Vilnius pedagogical university faculty of foreign languages department of english philology

George Caldwell maintains his intentions in the face of a hostile reality by retreating into a mythological kingdom in which Olinger, Pennsylvania, becomes Olympus. George’s experiences are almost wholly psychological, but like Rabbit’s they constitute a significant rebellion against the meaninglessness of life. (The Absurd Hero in American Fiction, p. 32)

Caldwell wants to escape that hostile world. For that reason the fact of his supposed illness exhilarates him. He is preparing to die: “In these last days he had been saying goodbye to everything, tidying up the books, readying himself for a change, journey. There would be none.” (The Centaur, p. 268) At the end of the book Caldwell realizes that he cannot afford himself to die. He must sacrifice, must live in this ugly vile world because otherwise his family will experience poverty and hunger. In this way the protagonist makes his life purposeful and this deed raises him above the grey mediocre population of Olinger, and, as a result, above the contemporary America.

Caldwell ought to become a model for the readers of The Centaur. It does not mean that they should copy his way of life, his manners etc. What matters is his life taken as a whole – his deed made in the name of his family and other people. Campbell wrote in The Power of Myth, that “When a person becomes a model for other people’s lives, he has moved into the sphere of being mythologized.” (p. 15) Consequently, Caldwell himself is a mythologized character; however, paralleled with Chiron, his figure gains even more prominence.
It should be mentioned that, according to Campbell, sacrifice itself is wrongly perceived nowadays. He states that sacrifice is extremely important and meaningful; and that only people, who deserve being called Gods, are capable of sacrifice. In his book The Power of Myth he presents an interesting example of this statement: the Mayan Indians had a kind of basketball game in which, the captain of the winning team was at the end sacrificed by the captain of the losing team. In other words, the ritual’s exemplified above main purpose was to identify the man, being worthy to be sacrificed as a God. Campbell writes: “You have to have death in order to have life.” (The Power of Myth, p. 109)
Despite the fact that Caldwell does not sacrifice himself in the literal sense, he sacrifices a part of his inner world – the centaur, and due to it he is entitled to be called a real man, even a God.
At this point another aspect of the pedagogical function of myth emerges: every individual has the right to choose how to live his or her life, which existential path to go –
either to sacrifice on behalf of others and become a God, or to fasten to one’s ego, become wealthy, prosperous, and spiritually empty.
In The Power of Myth, Campbell presents one more example of sacrifice, which is worth mentioning. He contemplates the essay written by Schopenhauer, in which the author asks, how it can happen that one man can sacrifice in the name of another person. Campbell writes:


Schopenhauer’s answer is that such a psychological crisis represents the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization, which is that you and that other [man for whom you sacrifice] are one, that you are two aspects of the one life, and that your apparent separateness is but an effect of the way we experience forms under the conditions of space and time. Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. This is a metaphysical truth […] the truth of your life. (p. 110)

Consequently, Caldwell, sacrificing on behalf of his family and other people, is a God, a winner, who is awarded with the highest gift – the unity with the whole life, the universe. Again, Campbell quotes Jung writing about sacrifice: “You don’t have to die, really, physically. All you have to do is die spiritually and be reborn to a larger way of living.” (The Power of Myth, p. 114)

To conclude, the pedagogical function of myth in The Centaur plays an important role of teaching, how to live one’s life with dignity despite endless obstacles stationed by fate. It guides people and emphasizes the significance of purpose which must be present in everyone’s life – not the vile desire to prosper, gain the temporal material wealth; but to improve oneself spiritually, for instance, to sacrifice something on behalf of another person, herewith passing to a higher level of existence.