ABSTRACT
In John Updike’s short story “The Music School,” protagonist Alfred Schweigen waits for his daughter to finish her piano lesson, contemplating the host, confession, and his own infidelity. He surmises, “My friends are like me. We are all pilgrims, faltering toward divorce.”1 His diction is suggestive. The word “pilgrims” is of course associated with the founding of American culture, invoking first grade history lessons of those who came over on the Mayflower, divorcing themselves from both England and the English church.2 Thus in making his pilgrims of the American 1960s falter toward divorce, Updike both invokes their Americanness and links that Americanness with divorce. On one level, Updike suggests the valorization of divorce as a shrine. However, unlike most pilgrims who set out ardently toward their shrine, these pilgrims falter, meaning they head for their shrine, divorce, perhaps accidentally, unaware of the values that take them there in the first place.
