88Notes "Walter Blair, "On the Structure of Tom Sawyer," MP, 37 (August, 1939), 86n, on the other hand, observes: "The fact that the action of the book requires only a few months seems irrelevant since fictional rather than actual time is involved." One cannot, however, ignore Twain's constant references to the passage of specific lengths of time. '"Twain's own case of measles (and the manner in which he was exposed) in the summer of 1845 may have remained so vivid in his memory that he felt compelled to include it in the novel. See Charles Neider, ed., The Autobiography of Mark Twain (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 77-78. THE CENTAUR: WHAT CURES GEORGE CALDWELL? Ronald Wesley Hoag University of North Carolina George Caldwell, the troubled Olinger High School science teacher in John Updike's The Centaur (1963), suffers from three kinds of problems. First, he is the victim not only of a fear of sex but of a broader, multidimensional mind/body split manifested in his hatred of his own body and his reluctance to touch all other bodies: bodies, touching, the female principle, and sex—to Caldwell, they all smack of death. He is cured of these phobia through his interactions with his son, Peter, and with the novel's Venus figure, Vera Hummel, though he almost certainly does not make love with her.1 Caldwell's second difficulty is his inability to recognize his proper sphere of influence. Blaming himself for each new adversity from clumsy dentistry to inclement weather, he makes of himself a ridiculous, and highly ineffectual, sad-sack martyr. Here he is saved, in part, by a recognition—triggered by Peter—of God's mercy2 but also by a re-viewing of his relationship to his family and to such true friends as Al and Vera Hummel. A corollary to this second problem, but one which merits separate discussion , is the reciprocally paralyzing sense of burdensome responsibility felt by both Caldwell and Peter for each other. While Caldwell's mind/body split is resolved by the joining of the severed parts, the parasitic conjunction of father and son must ultimately be remedied by their psychological separation.3 As a result of these processes of unification , limitation, and separation, George Caldwell finally is able to "kill off his centaur alter ego, Chiron, and emerge—healthy and joyful—as his own man. Studies in American Fiction89 George Caldwell has this in common with the mythological Chiron: they both hate the body, revere the spirit. Nowhere in the novel is this mind/body split more overtly depicted than in the following description of Chiron-Caldwell's thoughts as he flees OHS to Al HummeFs garage to have an arrow removed from his leg: "His top half felt all afloat in a starry firmament of ideals . . . the rest of his self was heavily sunk in a swamp where it must, eventually, drown."4 Caldwell, who identifies the spirit with immortality and the body with perishable clay, aligns himself exclusively with the former. As the teacher's physician, Doc Appleton, tells him, " 'you believe in the soul. . . . You ride your body too hard. You show it no love' " (p. 101); and Caldwell himself says, " ? hate the damn ugly thing' " (p. 100). Here the words "soul" and "damn" are important, for while the soul possesses immortality, the body is damned to degeneration and ultimate death. And Caldwell, who fears he has cancer, confesses to a fellow teacher that dying " 'scares the hell out of me' " (p. 168). Thus, Caldwell's hatred of his body is one manifestation of his fear of death. Afraid of the body, and its concomitant mortality, Caldwell shuns bodily experience. Peter says that his father's kisses to his mother are "rare" (p. 56) and admits that he and his father "never touched" (p. 115). " 'You don't like women' " (p. 24), Venus-Vera tells ChironGeorge in the shower room of dinger High's gymnasium. And Cassie Caldwell is even more specific in her indictment of her husband's perfunctory parting kiss on the cheek: " 'If there's anything / hate,' " she says, " 'it's a man who hates sex' " (p. 56). Caldwell does...