Moise Bianca Roxana

Master SAA, year 1

Agency versus Structure in John Updikes Terrorist

Literary studies have been interested in identity issues for a long time now. In investigations of
such issues in literary texts as well as in real life, themes from social psychology along with
themes from literary studies are of great use. In my research involving the characters and plot in
John Updikes novel, I chose to rely on sociologist Kath Woodwards studies, as well as Lois
Tysons work for definitions and further explanations of certain terms and oppositions.

Terrorism is on everyones mind nowadays. Updike forces us to think, would an American-born

boy, despite being brainwashed by Islamic extremists, push the button of a bomb that would
harm his own country? Besides this, Updike truly manages to contour, in his Pulitzer prize-
winning novel Terrorist, the Americans frame of mind in which touches of paranoia are
worth considering following the events of 9/11. The plot is mediated through the eyes and mind
of a very lonely 18 year old Muslim-American young man, Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, who tries
to find some purpose in his life turning to his local mosque and rapidly becoming an extremely
devout Muslim. The theme itself concerning terrorist plots and the post-industrial, decaying city
of New Prospect with its consumerist society make it clear that there are connections between
the place and time from the literary text and real-life America.

Some of Ahmads decisions are influenced by certain factors. In their discussion, certain aspects
of individual and group identity, as well as aspects concerning the two distinct but interwoven
dimensions agency and structure need to be taken into consideration. Identity, according to
Woodwards study on Social Sciences The Big Issues, is the key concept in sociology and of
major importance in our everyday lives, too. She concludes that identity is what allows us to
align ourselves to some groups of people and, in the same time, to mark ourselves out as
different from other certain groups and, finally, it is what binds together the personal and the
social (Woodward:20). Ahmad makes it clear, in a discussion about how other people see him,
that he wants to have a pure, defined identity simply by wearing a white shirt, arguing in his
head on the reason why:

[]Joryleen adds, "You didn't care, you wouldn't pretty yourself up with a clean white `
shirt every day, like some preacher. How's your mother stand doing all that
ironing?" He doesn't deign to explain that this considered outfit sends out a non-
combatant message, avoiding both blue, the color of the Rebels, the African-American
gang in Central High, and red, the color always worn, if only in a belt or
headband, by the Diabolos, the Hispanic gang.

(Updike, 2006, p.9)

Ahmad consciously and purposely differentiates himself and creates his own personal identity
simply by marking himself off in relation to those undesirable other groups of people.

Other scenes where the opposition between individual identity and group identity can be
depicted are the ones where Ahmad talks to himself and calls all the other non-Muslim people
infidels,devils,unclean. Another discussion where Charlie, the brother that Ahmad has
not been blessed with, discusses how two groups of people are differentiated, brings the
discussion on group identities: Back in the cheerfully orange truck, Charlie confides to Ahmad,
"Interesting to see their minds work. Tools, hero: no shades in between. (Updike, p.250).
 Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1

Shaikh Rashid, the pillar in teaching and keeping Ahmad a devout Muslim, also marks out the
other people, of other religions by calling them the global Satan, while manipulating Ahmad
to take part in a terrorist attack and discussing the message it should send:

"Your heroic sacrifice," his master quickly amplifies. "Within a week, I would say. The
details are not mine to specify, but a week would approximate an anniversary and send
an effective message to the global Satan. The message would be, 'We strike when we
please.' "

(Updike, p.236)

The concept of idenitifcation seems to have slightly different meanings in classical

psychoanalysis and in subsequent identity themes in terms of the element of agency involved in
the latter. Woodward, taking after Freud, explains how identification was exemplified by the
father of psychoanalysis through the way in which children adopt gender identities, this process
being psychological, even having to do with the unconscious mind. Freud focused on how male
children identify to their father. Thus it can easily be concluded that there can be conscious and
unconscious identification (Woodward:25).

Ahmad gradually gets involved in the terrorist plot and nearly manages to bring it to completion
by one heroic self-sacrifice as a product of psychological predispositions, of broader social
environment and, also important, of his mixed family background or lack of guidance from his
parents, especially his absent Egyptian father.

