Roger's Version by John Updike

First published: 1986

Type of plot: Novel of ideas

Time of work: 1984-1985

Locale: An unnamed New England city

Principal Characters:

• Roger Lambert, a divinity-school professor
• Esther Lambert, Roger’s current wife
• Dale Kohler, a graduate student in computer science
• Verna Ekelof, Roger’s niece, a single mother who lives in a housing project in the same city as the Lamberts
• Paula Ekelof, Verna’s illegitimate two-year-old daughter

The Novel

John Updike’s long-standing interest in religious issues and his continuing fascination with human sexual behavior are combined in this novel set in New England, the landscape that admirably served an earlier American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, for his investigation of similar subjects in his American classic The Scarlet Letter (1850). Told from the point of view of Roger Lambert, the novel presents an intriguing narrative of modern concerns with science and theology. Lambert, a divinity-school professor married for the second time and living happily in an older suburb near the university, is approached by Dale Kohler, a graduate student in computer sciences at the same institution. Dale wants Roger’s support in obtaining funding for a most unusual project: He wishes to use the university’s computer to prove the existence of God. After an impassioned conversation, Roger provides Dale with the information he needs to seek a grant from the theology school.

Dale has sought out Roger at the suggestion of Roger’s niece, Verna Ekelof. The daughter of Roger’s half-sister, Verna has fled the family home in Cleveland with her illegitimate mulatto child. Roger has had nothing to do with his niece, but at Dale’s insistence, he visits her; he is immediately attracted to her sexually, and the worldly-wise Verna takes advantage of his interest to manipulate him throughout the novel.

Roger’s efforts to help Verna finish her education provide him with opportunities to see her, and their family ties make it easy for him to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner. Dale receives an invitation, too, and Roger’s wife Esther immediately takes a strong interest in the computer-science student. During the remaining months of winter, Dale prepares his materials to seek the grant, Roger continues to assist Verna in several ways, including financially, and—in Roger’s mind, at least—Esther and Dale engage in an affair, using the third-floor studio in the Lambert home or the slovenly student apartment where Dale lives with his Korean roommate.

In February, the Grants Committee awards Dale his grant, and his search for the proof of God’s existence begins in earnest. Roger imagines the graduate student seated before his computer screen, manipulating data, cross-referencing information, searching for patterns that might suggest an intelligent being at the seat of creation. Excited by the repetitions of certain combinations, Dale presses on until first a face, then a hand, emerges on the screen—then the computer overloads and shuts itself down.

While this investigation goes on, Verna’s situation at home deteriorates. Lambert is called one evening in the spring to come immediately to Verna’s apartment, because her daughter Paula is apparently ill. Roger discovers a clear case of child abuse; he takes charge of the situation, delivers mother and daughter to the hospital, and then tries to make excuses for Verna with the doctors and social workers. When Verna is forced to leave the girl overnight at the hospital, Roger takes her back to her apartment, and the two finally make love.

After the consummation of Roger’s physical attraction to his niece, the novel moves quickly toward its conclusion. Dale decides to give up his project, claiming that it has eroded his faith; his affair with Esther seems to wane, too. Roger helps Verna come to the conclusion that it would be better for her to return to her mother in Cleveland. In the final scene, Roger and his wife have returned to what is for them a normal lifestyle; the twin crises in their lives, caused by the intrusion of the two young people who have placed unusual and competing demands on them, is apparently over. All is not as it was before Dale Kohler and Verna Ekelof entered the picture, however; Esther is pregnant, presumably with Dale’s child. Roger is left to accept this permanent alteration in their lives.

The Characters

Roger Lambert is both narrator and principal subject of this novel. As narrator, he serves as the medium through which events in the story are filtered, and his unusual capacity for self-reflection allows readers significant insight into his character. It also nudges readers to adopt his opinions of other characters, however, which may be at variance with the truth. A former pastor and now divinity-school professor, he represents the attitude of many Americans toward religion: For him it has become a form of social psychology and an intellectual exercise, divorced from any of the fervor of faith that characterized believers in earlier ages. He is uncomfortable when a devout believer such as Dale Kohler accosts his complacency. Nevertheless, the author creates him with sufficient sympathy for the reader to see him as a typical Updike hero: a complex individual struggling with desires of both the spirit and the flesh.

