The Centaur is a 1963 novel by John Updike. It won the National Book Award in 1964. The story concerns George Caldwell, a school teacher, and his son Peter, outside of Alton (i.e., Reading), Pennsylvania. The novel explores the relationship between the depressive Caldwell and his anxious son. Like James Joyce in Ulysses, Updike drew on the myths of antiquity in an attempt to turn a modern and common scene into something more profound, a meditation on life and man's relationship to nature and eternity. George is both the Centaur Chiron and Prometheus (some readers might see George's son Peter as Prometheus), Mr. Hummel, the automobile mechanic, is Hephaestus (AKA Vulcan); and so forth.
Each volume of Poetry for Students provides analysis of approximately 20 poems that teachers and librarians have identified as the most frequently studied in literature courses. Some of the poems covered in this volume include:
The Poison in the Blood
The book tells the story of the poisoned arrow that shot Paris (as in
Helen of Troy). In the beginning, Earth created monsters. One of these
was the Hydra. Heracles killed it, then dipped his arrows in the venom
of its blood. Years later, when his wife was abducted by a centaur, he
killed the rapist with one of these arrows. The dying centaur told
Heracles' wife to dip a robe in his blood, and give it to Heracles as a
token of her love. Heracles put on the robe, and was burned alive by
the poison. He built himself a funeral pyre, but no one would light it.
Finally, a small boy named Philoctetes did as Heracles asked, and
Heracles left him his arrows as a reward. It was with one of these
arrows that Paris was shot. Dying, he was taken into the woods where
there lived a goddess who had once loved Paris, and had the power of
healing. But she refused to cure him, and sent him away. Repenting, she
then hurried after him, but it was too late.
