John Updike's Separating Essay

No matter how old someone is when their parents get divorced, their life is always affected somehow. In John Updike’s “Separating,” each child is affected individually by their parent’s divorce but the fifteen-year-old boy, John, does not take the news as well as his siblings do. When Richard and Joan Maples decide that it is best for their marriage to end, they agree to tell each child about the divorce individually (1426). Every family is different in their own way, which also means that each child within that family is different and handles life changing news differently than the siblings do. The family is throwing a party for their oldest, Judith, when she comes home from England and that is when each child finds out about the divorce.

John is curious as to why his parents did not tell the children that they were not getting along (1429). Children can sometimes sense when the atmosphere they are accustomed to is off balance, but maybe that was not the same in the Maples’ case. The parents might have just been trying to keep everything in balance and not make the children feel like anything was wrong in the home or in their marriage. After John asks his parents the questions that he has, he “flipped out; he shouted and ate a cigarette and made a salad out of his napkin and told [them] how much he hated school” (1432). John acts this way out of anger because no child ever expects their parents to get a divorce. He reacts to show his parents how angry he is that they did not tell the children how they were not getting along or not just coming right out with the news when it was decided; they waited for the right time to tell each child. However, the two girls took the news “pretty calmly” and the other son, Dickie, had “nothing much” to say about the divorce (1432-33). No child wants their parents to get divorced and most certainly do not ask for it, but divorce is just a part of life that children have no control