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Rabbit, Run is a novel written by John Updike. Released in 1960, it is the first novel featuring recurring protagonist Rabbit Angstrom and tells of him trying to run away from his own life.
Characters[]
- Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom - a former basketball star and kitchen products salesman
- Janice Springer Angstrom - Harry's wife
- Marty Tothero - Harry's old basketball coach
- Jack Eccles - a minister in Brewer
- Lucy Eccles - Jack Eccles' wife
- Ruth Leonard - a girl who is introduced to Rabbit by Marty
- Miriam "Mim" Angstrom - Rabbit's sister
- Mrs. Smith - an old lady who hires Rabbit to work in her garden
- Mrs. Springer - Janice's mother
- Mr. and Mrs. Angstrom - Rabbit's parents
- Fritz Kruppenbach - Rabbit's pastor
- Nelson Angstrom - Harry's two-year-old son
- Margaret Kosko - a girl who Marty is dating
Publisher's summary[]
Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.
Plot[]
March in the Mount Judge suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. After playing basketball with local kids, former high school basketball star and current kitchen gadget peddler Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom returns home to his pregnant wife (with whom he has a somewhat rocky relationship) Janice and learns that his son Nelson is with his mother while his car is with Janice's mother. Thinking about which to get first, Rabbit briefly walks up to his parents' house and decides to get his car first. Once he has his car, Rabbit decides to follow a whim and drive out of Brewer entirely and flee his life for the virtues of the south. While doing so, he stops at a rural gas station to have his car filled up and briefly worries that the clerk is aware that he is running away but keeps up with his southward flight through Pennsylvania throughout the night. This flight only ends when Rabbit has to stop at a dirt road, looks over the map, and (while extremely frustrated with it) decides to drive back to Brewer.
Once at Brewer, Rabbit drives right past his parents' house and stops where his old basketball coach Marty Tothero is staying at and sleeps in his car right outside in the hopes that Marty will notice it. Soon, Marty steps outside and finds his old student. Rabbit almost immediately reveals that he has run away from home and Marty (while making Harry promise that he will talk about it with him tomorrow) lets Rabbit sleep in the attic. The next morning, Marty takes Rabbit to meet with two girls named Margaret Kosko and Ruth Leonard and takes the four of them to a Chinese restaurant. After eating and musing over Rabbit's basketball career, Marty leaves with Margaret while Rabbit leaves with Ruth.
Having given Ruth rent money, Rabbit walks with her to her apartment and (after some cajoling) undresses and "sleeps" with her. After a surreal nightmare, Rabbit visits a local store to get food for Ruth to cook. Rabbit eats with Ruth and then leaves to get some clothes from his home and leave his car there for when Janice returns from her mother's. While leaving his home with some of his clothes, Rabbit runs across the street fearing that someone will recognize him. While he is doing this, a local minister named Jack Eccles pulls up aside Rabbit and convinces him to get in his car. While riding with Rabbit, Jack reveals that he has been speaking with Janice and tries to get Rabbit to reconcile. While doing this, Jack reveals that he plays golf and asks Rabbit to play a game with him before leaving him in Brewer. Rabbit then returns to Ruth and takes a walk with her.
Several days later, Rabbit drives to Eccles' house to take him up on his offer to play golf. Once at Eccles' house, Rabbit meets Eccles' wife and toddler-aged daughter before leaving with Eccles to a golf course. While playing golf with Rabbit, Eccles speaks with him about religion and his relationship with Janice. During this conversation, Rabbit reveals that he believes that something is missing in that relationship but can't put his finger on what it is exactly.
Two months pass. During those months, Rabbit takes a job helping an old lady plant flowers while Ruth becomes more and more worried about not having her period. Meanwhile, Eccles visits Janice's mother to convince her that Rabbit will come home. Mrs. Springer is somewhat unconvinced by this but agrees to not call the police if Rabbit returns before Janice gives birth. After doing this, Eccles visits Rabbit's parents (who argue over if their son even deserves to be saved) and Rabbit's pastor (who lectures Eccles about if the lives of Janice and Rabbit even matter compared to the bigger picture of the world).
Presumably around the same time of Eccles' visitations, Margaret invites Ruth and Rabbit to a somewhat seedy bar called Club Castanet. Once there, Rabbit finds that Margaret is not with Tothero and is with an old classmate named Ronnie Harrison. Rabbit and Harrison passively-aggressively snipe at each other before Rabbit's sister Mim walks into the bar with a date. Rabbit briefly speaks with Mim and shows his disdain for Mim's date. While leaving the Club Castanet with Ruth, Rabbit briefly argues with her before convincing her to "sleep" with him.
Shortly after this, Eccles calls Rabbit in the middle of the night to tell him that Janice is giving birth. As such, Rabbit walks out of Ruth's bed while she is seemingly asleep. Unbeknownst to Rabbit, Ruth was awake while he ran out. Once at the hospital, Rabbit waits with Eccles for Janice to finish giving birth and worries that his perambulations have brought the wrath of God upon him and his wife. The next morning, Janice gives birth to a healthy baby girl. After Rabbit speaks with Janice, Eccles asks if Rabbit wants to spend the night in his house. Though Rabbit is hesitant to do this, he eventually agrees.
