The Disposable Rocket

             John Updike’s The Disposable Rocket describes what it is like to live in an ageing man’s body. He discusses the struggles and the advantages of the male body and compares them to those of a female’s body as well as how both bodies gradually betray their owners. He also delves into the mental differences and how the genders vary in thought. The writer, John Updike, has had the honor of working alongside many famous authors including J. D. Salinger, Henry Green, and James Joyce. Updike himself won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1980 for his book Rabbit is Rich.

          When Updike wrote this essay, he was on the receiving end of his body’s betrayal. As a 59-year-old man, Updike realized that his body had begun to give up at his expense. Updike wrote this essay to make younger readers appreciate their bodies while they can, and to take care of them. Another reason he may have wrote it is to explain the experience of being a man to women reading the essay. Since nearly everyone will only ever experience what it’s like to be one gender, it can be very helpful to gain understanding of the other. For these reasons, Updike was likely writing towards a younger audience. An older man reading this essay would not learn as much, but may enjoy it as they could relate to Updike’s struggles.

          Most of the essay is an onslaught of literary devices. In the very first sentence, Updike describes inhabiting a man’s body as “much like having a bank account.” He concludes with the analogy of a man and his body being like a boy and his buddy with his parents’ car keys, you’re “just along for the ride.” These metaphors and analogies make Updike’s claims easier for the reader to understand. While the way he describes ageing is powerful, his comparisons between male and female bodies are questionable. No one has substantial credibility to speak on the other gender’s behalf.

via reddit.com u/slivr33

"Any accounting of male-female differences must include the male’s superior recklessness, a drive not, I think, toward death, as the darkest feminist cosmogonies would have it, but to test the limits, to see what the traffic will bear—a kind of mechanic’s curiosity"