John Updike is one of the most famous and remarkably prolific authors in the United States. “He wrote for several hours every morning, six days a week, a schedule he adhered to throughout his career”. With the passion of writing, he published twenty novels and fourteen short story collections, as well as poems, one play, a memoir, and literary criticism. In addition, he wrote several children's books. He won the three major American literary prizes: the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. “He was only the third American to win a second Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category”. “Updike has always been frank about his appreciation for the ‘middleness’ of American life”. His descriptive language presents three short stories “Man and Daughter in the Cold”, “Eros Rampant”, and “The Orphaned Swimming Pool”. These stories show the reactions of three couples to their mid-life crises. Attention to children, adultery, and separation may happen in unhappy marriages when the couples face their mid-life crises.  

“Man and Daughter in the Cold” is a story about Ethan who is troubled by an asthma attack while he is skiing with his daughter Becky. Although his breathing is very difficult, he still accompanies his daughter skiing. After returning home, Ethan goes out to shovel snow. Becky joins him soon. He is pleased for her demonstrating a preference for his company. “Eros Rampant” is a story about Richard and Joan Maple. They are not satisfied with their marriage. Both of them have adulterous intentions to compensate for their troubled marriage. “The Orphaned Swimming Pool” tells the story of divorce of Brad and Linda. They seem to live happily with adequately material conditions in neighbors’ eyes. But in the third summer time of having the swimming pool, the couple abandons the place, and the swimming pool becomes a community pool of sorts. Finally when Linda returns home after the divorce, she finds the pool is “one huge blue tear”. Only she had drowned in it.

In the story of “Man and Daughter in the Cold”, many couples like Ethan, who is very personable and pleased with his child. The relationship with children becomes the most important part of family life. Updike describes Elaine, Ethan’s wife, twice. Once is in a cafeteria. She is taking care of the twin sons and eating lunch with Matt Longley, a ski instructor. When Ethan joins them, his face is “absolutely white” due to the asthma attack. Becky is afraid to tell him because she “thought it might scare [Ethan]”. But, Elaine does not notice the signal of his sickness. Instead, she continues “shouting and laughing with a strange guilty shrillness” with Matt. On the way home, the couple does not have any communication; Ethan does not tell Elaine about his asthma attack. She still does not get any sense of his sickness. After arriving home, Elaine invites Matt to supper. Ethan needs to shovel out the Jeep in the cold. During his shoveling, his symptoms get worse. “His knees creaked, and his breathing shortened so that he had to pause”. He sees “again Elaine and Matt sitting flushed at the lodge table, Parkas off, in dishabille, as if sitting up in bed”. Many middle aged couples ignore the spouse intentionally or unintentionally.

On the other hand, Updike creates the warm bond and love between father and daughter. They have a very good reciprocal interaction. Although the weather and temperature are very severe and bitterly cold, he is still very happy to accompany Becky to do the thing she wants. During the way down to the bottom of a hill, Ethan faces a very difficult situation:

His entire body would become locked tight against air and light and thought. His legs trembled; his breath moved in and out of a narrow slot beneath the pain in his back. The cold and blowing snow all around him constituted an immense crowding, but there was no way out of this white cave except to slide downward toward the dark spot that was his daughter. … He floundered through alternating power and ice.

He overcomes all the problems he has, such as an asthma attack, back pain, inadequate ski skills, bitter windy weather, and falling down. Even thought he needs to use an inhalator before talking to Becky several times, he insists on accompanying and encouraging her. The relationship between father and daughter is very warm in spite of the cold setting.    

If paying attention to children is the mild and traditional way to deal with a mid-life crisis, Updike presents more intense conflicts in the Maples couple of “Eros Rampant”. They betray each other by infidelity. They try to have lovers to solve their marriage problems. Richard loves his wife, Joan, but he finds it hard to reach her. Joan is busy with all the things at home:

     Joan swims through [children’s] love like a fish through water, ignorant of any     other element. Love slows her footstep, pours upon her from the radio, hangs about her, in the kitchen, in the form of tacked-up children’s drawings of houses, families, cars, cats, dogs, and flowers. …she is solid but hidden.

However, Richard has a hard time finding his position in the family. Children “fight bitterly for a piece of [Joan]’s lap and turn their backs upon [Richard], as if he, the seed-bearing provider of their lives, were a grotesque intruder”.So he tries to have a relationship with his secretary, Penelope Vogel. However, Penelope refuses his indication that he wants to go to her apartment. Later, a neighbor tells Joan that she saw Richard having dinner with another woman, so they have a quarrel at home. In the long conversation, Joan vindictively fights back to Richard. She tells him who her lovers are. She is desperate and grotesque. She complains that “[Richard] makes her feel like an ugly drudge” (457), but her lover makes her feel beautiful and confident. She, “like a chess player who has impulsive swept forwards her queen, has nowhere to go but on the defensive”. In the later part of the conversation, she abruptly shouts: “Divorce me. Beat me” . Joan’s confession and unmindful attitude put their love in “a cloudy heavy ink”. Their unpleasant conversation is interrupted by the conflict between the kids. They pretend to keep the surface of peace and join a social party. At the party, Richard is restless and angry when Joan dances with another man, and he requests to leave early. They continually fight on the way back home. After he gets all the details about “dates, sites, motel interiors, precisely mixed emotions, they make love, self-critically”. The relationship between the Maples couple is like their cats. Updike tells in the beginning part of this story that “one feels, unexpectedly, that Esau still loves Esther, while she merely accepts him. She seems scornful of his Platonic attentions” (452).      

Updike’s stories about family life are full of struggles, conflicts, carelessness, dissatisfactions and pressures. Even through the relationships between the couples are painful and hopeless, Ethan and Elaine, Richard and Joan still keep a superficial peace in their family life. However, Brad and Linda choose divorce to solve the mid-live crisis in the story of “The Orphaned Swimming Pool”. They have a house, children, social activities, and busy schedules as the couples mentioned above. “They were always a little in advance of their friends, [but] they never seemed happier, nor their marriage healthier, than those two summers” (442). Joan says in the story of “Separating” that “divorce followed a dramatic home improvement, as if the marriage were making one last twitchy effort to live”. Updike does not tell us in the detail of the couple’s problems, but divorce is a tragedy impacting this family completely. Both of them lose weight, and home becomes a terrible place to stay:

   The day after school was out, Linda fled with the children to her parents in Ohio. Brad stayed nights in the city. …He explained he would not be able to make it out every weekend – as if the distance that for years he had traveled twice each day …had become an impossible steep climb back into the past.         

They abandon their home including the swimming pool. All different kinds of people come to the pool without permission. They leave trash and a dirty environment when the summer passes away. The condition of the swimming pool is the same as of their marriage. “The pump broke down …a dozen bottles beneath the glass-topped table. The nylon divider had parted, and its two halves floated independently… no one repaired it” (445). In the end, the swimming pool is covered by a new owner. Their marriage is covered by their divorce.