Barbara Ann Duffy

A Brief Examination of John Updike’s Use of Anti-social Behavior in the Mr. Lutz Character in His Short Story, “Friends from Philadelphia”

Like many of Updike’s characters, Mr. Lutz, one of the antagonists in “Friends from Philadelphia” is complex and his motives are much deeper than they seem on the surface. At first the reader expects Mr. Lutz to be exactly what he appears to be: a hard working man with a spoiled wife and daughter. We forgive Mrs. Lutz any breaches of etiquette because for all her potential faults she is a kind woman who immediately offers her husband’s assistance to John. Once Mr. Lutz arrives home, we see a totally different dynamic in the household, and the extent of the difference becomes more pronounced as the story progresses.

Lutz’s claim to “ownership” of the two women identifying his daughter as “his little pookie-pie” and his wife his “big pookie-pie” (36) is so subtle that the reader isn’t sure that it is what it is: The first act of aggression disguised as passivity and loving attention to the two women. In reality the claiming of the two females as “my” is a warning to John that Mr. Lutz will not permit John, or any man, to usurp his position of authority over the women.

Five paragraphs later we begin to see more obvious signs of Mr. Lutz’s true character as a person who feels inadequate in his own right, and uses insult and innuendo to raise himself above those he sees as better than himself. When informed that the people from Philadelphia are an engineer and his wife who went to school with John’s mother, Mr. Lutz replies, “Oh, college people. Then we must [emphasis added by me] get them something very nice I should say.” (36) Lutz continues his quiet disparaging remarks concerning the better educated guests due at the Nordholm’s home with “People from college. People with diplomas” [emphasis added].

Unfortunately for Johnny, Mr. Lutz is far from done with his expressions of his pseudo- superiority over those who are well educated. Next he tells Johnny, “I never went to college—yet I get a new car whenever I want” (37). A few paragraphs later he says, “Here’s your father an educated man, with an old Plymouth, yet at the same time, I, who never read more than ten, twenty book in my life…”(37) [emphasis added]; and then to add insult to injury, he asks the boy “Do you want to drive it?” (37). Mr. Lutz uses the excuse of teaching Johnny to use the automatic shift as a reason to speak to the boy in a condescending and insulting tone one might use with a half witted child.

The last two acts of aggression by Mr. Lutz come when he insists on taking John home. By now the reader understands that Mr. Lutz is not doing it to save Johnny the walk, but to show Johnny’s parents and their visitors that he is better than they are even if he never went to college. His motive is clear from his statement, “People from Philadelphia can’t be kept waiting.” (40) [emphasis added]. Knowing that the boy knows nothing about wine, Lutz plays his role very well by giving the boy back one dollar and twenty-six cents from the two dollars his mother had given him to get the wine. The act of giving back that amount of change gives the boy and the reader the impression that he had purchased an inferior wine that cost only seventy-four cents. It’s only when Updike identifies the wine as Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1937, (40), possibly Rothschild’s most famous year, that the reader understands the full extent of the passive aggression Mr. Lutz is capable of showing.

Updike has given the reader a microcosmic vision of life with a man filled with self-hatred, envy, and possessiveness that have reached the level of a mental illness. Lutz is a subtle bully whose own feelings of inadequacy drive him to belittle and disparage others to make him feel better about himself. His self hatred is so deep that he is even compelled to deride the teenaged protagonist.