Rabbit, Run

Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom was once king of the high school world, a star basketball player, tall and handsome, and able to get the girls. Now, several years on, he is married, frustrated and unsure as to how it all ended up this way. One day, arriving home to his alcoholic, dreary wife and his meager home, he snaps. He will leave his wife, his responsibilities, his child. He will run.

Rabbit turns to his former coach for advice, the old lecher introduces him to a part-time prostitute. He moves in with her the same night and they develop a dominant-submissive relationship, his affection existing only because it allows him to demand, hers because she knows no better. Like most of the other events in the story, this one is sad, gritty, and very real. Ruth, the plump good time girl, is a sympathetic character, and there are enough flashes of hard iron in her make-up that any sensation of her being a caricature or place-holder character fades.

What Updike has done here is to create the dreary reality of a life that turned out not quite how you expected. Rabbit is a man at turns puzzled, the confident, then angry, then confused, but his emotions are never directed at himself. It is almost as though he is unable to analyse what lies within for fear that he will find something he doesn't like or - worse - nothing at all. When he acts, it is quick and unpredictable, but oddly, never out of character. Because he rarely internalises in the narrative, for the first half of the novel he is as much an enigma to us as he is to the other characters, but as the story develops, we begin to learn what makes him him, and while his actions never really lose that exciting touch of randomness, they always feel right in hindsight, justified.

While evading his marital responsibilities, Rabbit and his wife's priest, Jack Eccles, form an unequal friendship. The priest is there to save Rabbit, to return him to the fold, to where he should be, but it is clear that the young man is as unsure about his world as anybody else. He doubts himself, he doubts his God. It is interesting that Rabbit actually draws strength from this indecision, allowing him to help as he is helped. It is made very clear that if Eccles had of been secure in his faith and in himself, he never would have been able to relate to Rabbit.

When the novel was first printed, there was a lot of discussion about the overt, explicit sexuality of it. Forty years and more later, it is both difficult and easy to see why. Rabbit is a conscious sexual predator, an animalistic man who thinks about sex often, and loves women for being women. But today, that sort of outlook from a twenty-one year old man is not surprising, and is all but expected. Perhaps what still has the capacity to shock is his domination of women, his calm, measured attempts to make them submit - and they do. I can't help but wonder if that is another taboo that in a few decades will fade, just like the rest.

Eventually Rabbit returns to his wife, but not in a triumphant, 'all is resolved' plot twist at the end of the novel. No, Updike does not take the easy way out, instead reuniting the pair a little over halfway through. And for what? A birth. His wife Janice is pregnant, to a little girl they name Rebecca. The events immediately preceding Rabbit's return to his wife are both sad and delicate, happy and horrifying.

There is one scene that deserves special mention. I won't reveal what it is so that the plot can remain a surprise, but I must mention its power, both on the novel, the characters, and the reader. It is an urgent scene, horrible in its inevitability. From the opening paragraph, it is clear what is going to happen, and the fact that we, the reader, knows about it, makes it all the more terrible. I cannot praise Updike's skill as an author in this particular section enough, and it is worth the price of admission alone.

To continue on that, Updike is an amazing wordsmith. He captures the unfriendly reality of everyone's life with ease. Only rarely dipping into lengthy sentences and almost never using literary tricks, Updike keeps his sentences short and sharp, his metaphors clear and crisp. Yet he never strays from what is real. Nobody is 'luminously beautiful', instead we have, 'Her hair in sunlight sprays red, brown, gold, white, and black across her pillow. Smiling with relief, he gts up on an elbow and kisses her solid slack cheek, admires its tough textures of pores.' In those two sentences, we are introduced to both the beauty and the reality of this sleeping woman, and it is wonderful. Throughout, Updike concentrates on reality, never fancifying or making a scene glib because he can. For every positive a character reveals, he shows us a - not a negative, never - but a neutral, a real, a grey. If a character was perfect, why would we care?

The ending was, unfortunately, a little confused, and I am uncertain as to how he could have extended the story of Rabbit to three more books. However, based on every page, every sentence, every word that Updike used to create his marvellous narrative, I am convinced that he can pull it off. He was only twenty-nine when he wrote this book, but there is a wisdom and sensitivity throughout that many never touch - truly a stunning author.