Imagery and technique in John Updike's 'Rabbit, Run' (1960)

Content

1. Introduction

2. Narrative Technique

3. Structure and Central Motif

4. Summary

5. Bibliography

1. Introduction

John Updike is one of the most prolific and important American authors of the contemporary period, with an acclaimed body of work that spans half a century and is inspired by everything from American exceptionalism to American popular culture. Hence, Updike has searched for a value system that still makes sense to modern Americans. Updike once said that there are three private little things he longs to explore in his fiction. These things are sex, religion and art.^[1]

Perhaps the most revered Updike novels are his Rabbit tetralogy, comprised of four books that ran from 1959 to 1991, which detail the center of American life, i.e. the middle class. Updike received a Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Run, which begins with Rabbit at age 27 and was first published in 1960. His next decade begins with Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Revisited, 1971), where the reader is presented with a cage for rabbits before they are slaughtered. At age 47, Rabbit is still lost (Rabbit is Rich, 1981) but is wealthier and attends the second best country club. This book also earned Updike a Pulitzer Prize.^[2] Finally, at age 57, Rabbit is still lost, but his wife becomes independent, blossoming in Rabbit at Rest (1990).

Hence, the protagonist Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom can be regarded as Updike’s most famous character, even though critics sometimes describe him as a non-hero.^[3] From his Rabbit series, the first novel Rabbit, Run is without doubt Updike’s most recognized book. Even contemporary readers appreciate this novel greatly. This is obvious by the fact that readers of Library Journal included Rabbit, Run in the list of their favourite 20th century books.^[4] In Updike’s own words, Rabbit is a character that is similar to the author. Hence, Updike once told Michael Rogers in an interview that even though he does not have the same social background and sociological circumstances as his character Rabbit, many of his ideas and thoughts enter Rabbit’s head.^[5] Thus, one might be justified in claiming that the Rabbit novels are also partly autobiographical.

However, since the novel Rabbit Run has been published, some critics have not held it in great esteem. For instance, Hermione Lee asks in her essay “The Trouble with Harry”: “Who likes Rabbit, apart from his author?^[6] Lee draws a rather unsympathetic and negative picture of Rabbit, calling him “[s]exist, dumb, lazy, illiterate (…), a terrible father (…), an inadequate husband, an unreliable lover, a tiresome lecher, a failing businessman, a cowardly patient, a typically “territorial” male” and goes on asking the reader: “What kind of moral vantage point is this?”^[7] Nevertheless, Lee also says that there is a tender, feminine side to Rabbit that makes him amiable.

Thus, Rabbit does seem to be a sympathetic character. The protagonist who is mostly innocent of politics feels crowded by his world and seeks freedom in flight. Hence, Tony Tanner associates Rabbit’s concern with the romantic pattern of male flight from social conditioning.^[8] The fact that the protagonist does not want to take responsibility for his family and leaves his wife and child to find a new life has sometimes outraged readers. What is more, many readers have also been upset by the author’s extreme emphasis on sex. Thus, the critic Robert Detweiler even argued that Updike shocked his readers with explicit descriptions of sexuality in order to have the public’s undivided attention.^[9]

However, Detweiler also claims that today the novel can be appreciated more fully for its artistic qualities – and these qualities are, in fact, quite numerous. Hence, there are many critics who appreciate Updike’s style and his mastery of language. For example, Rachael C. Burchard calls Updike’s art of writing “superb” and says that “[h]is work is worth reading if for no reason other than to enjoy the piquant phrase, the lyric vision, the fluent rhetoric”.^[10] Similarly, Susan Henning Uphauser also puts emphasis on Updike’s remarkable use of language.^[11]

In the following, it will be analyzed which techniques Updike uses in the novel Rabbit, Run. Hence, it will be focused primarily on the narrative technique. In a second step, the structure of the novel will also be analyzed and the central motif of the quest will be dealt with.