After eating breakfast at Eccles' house, Rabbit returns to the hospital to visit his wife. While there, he meets Tothero's wife and learns that his old coach has suffered two strokes and is confined to a bed, being unable to speak or even move his head due to the effects of the strokes. Rabbit briefly speaks to his old coach before leaving to see his wife. The two briefly argue before making up just in time for Rabbit to see his newly-born daughter and name her. As Rabbit and his wife have two separate ideas for what to name the baby, they decide to give her both names - dubbing her Rebecca June Angstrom.
Though Rabbit assumed that his apartment had been foreclosed on, as neither he or Janice paid for the apartment, he learns that Janice's father paid for the apartment. He also took a job with Janice's father working at one of his used car lots. While he was alone with Nelson, Rabbit visited the Springers (finding them somewhat warm) and his own parents (finding that his mother was extremely cold towards him and his child due to their status as Springers). Once Janice returns home from the hospital with baby Rebecca June, Rabbit starts going to Eccles' church. While there, he ruminates over his somewhat lustful feelings for Eccles' wife Lucy, he comes to believe that Lucy is trying to flirt with him. As such, he turns her down (as he is married) but is unsure if Lucy was ever actually flirting with him or not.
While baby Rebecca is at home, she cries almost nonstop - greatly distressing and tiring Rabbit, Janice, and Nelson. While going to bed with Janice, Rabbit tries to convince her to let him "lie" with her and when she does not let him do so, he leaves the house in the middle of the night. While Rabbit is away, Janice sleeps through the night and then begins taking care of Nelson and baby Rebecca after waking up. While doing so, Janice fears that there is someone else in the house and tries to ignore the fact that Rabbit has left by drinking. When her parents call asking where Rabbit is, Janice lies to hide the fact that he ran away in the middle of the night and then tries to bathe baby Rebecca. Unfortunately, she lets the baby slip deep into the bathwater and she drowns, even though Janice tries to save her.
As Ruth left Brewer for Atlantic City, Rabbit spent most of that fateful night wandering around the streets of Brewer. While at a drugstore, he gets a call from Eccles telling him what his wife has done. As such, Rabbit visits Janice's parents' house. Though the Springers believe that Rabbit has some blame in the death of his baby, they agree to put the whole thing behind them as a tragic accident. Rabbit then returns to his apartment and has various visitors - including Marty Tothero (whose body is half-paralyzed from his stroke) and Eccles, who tells Rabbit that both of them must work for forgiveness (as Eccles believes he is somewhat to blame for what happened, having brought Rabbit and Janice back together in the first place).
Once Janice recovers from her grief, she and Rabbit attend the funeral of baby Rebecca alongside both of their parents. While at the funeral, Rabbit is overcome with grief and conflicting feelings about his baby's death and declares his innocence in her death. When Janice and her family shy away from him, Rabbit flees them into the nearby woods - with Eccles closely pursuing him. Once he is outside of the woods, Rabbit tries to call Eccles at his home but is snubbed by Lucy. As such, he decides to visit Ruth but finds her extremely antagonistic towards her. He learns that she is pregnant with his kid and has plans to abort the kid, though she has not done so yet. Rabbit tries to convince Ruth to keep the kid but, when she asks him to divorce Janice and marry him, he finds that he cannot do so and leaves after making several empty promises. Rabbit is then stuck between two branches in life, one leading towards Janice and the other towards Ruth, and runs towards one of them - with the novel ending before the reader can find out which one Rabbit has ran towards.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 1951 | A novel with a similar story and similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| Marry Me | John Updike | 1976 | A novel with similar themes by the same author |
| On the Road | Jack Kerouac | 1957 | The novel that inspired Updike to write Rabbit, Run |
| V. | Thomas Pynchon | 1963 | A novel with similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| A Month of Sundays | John Updike | 1974 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | 1930 | Another novel that uses the present tense |
| Revolutionary Road | Richard Yates | 1970 | A novel with similar themes |
| Bech, a Book | John Updike | 1970 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| Portnoy's Complaint | Philip Roth | 1969 | A novel with somewhat similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| Lucky Man, Lucky Woman | Jack Driscoll | 1996 | A novel with similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| Low-lands | Thomas Pynchon | 1966 | A short story with similar themes and a vaguely similar plot to Rabbit, Run |
| The Moviegoer | Walker Percy | 1961 | A novel with somewhat similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| Appointment in Samarra | John O'Hara | 1934 | A novel with somewhat similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| The Bonfire of the Vanities | Tom Wolfe | 1987 | A novel with vaguely similar themes to Rabbit, Run |
| The Sportswriter | Richard Ford | 1986 | A novel with somewhat similar themes |
| The Fall | Albert Camus | 1956 | Another novel that uses the present tense |
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Goodreads
| Works of John Updike | ||
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Rabbit Angstrom novels | ||