Bibliography

John., Updike,. The Witches of Eastwick. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985. Print.

images from: bing.com

http://67.222.6.107/~pebblest/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/burned-out-match1.jpg

"The Witches of Eastwick -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 20 Nov. 2009. .

Relation to Real(ity) Life?

In John Updike's novel, The Witches of Eastwick, there is the idea of sleeping around with everyone knowing about every aspect of your life, since the town is so small. This theme seems to be becoming more and more popular now, especially in T.V. shows. We see the plot line of sleeping around with friends, fellow co-workers, and neighbors in popular shows like "Gossip Girl," "Grey's Anatomy," "Secret Life of the American Teenager," and "90210." But no show follows the plot line than "Desperate Housewives." The show takes place in a suburban town, and everyone in the show knows everything about everyone else in the town. The only major difference is that no one in "Desperate Housewives" is a witch. There is also the similarity of a new man moving into town, and the women all throwing themselves after them. Is there a possibility that the book influenced some of these shows? Of course it's possible, and I mean come on, who can't resist a good drama like The Witches of Eastwick?

(Of course, there is the television show "The Witches of Eastwick," but these are shows that may have been influenced by the book, not created exactly from it!)

Rhetoric Study

John Updike's most prominent rhetorical devices used throughout his novel is definitely imagery. As supported in one of my previous posts, Updike uses long descriptions to put the reader into the story. One of his descriptions in the book goes on for about ten pages! He also uses vibrant similes when describing people or places. His simile's were some of my favorite parts of the book, because they were so oddly accurate. In my opinion, not many people would be creative enough to come up with comparisons like John Updike does. Some of my favorites include:

- "The town in the winter, deprived of tourists, settled more compactly upon itself, like a log fire burning late into the evening" (Updike 224).

- "Her S's hurt, stinging like match tips" (Updike 241).

- "Alexandra felt a sliding start within her; an immense slick slope of depression was revealed as if by the sliding upwards of an automatic garage door, the door activated by a kind of electric eye of her own internal sensing and giving on a wide underground ramp whose downward trend there was no reversing, not by pills or sunshine or a good night's sleep" (Updike 252).

- "Insects chewed at the silence; sun light pressed on Alexandra's face and she could feel the hair of her single thick braid heat up like an electric coil" (Updike 291).

- "Alexandra noticed the damp dark earth around it crawling with mites of some kind, reddish specks collected like filings around a magnet, scurrying in their tiny world several orders lower, on the terraces of life, than her own" (Updike 320).

All of the above quotes show Updike's common use of similes. He always comes up with very original similes, one's I can say I have definitely never heard before. They all give the reader an interesting image in their head, with a strong image to compare it to.

With Updike's intricate descriptions and his ingenious similes, the reader can learn about the characters, understand the setting, and understand what is going on. Through his similes, we can learn about the characters motions, and how they go through with actions. Also, we can learn about their personality, or how they are, for example, when Updike compares Jane's pronunciation of S's as a just put out match. His descriptions also add a certain quality to the story. While most of them are pretty lengthy, Updike undoubtedly describes the scenery in more detail than any other author's writings I have read. These give me a stronger sense of what Updike was picturing when he was writing the book, and the confident use of adjectives add to the images he creates. Without these audacious rhetorical devices, John Updike's book would not have the same power as it does now.

Themes From American Literature

In most of John Updike's longer pieces of work, there is a repeating theme of the "importance of the individual person's struggle to understand his or her place in the universe and comprehend the meaning of life." Sukie, Alexandra, and Jane each go through this journey in the book.

Throughout the book, all of the witches grow, mature, and learn from their experiences in Eastwick. Each witch is previously divorced, and now sleeping around with different men; none of them are looking for a seriuos relationship. They are all looking for something that is just purely fun. None of them have any real purpose for living, they all have no intent direction planned on going in their lives. They all just take every day as it comes.