Esther Lambert is less well developed, largely because she is seen only through the eyes of her husband. A woman possessed of courage, she is willing to brook social convention to steal Roger from his first wife (ruining his work as a pastor in the process) and then to take up with Dale to fulfill a sexual appetite that her husband cannot satisfy. Though certainly not devoid of intelligence, she serves primarily as a complement to Roger’s overindulgence in intellectual pursuits.

Dale Kohler is a true believer in God; his passion for seeking the deity stands in contrast with Roger’s cool, analytical approach to religious questions. The young computer-science student’s idealistic—and ultimately unsuccessful—attempt to use scientific knowledge (in this case, the power of the computer) to demonstrate with certainty that God is not a figment of the human imagination is both a typical application of the scientific method and an extension of a long philosophical and theological proof for God’s existence.

Verna Ekelof, like Esther, complements Roger’s intellectual side in that she is almost totally sensual. A rebellious young adult who has defied parents and social custom by becoming an unwed mother through an interracial relationship, she serves as a living reminder to Roger that he has yearnings of the flesh that are as powerful as his desire to explore the ideas and idiosyncrasies of heretics who influenced the Christian church in its early centuries. She also reminds Roger that he has responsibilities to society that extend beyond the domain of the university at which he earns a comfortable living.

Though not a fully developed character, Paula Ekelof, Verna’s illegitimate daughter, serves important functions in the novel. She plays a key role in the plot, since her presence drives Verna to the housing project. She is also the proximate cause of Roger’s lovemaking with his niece, since Verna’s abuse of Paula causes Roger to leave his home in the middle of the night to help his niece cope with her problem.

Critical Context

Roger’s Version is the middle novel in a trilogy Updike wrote as an extended commentary on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s story of religious intolerance and sexual repression is for Updike a profound commentary on the American character. Over a thirteen-year period, Updike wrote three novels, each focusing on these topics from the point of view of a character modeled on one of the three principal personages in Hawthorne’s tale: the adulteress Hester Prynne, whose character is reprised in Sarah Worth in the novel S. (1988); her lover, the respected minister Arthur Dimmesdale, recast as Tom Marshfield in A Month of Sundays (1975); and the relentless persecutor of Hester and Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingsworth, the model for Roger Lambert in Roger’s Version. As in almost all of his works, Updike focuses on the domestic scene, detailing the lives of everyday middle-class people struggling with their sexual desires and with a feeling of angst brought on by a modern world which has turned its back on God and is much the worse for having done so. The characters in this novel share many similarities with others in the Updike canon. In several ways, Roger is an intellectual version of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, principal character of four Updike novels which also examine people’s preoccupation with their sexual desires and their anxieties about the significance of their lives.

Bibliography

Duvall, John N. “The Pleasures of Textual/Sexual Wrestling: Pornography and Heresy in Roger’s Version.” Modern Fiction Studies 37 (Spring, 1991): 81-95. A poststructuralist analysis of the novel focusing on Roger’s unconscious erotic relationship with Dale. Duvall points out parallels between Roger’s interest in theology and pornography.

Greiner, Donald J. “Body and Soul: John Updike and The Scarlet Letter.” Journal of Modern Literature 15 (Spring, 1989): 475-495. Greiner discusses the ways Updike uses Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as the basis for his discussion of modern American mores and interests in three novels: Roger’s Version, A Month of Sundays, and S.

Neary, John. Something and Nothingness: The Fiction of John Updike and John Fowles. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Describes the reaction to the novel by several early reviewers. Neary argues that Roger is not really Barthian in his views; rather, the novel presents a Gnostic portrait of the deity. Though Roger manages to crush Dale’s spirit, the younger man’s optimism lives on in the transformation Esther undergoes.

Newman, Judie. John Updike. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Newman briefly summarizes the main action and shows how Updike has carefully crafted his narrative strategies to highlight his themes, theology and technology.

Schiff, James. “Updike’s Roger’s Version: Revisualizing The Scarlet Letter.” South Atlantic Review 57 (November, 1992): 59-76. Schiff compares the treatment of myth and witchcraft in New England as portrayed in Updike’s novel and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Wilson, Raymond J., III. “Roger’s Version: Updike’s Negative-Solid Model of The Scarlet Letter.” Modern Fiction Studies 35 (Summer, 1989): 241-250. Wilson discusses the many parallels between Updike’s novel and Hawthorne’s romance. He delineates ways Roger’s Version is more complex than its predecessor; he also demonstrates how Updike transforms Hawthorne’s tragedy into a comic vision of life.