[]Ahmad himself is the product of a red-haired American mother, Irish by ancestry,

and an Egyptian exchange student whose ancestors had been baked since the time of
the Pharaohs in the muddy rice and flax fields of the overflowing Nile.

(Updike, p.13)

Thus he may unconsciously identify with his father, accepting his appearance to be closer to his
fathers than his mothers.

[]Ahmad knows it is a sin to be vain of his appearance: self- love is a form of

competition with God, and competition is what He cannot abide. But how can the boy
not cherish his ripened manhood, his lengthened limbs, the upright, dense, and wavy
crown of his hair, his flawless dun skin, paler than his father's but not the freckled,
blotchy pink of his red-haired mother[]Though he shuns, as unholy and impure, the
glances of lingering interest he receives from the dusky girls around him in the school,
Ahmad does not wish his body marred. He wishes to keep it as its Maker formed it.

(Updike, p.18)

In addition to the previously mentioned oppositions between individual and group identity, as
well as conscious and unconscious identification, the connected terms of agency and structure
also have to be discussed after reading this novel.

Taking into account the difference between human agency i.e. the total of human decisions in
shaping their own lives and structure i.e. the outcome, the result of human activities which can
 Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1

influence or constraint people, we can identify a number of aspects concerning Ahmads

identity. Woodward denies the existence of a clearcut binary opposition between the two and
seems to favor the idea of an interrelationship between agency and structure (Woodward:71)
She claims that increased migration across the state boundaries can change everyday life and
this perspective can be seen in Updikes novel too, where we can depict several multiracial
Americans and multicultural activities. Terry, Ahmads mother may be the best example, since
she herself seems to have an attraction to other cultures (her Egyptian ex-husband, her Jewish
lover Jack Levi). Also, the way she chooses to raise her child, by subscribing to a philosophy of
education according to which she should live her son to decide alone for his life also reveals the
movement across social, cultural and moral changes in family life in America, as Woodward
also argues and as Ahmad feels about his mother:

His mother is, he sees now, looking back, a typical American, lacking strong
convictions and the courage and comfort they bring. She is a victim of the
American religion of freedom, freedom above all, though freedom to do what and to
what purpose is left up in the air. Bombs bursting in air empty air is the perfect
symbol of American freedom.

(Updike, p.167)

"I have never been essential to my mother," he explains, "though she did, I admit, stick with her
assignment once I was unfortunately born. As to the mother of a monster, in the Middle East the
mothers of martyrs are highly esteemed and receive a substantial pension."

(Updike, p.293)

Yet Terry is not the only character in the novel affected by the several layered changes. She has
an adventure with Jack Levy, Ahmads Jewish teacher, who seems to understand her son more
than her or anyone else besides his Muslim partners, confessing in a dialogue with her:

"It's not just AIDS and the rest; there's a certain hunger for, I don't know, the absolute,
when everything is so relative, and all the economic forces are pushing instant
gratification and credit-card debt at them. It's not just the Christian right
Ashcroft and his morning revival meeting down in D.C. You see it in Ahmad. And
the Black Muslims. People want to go back to simpleblack and white, right and
wrong, when things aren't simple."

(Updike, p.205)

Lois Tyson also raises the problem of an interrelationship rather than a conflict between agency
and structure. In her work on critical theory, based on new historical and cultural criticism
(focusing on the culture of one time, on revealing the spirit of the age), she claims that asking whether human
identity is socially determined or human beings are free agents is a wrong thing to do, since
there should be no choice between these two entities which are not wholly separate
(Tyson:284). Thus, as Woodward also does, she approaches this subject by trying rather to
investigate the processes by which individual identity and social formations together create,
influence, change or constrain each other.
 Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1

In Ahmads mind, there is constantly a conflict between what to do and what to think, even
though, in his blind devotion to Allah and the Quran, he does not realize it until the end. The
presence of tiny insects and worms around him at important moments and his identification with
them hints at his hidden questioning nature:

The deaths of insects and worms, their bodies so quickly absorbed by earth and weeds
and road tar, devilishly strive to tell Ahmad that his own death will be just as small
and final. Walking to school, he has noticed a sign, a spiral traced on the
pavement in luminous ichor, angelic slime from the body of some low creature, a
worm or snail of which only this trace remains. Where was the creature going, its path
spiralling inward to no purpose? If it was seeking to remove itself from the hot
sidewalk that was roasting it to death as the burning sun beat down, it failed and
moved in fatal circles. But no little worm-body was left at the spiral's center.