But then, everything changes when Darryl Van Horne moves into their small town of Eastwick. He seduces each one of the women, and they are content sharing him until he does something unexpected. Darryl marries one of their young neighbors, Jenny. The witches all get jealous and plan to seek revenge, so with their powers, they give Jenny cancer. Later in the novel, Darryl and Jenny's brother flee the town after Jenny's death. Alexandra, Jane and Sukie all doubt their judgements on their decision to give Jenny cancer.

The women are all affected from Darryl's departure. They begin to doubt themselves, and they all reach somewhat of a lowpoint of their lives in the novel. But, each of the witches were able to learn from their mistake. They realize no man is worth killing someone for, especially with the guilt that comes along with it. Alexandra, Jane and Sukie each grow and mature from the mistake they made. Each woman ends up getting with their ideal man, and leaving town.

So it is quite apparant that John Updike's theme of understanding a person's struggle to find his or her place in life continues into his novel The Witches of Eastwick. All of the witches find their place, after various lovers, then the same lover, killing a woman, and then running away with each woman's respective man. Throughout their long and complex journey together, the witches find out who they are; that they are better than the women who killed Jenny.

Character Study - Darryl Van Horne

Darryl Van Horne: Darryl Van Horne is the new neighbor in the small town of Eastwick. He catches the attention of the whole town, and especially the attention of Alexandra, Jane and Sukie. Some of them are interested in him because of what he is doing to the precious marshlands his home is on, and others (the three witch friends) are interested in him out of sexual desire.

When he first moves to Eastwick, Van Horne was always the center of the converstaion, but not much could be said about him. He was a mysterious man; he kept to himself, and never went out his first few weeks of living there. Later, he starts becoming more social but still remains a mystery and is hard to understand who exactly he is and what he is like. He has his own way of almost controlling each of the three witches, as if able to put a spell on them or something. Each woman is swooned by this man, and falls victim to his 'charm.' Eventually, he ends up seducing each of the women, having sex with all of them.

Darryl is described as a 'devil-like' character, and this can be seen at many points in the novel. One example, is his name. The 'D' in Darryl and 'V' in Van give his name the same sound as 'devil,' with both Darryl and devil starting with the letter d, ending with an l, and having two syllables. Also, his last name is Horne. This relates to horns on a devil, giving his name even more similarity to a devil.

Along with the close relations between the two names, Darryl also is like the Devil through his actions. In the Bible, the Devil seduces Eve by offering her fruit from the forbidden tree. He tempts her until she says yes, much like Darryl tempts the women until they consent to have sex with him. He is always seducing them by inviting them over, and gives them expensive alcohol to try when they come in hopes to make their decision making abilities a tad fuzzier.

It is without a doubt that Darryl Van Horne strongly symbolizes the Devil.

Character Study - Witches

Jane Smart: Jane Smart is one of the three main witches in the novel. She is described as the "artistically inclined-a musician" (Updike 21). Updike also states that "Jane was hot, short, concentrated like a pencil point" (Updike 3). Updike's comparison to Jane being hot reminded me of his concentration on Jane's pronunciation of every word she spoke, with every word containing an s being emphasized. The one simile in particular that stood out to me was when he said, "each s seemed the black tip of a just extinguished match" (Updike 1), comparing her speech to something hot and short.

Also, from the way Updike has Jane act in later situations, she could be considered conservative. She often keeps to herself, and shows her emotions to only her two best friends. At one point, after she performs marvelously at one of her cello concerts, Darryl Van Horne just goes on and on about how wonderful she was. Then he later suggests that she didn't put her heart into the piece. Jane is instantaneously quiet, and says nothing to defend herself. She just continues to stand there, with anger slowly building up inside of her from being offended. And finally, her friends even discuss this about her. They mention how

"'She has so much potential....But she wastes herself....It's a terrible waste, a conservatory graduate playing fiddle for a bunch of deaf old biddies in a dilapidated church,' said Alexandra. 'She feels safe here,' Sukie said." Both her friends are concerned that Jane can achieve bigger and better things, but she refuses to go anywhere outside of her comfort zone.'

(Updike 26-27).

