Updike ends Terrorist with unresolved ambiguity rather than clean triumph over faith.

Evidence

However, as Kierkegaard reminds us, resignation is the last stage before faith. As Ahmad and Jack sail through the Lincoln Tunnel and out again into the sunlight, the death of Ahmad’s religious faith yields the birth of something more ambiguous and imperfect. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 143

Categorization

• XREF: Lukács’s idea that the novel is the epic of a world abandoned by God coincides with Kierkegaard’s resignation-before-faith here — both place the modern subject in an unfinished metaphysical state.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘ambiguous ending’ as the signature formal device that distinguishes a novel contesting Islamophobia from one reinforcing it — usable directly in the Hamid/Naqvi chapter.
• QUESTION: Does the Kierkegaard ground really hold for a character who has lost God entirely, or is Morey overreading a secular sentimentalism as proto-faith?