So where did that body fly to?

(Updike, p.4)

These thoughts concerning his identity being so small and insignificant, leaving no trace, appear
again, when, symbolically, a day before completing the terrorist attack through his self-sacrifice,
a beetle struggling to its death appears in the parking lot and is noticed by Ahmad:

Saturday morning, before the store has opened, he sits on a step of the loading
platform, observing a black beetle struggling on his back on the concrete of the parking
lot. []The beetle's tiny black legs wave in the air, groping for a purchase with which
to right itself, casting sharp shadows elongated by the sun at its morning slant. The legs
of the small creature wiggle and writhe in a kind of fury, then subside into a
semblance of thought, as if the beetle seeks to reason a way out of its predicament.

Ahmad wonders, Where did this bug come from? How did it fall here, seeming unable to
use its wings?

(Updike, p.252)

He feels the same as the bugs while Shaikh Rashid keeps looking at him before his sacrifice,
feeling somehow guilty:

The curious way in which the imam looked down upon him reminded Ahmad of how he
himself stood above the worm and the beetle. Shaikh Rashid was fascinated by him, as
if by something repellent yet sacred.

(Updike, p.270)

The identification with the tiny, insignificant deaths of the insects comes along with realizing, in
a conversation with Charlie, that in terrorist attacks there are also people of the same religion as
them who end up dying involuntarily:

[]"Many were merely guards and waitresses."

"Serving the empire in their way."

 Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1

"Some were Muslims."

"Ahmad, you must think of it as a war. War isn't tidy. There is collateral damage[]

(Updike, p.187)

Yet, what should be taken into consideration is Ahmads socially shaped views on his future
identity as a martyr, a Muslim hero:

His eighteen years have accumulated historical evidence, which will become, he
imagines, of great interest to the news media: cardboard-framed photos of children
squinting in May sunshine on the brownstone steps of the Thomas Alva Edison
Elementary School, Ahmad's dark gaze and unsmiling mouth embedded in the ranks of
other faces, most black and some white, all lumped in the child labor of becoming loyal
and literate Americans; photos of the track team, in which Ahmad Mulloy is older and
fractionally smiling; [] his Class C driver's certificate; a photograph of his father,
[] His father's face, it will be broadcast, was more conventionally handsome than the
son's, though a shade darker. His mother, like televised victims of floods and tornadoes,
will be much interviewed, at first incoherently, in shock and tears, and later more
calmly, speaking in sorrowful retrospect. Her image will appear in the press; she will
become momentarily famous. Perhaps there will be a spike in the sale of her
paintings.

(Updike, p. 268)

One can find another illustration of the fuzzy boundary between agency and structure in the
representation of the scene in which Ahmad, as a result of his verbal interaction with Jack Levy,
decides to change his mind and stop before commiting the terrorist attack.

It is interesting that the last thing Ahmad says is: These devils, Ahmad thinks, have taken away
my God. (Updike, 2006, p. 310) while the first thing he said in the book is: DEVILS, Ahmad
thinks. These devils seek to take away my God (Updike, p.3)

Thus, considering his final decision, a question arises: to what extent is it his lucid reasoning of
what is good or bad, his emotional involvement in what is going on around, Jack Levys
persuasion, his education, his family background on the spur of the moment?
 Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1

Sources

Tyson, L. (2006) Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Second Edition. Published in
USA by Routledge. 448 pages.

Updike, J. (2006) Terrorist. Allentown, Pennsylvania. Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley &
Sons. 310 pages. Print.

Woodward, K. (2003) Social Sciences: The Big Issues. Simultaneously Published in the USA
and Canada by Routledge. First published 2003. 173 pages.
Moise Bianca Roxana
Master SAA, year 1