Alexandra Spofford: Alexandra is the oldest of the three witches, and probably, in my opinion, the most immature. She initially stood out to me in the beginning of all the three witches. She has this strange obsession with one of her lovers, and even had a tribute to him. He was of Italian heritage, so it was a whole wall of jars of spaghetti sauce. Updike explains it as

"Mason jars of spaghetti sauce, sauce for more spaghetti than she and her children could consume even if bewitched for a hundred years in an Italian fairy tale, jar upon jar lifted steaming from the white-specked blue boiler on the trembling, singing round wire rack"

(Updike 4).

I love this comparison, and it definitely stuck with me throughout the whole novel.
I also found Alexandra to be very territorial; usually with her friends and lovers. One particular moment like this that I remember is when Alexandra is talking to Jane on the phone, Alexandra brings up their usual Thursday plans for hanging out at one of the three friends houses. Jane tells Alexandra that she can't make it, because she is meeting with Darryl. Updike writes

"It made Alexandra angry, to be put on the defensive, when she was the one being snubbed. She told her friend, 'I thought Thursdays were sacred.'"

(Updike 63).

Alexandra automatically gets offended, and becomes curt with Jane.
Another incident where she is territorial is with her lovers. Alexandra would become furious with either Jane or Sukie if they slept with her Italian lover, even though they are strictly a fling. She also is strangely protective of Van Horne, even before she sees him. As soon as she finds out that there is a new neighbor in town, she doesn't stop asking questions about him to others. Also, later in the book, Jane goes over to Van Horne's House. When Alexandra first finds out about it when talking to Jane, she says, "'You actually went??'" (Updike 56) And then later she asks, "'You were alone??'" (Updike 57). Alexandra gets extremely jealous over Jane, because she is so territorial of Darryl Van Horne.

Sukie Rougemont: Sukie is the youngest and most outgoing of all the witches. She has a free spirit, and loves knowing every one's business. She works on the town's newspaper, and is head of the gossip column. Updike describes her appearance as a

"cheerful simian thrust: Sukie's big teeth pushed her profile below the brief nose out in a curve...which was longer and more complex in shape than her lower,..."

(Updike 24).

Sukie's appearance is very complicated, which I think directly related to her personality. We don't hear a whole lot about Sukie, at least not as much as we do about Jane and Alexandra, making her harder to figure out.
Another quality of Sukie is that she isn't afraid to be herself. For example, Sukie is the only witch at first who doesn't act all sweet to Darryl Van Horne. She gives him a piece of her mind, throwing a bit of an attitude in there. She pursues what she wants, and in this case it is answers to the questions she has for Van Horne. Sukie also isn't afraid to offend Van Horne with her questions, going wherever she likes to in her questioning, she's "not ashamed to ask" anything (Updike 50).

Movie v. Musical v. Book

John Updike's popular novel The Witches of Eastwick has been adapted into a movie and a musical. All three were raved about, instantly popular, but which one is the favored?
MUSICAL
In the musical, there were of course, some changes. The musical starts off with a little girl singing praises about Eastwick. Then the play continues on skipping a lot of Updike's details about each individual and the depth of their inner conflicts. The women continue on to have martinis and complain about the lack of men in their life. Then of course, there are the obvious musical numbers added that are absent from the book.
MOVIE
In the movie, it also has its difference from the book. The movie is of course, Hollywood-fied, and its biggest example of this being at the end of the movie. Darryl, in the book just an average almost broke man, has quite the spin on himself in the movie. At the end of the movie, he turns into an enormous demon and tries to kill the three witches.
BOOK
The book, for me, is personally always the best. I think books always are better than the movie or play remakes. The book was the original, so there was nothing changed about it. It includes the detail, gives the reader the best idea of what is going on, what the scenes look like, and what's happening between the characters. The characters and events are more realistic, the plots more plausible; although the movie is arguably more climatic with its...er...interesting twist at the end.

Image Focus

Below are images and some links that remind me of The Witches of Eastwick:

This image to the left symbols Jane's speech. Both the match and her speech pronunciation are short, terse, and abrupt. I thought this was the most interesting description of Jane's speech. This comparison first didn't make sense to me, but after thinking about it, I realized just how good of a comparison this was to a person's speech. It's different, attention catching, and interesting. The description implies that Jane's speech is coarse, blunt, and has the sound of a match being burned out; when she says anything with a s he mentions how it makes the same sound as the match: thsssssss.

