Updike’s uncertain ending reveals the West’s comforting fairytales about itself

Evidence

In Updike, I have argued, the same urges to purification are explored, this time through the young Muslim protagonist, but they are rejected in favor of a kind of world-weary resilience, embodied by Jack Levy, which speaks of perseverance in the face of cultural exhaustion. As such, Updike’s novel ends in a more uncertain, indeterminate way. We may not have learned much about Islamist extremism, but we have understood something about the other fairytales by which the West seeks to comfort itself. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 144

Categorization

• XREF: ‘The other fairytales by which the West seeks to comfort itself’ is a strong critical counterpoint to the reader’s project of distinguishing contesting vs. reinforcing Islamophobia in Hamid and Naqvi.