All in all, as Updike was rewarded by the renowned Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for twice, there is no doubt that he bas a talent in composing literary works and his works worth reading。

In Updike’s own words, the majority of his stories are written “directly out of my own experience”, but functioning “through a basic resistance to tidy stories, or stories that end with a moral”(2005)。 It is universally acknowledged that art comes from life while transcends life, and Updike’s philosophy of composing short stories tally with this principle。 

The story “My Father’s Tears” also demonstrates his distinct understanding of composition。 When the story was first published, Updike was already an old man in his seventies。 In no more than six thousand words, the story unfolds the narrator’s life picture scroll from his childhood till the old age。 Updike sews his own experience in the story, and tells some thought-provoking truths through the lips of the narrator—Jim。

1。3 Structure of the paper

This paper aims to analyze heterotopian spaces in the short story “My Father’s Tears” to explore John Updike’s philosophy in composition from a spatial perspective, and to discover the reasons of the arrangement of spaces in his works。 This paper is pided into five parts。

Chapter One gives an introduction to the thesis by providing several academic studies on the story “My Father’s Tears”, introducing the background of the author and the story, and listing the structure of the paper。

Chapter Two helps to understand the notion of heterotopias by introducing its derivation and the most typical form as well as six principles put forward by French philosopher Michel Foucault。 Moreover, this chapter emphasizes the influence of heterotopias in appreciating literary works, and presents several studies on analyzing heterotopias in literary works, which confirms the significance of this research。

Chapter Three is the major part of the paper, focusing on heterotopias in “My Father’s Tears”。 It analyzes the traits of heterotopias in three places, so this chapter is further pided into three subsections。 These three heterotopias function differently, as the Alton Station being a heterotopia accumulating time, the farmhouse in Vermont being like a mirror reflecting the relation between Jim and his father-in-law, and the hometown in Pennsylvania being a heterotopia reflecting several interpersonal relations as well as Jim’s relation with his hometown。

Chapter Four explores the reasons of setting heterotopias in ”My Father’s Tears” mainly from two dimensions: the social background of John Updike, and his inclination in composition caused by his pursuit in literature。论文网

Chapter Five concludes the whole paper, and points out the value of this paper both in theoretical and practical aspects。 

2。 Heterotopias

2。1 Understanding Heterotopias

The term, “heterotopias” was a concept of space coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his essay "Of Other Spaces" (1986)。 In contrast to utopias, which are “sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society” and so are “sites with no real place”, Foucault points out the existence of “heterotopias”, which are “real places” that are formed in the very founding of society。 Heterotopias are “something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted”, and they are outside of all places as well as absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect。 

A very basic conception should be mentioned that Foucault holds that the twentieth century is an “epoch of space”, and people are “in the epoch of juxtaposition”, which is totally different from what people nineteenth century obsessed in。 What is more, the conception of space has experienced an evolution from the space of emplacement at Galileo’s time to expansion, till the current “the site”, so “our epoch is one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites。 “As a result, people’s experience of the world is more that of ”a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein”。