sky is the limit.” This description relates to the women’s curiosity towards Van Horne, and also the use of the word “torpedo” denotes the roughness and the harshness of his character. In addition, I feel that the simile involving the “vanilla plastic vibrators” and the following line “now that the revolution is on and the sky is the limit” also add to his overall characterization yet, the use of the word “vanilla” is confusing since, typically “vanilla” would refer to something that is plain and traditional. However, I feel that the next line was meant relate to Van Horne’s appearance in the town and it also in my opinion adds to the feel of his lack of class or authenticity and the idea that he is part of a phase.
As I mentioned before Updike often uses both historical and religious allusions. For example he frequently refers to Ann Hutchinson and the puritan era. The previously cited historical allusion referring to the burning at the stake and the tearing of the flesh of a witch helps to set the scene. Updike went further that simply describing the water has solely hot and scalding. Both of which alone, are weak in comparison to the imagery and that he depicted. He did however in that depiction use words such as: scalding, red hot, furnace, burning, steamy, and agonizing in order to move the minds of the readers towards an understanding of the temperature, and even the mood between Jane and Alexandra.