2. Narrative Technique

John Updike’s style of writing has often been praised because of his detailed descriptions and his skilful and extensive use of metaphors. Hence, the critic Hermione Lee says that Updike’s novels and short stories are “the most metaphorical writing in American fiction, except for Melville’s” and goes on commenting on the way Updike describes Rabbit’s heart in metaphors.^[12] Thus, Lee argues that the metaphor is of central importance in Updike’s work, for “every ordinary object and event can be seen as signifying something else, often a larger truth”.^[13] She concludes her argument by saying that in Updike’s writing “no object, no creature, is too ordinary or too technical to be subjected to metaphor”.^[14]

Updike is also widely appreciated for his close-to-life-descriptions. Hence, among critics Updike’s work is admired because of his “meticulous taxonomy” of “the material nature of the world” and his “memorializing American superabundance”.^[15] In point of fact, Updike describes the scenes of his novels in a very detailed and lively way so that the reader gets the impression that he himself is involved in the action. Hence, Updike creates immediacy, thus stimulating the reader’s imagination. In order to illustrate this, a passage from Rabbit, Run, presenting a vivid, detailed description from Rabbit’s perspective:

A colored girl in an orange uniform that he guesses from the frills is supposed to look South American comes and he tells her two Daiquiris. She flips shut her pad and walks off and he sees her back is open halfway down her spine, so a bit of black bra shows. Compared with this her skin isn’t black at all. Soft purple shadows flitter on the flats of her back where the light hits. She has a pigeon-toed way of sauntering, swinging those orange frills. She doesn’t care about him; he likes that, that she doesn’t care.^[16]

This passage is characteristic of Updike’s detailed descriptions. What is more, it also reveals a special feature of Updike’s writing, namely the exclusive use of the present tense. This also contributes to creating immediacy, thus bringing mid 20th century American middle-class life closer to the reader. Anthony Quinton even claims that Rabbit, Run succeeds in conveying a kind of emotional history: “what [the Rabbit novels] amount to is a social and, so to speak, emotional history of the United States (…)”.^[17]

[...]

^[1] Cf. George W. Hunt, John Updike and the Three Great Secret Things: Sex, Religion, and Art (Grand Rapids, 1980), passim.

^[2] For information about Updike’s work and life see http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run.

^[3] See for example Sylvia E. Bowman, ed. “Chapter 3: Rabbit, Run: The Quest for a Vanished Grail.” In: John Updike. Twayne United States Authors Series, n.p., pp. 45-59. However, the author also points out that Rabbit is not a typical anti-hero, although he has no heroic virtues. Rabbit is here described not as a rebel but rather as a conformist. The author defines the anti-hero as a character that “has qualities that society may not value, but they are at least of the kind that give him individuality and identity and that provoke unwilling admiration” (p. 50).

^[4] Cf. http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run, p. 11.

^[5] Cf. ibid, p. 2 referring to Michael Rogers, “The Gospel of the Book: ’LJ’ Talks to John Updike.” Interview in Library Journal February 15 (1999), p. 114.

^[6] Hermione Lee. „The Trouble with Harry.“New Republic December 24 (1990): 34-37 in http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run, pp. 1, 20.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Cf. Tony Tanner, City of Words. American Fiction, 1950-1970 (London, 1971).

^[9] Robert Detweiler, John Updike (Boston, 1984).

^[10] Rachael C. Burchard, John Updike: Yea Sayings (Carbondale, 1971) in http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run, p. 10.

^[11] Susan Henning Uphauser, John Updike (Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1980) in http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run, p. 26.

^[12] Rabbit’s heart is compared to “a first, an amphitheatre, a drum, a gallery slave, a ballplayer waiting for the whistle” (Hermione Lee, „The Trouble with Harry.“New Republic December 24 (1990): 34-37 in http://www.enotes.com/rabbit-run, p. 6).

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Ibid.

^[16] John Updike, Rabbit, Run, 1960 (New York, 1988), pp. 149-150. In the following, it will be quoted from this edition.

^[17] Anthony Quinton, „Review.“Times (London) January 14 (1982).