This Wednesday, we met to
discuss Rabbit, Run (1960) by JohnUpdike. At first glance, the storyline appears simple: a 26 year-old former
high school basketball player - Harry ‘Rabbit’ Armstrong - is trapped in a troubled,
boring marriage and a job without prospects. He experiences a personal turmoil
and decides to run away in order to change his life. Nevertheless, Rabbit, Run turns out to be an
existential novel about meaninglessness of life and lack of spiritual
fulfillment.
Here, everything stands for a trap: wife, lover, job, road or
house. Harry is unable to abandon his life completely and to start everything
anew. He embarks on a quest for spiritual epiphany, some kind of illumination
but he finds nothing. Rabbit wants to free himself from the constraints of middle
class community as well as from familial obligations, to no avail tough as he will
never escape the vicious circle. The motive of running is predominant in
American literature starting from the very beginning, that is Puritans who
escaped from the European continent to the USA in search for a better life. Rip
van Winkle or protagonists of Hemingway’s novels also tried unavailingly to
start something new, leaving the old and searching rejuvenation. Updike’s
protagonists won’t find any comfort in family and marriage either.
Another
important issue of the book is faith. The novel depicts Puritan duality and faith's binary
opposition. Rabbit is torn between religion and sex, for instance, when after
the night spent with Ruth he observes people leaving the church after Sunday
mass. The figure of the minister, in turn, is one of the most ambiguous
characters as his behavior escapes clear interpretation. Maybe Jack fears that
he has lost his vocation and uses Rabbit to renew his faith and relationship
with God? Or maybe he has never had the true calling of the minister and the
profession of priest seems just comfortable? One can also risk a
statement that Jack deconstructs the role of a minister who was supposed to be
a Sheppard but, in fact, is more interested in other people’s lives than in God
or his marriage? Rabbit Run abounds
also in symbols, for example, that of water (which stands for rebirth and death
at the same time) or garden (false promises). Finally, the issue of sexual
obsession, suppressed emotions and primary instincts implies straightaway
Freud’s Psychoanalysis. When analyzing Rabbit Run, it is impossible not to notice the cinematographic narrative, plastic
language and rich descriptions. American realism at its finest!
by Marta MakoĊ