The image to the right reminded me of when Alexandra made her pasta sauce shrine to her lover. "She returned to putting up Mason jars of spaghetti sauce, sauce for more spaghetti than she and her children could consume even if bewitched for a hundred years in an Italian fairy tale, jar upon jar lifted trembling, singing round wire rack. It was, she dimly perceived, some kind of ridiculous tribute to her present lover a plumber of Italian ancestory."
Her shrine of enless jars of sauce represent her endless problems with men. And the fact that they are pasta sauce symbolize that they are more related to her present lover who happens to be an Italian man.
I really found his imagery and word choice very interesting in this excerpt. I found his comparason of it to the Italian fairy tale and being unable to finish all the sauce in that sense a very clever and humorous way to tell the reader just how much sauce Alexandra had made.


http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/30/5d/8c/storm-coming.jpg


This image is exactly what I pictured when Alexandra Spofford, who can create thunderstorms, when she was walking along the beach to the house of their new mysterious neighbor, Darryl Van Horne. I believe her power to create thunderstorms is a mirror to her personality. Whenever she is feeling rather down, as she does when walking to Darryl's house, she brings on the thunderstorms to rid of the people. Thunderstorms are usually considered a symbol of anger, and when Alexandra gets angry, especially when things don't go her way, she brings about a thunderstorm to ease her mood.



http://sharesong.org/womaninsun.jpg



When Alexandra calls upon a storm, I found it to be a symbol of her moving from an angrier state of mind, to a more peaceful state of mind. The link to the picture above shows a woman who looks serene, similar to when Alexandra calls upon a storm. Storms look scary and symbolize anger and fury, but one the rain starts, the sound is peaceful and soothing. As soon as she creates the storm, she makes her transition to being agitated and irritated to being more tranquil.

(When trying to attach the third and fourth image, it said the images were attached but they never showed up. So the links are given for the pictures.)

Allusion to Hocus Pocus?

Hocus Pocus Trailor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJPvCLlm10

I found John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick similar to the Disney movie "Hocus Pocus." The characters are similar in a number of ways. In "Hocus Pocus," the main characters are three witches who are best friends, similar to Jane, Alexandra, and Sukie in The Witches of Eastwick. Also, each individual from "Hocus Pocus" is relatable to one in The Witches of Eastwick. Sarah Sanderson, from "Hocus Pocus," is similar to Jane. Sarah is considered the 'sexy' witch, and Jane is described as 'hot.' Winifred, or Winnie, from "Hocus Pocus" is the heavier one of the friends, just like Alexandra is of the three witches from the book. Then Mary is parallel to Sukie, both always hunting for the latest gossip around town in order to get ahead of everyone. Both Mary and Sukie feel the need to know more than the others, to have control of the situations by knowing what's going on around them.

Could the movie have based their characters from the book? Who knows, "It's just a bunch of Hocus Pocus!"

Focus on Speech

Whenever John Updike has a character speak in his book, he almost always mentions how the phrase was said. He does this with each of the main witch characters, but especially with Jane Smart. In just the first 3 pages, he makes six references to the speech of the women speaking. When Updike makes a reference to Jane's voice, he often compares her to darker things. For example, he says:
- "'And oh yes,' Jane Smart said in her hasty yet purposeful way; each s seemed the black tip of a just extinguished match held in playful hurt, as children do, against the skin."
- "...the last syllable almost barked, its r dropped in Massachusetts style."
- "...Jane said swiftly, her s's chastening."
- "Her voice bristled like a black cat's fur, iridescent."
- "...pressing the ncs hard into Alexandra's ear."
These are all examples where Updike puts emphasis on the pronounciation of Jane's dialogue. When he mentions her speech ethics, he always compares them to more somber images, including a black cat and a burnt match on a child's skin.
I think these descriptions of her speech are meant to represent her personality early in the book, foreshadowing her persona before the readers really get to know her.