Rabbit, Run

For the 1939 song, see Run Rabbit Run

Rabbit, Run

First edition cover
Author	John Updike
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	November 12, 1960
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	320 pp
ISBN	NA
Followed by	Rabbit Redux

Rabbit, Run is a 1960 novel by John Updike.

Plot introduction

It depicts five months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player named Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, and his attempts to escape the constraints of his life. It spawned several sequels, including Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest, as well as a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.

Plot summary

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is 26, has a job selling kitchen gadgets, and is married to Janice, a former salesgirl at the store where he worked. They have a two-year-old son named Nelson, and live in Mount Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. He believes that his marriage is a failure and that something is missing from his life. Having been a basketball star in high school, Harry finds middle-class family life unsatisfying. On the spur of the moment, he decides to drive south in an attempt to escape. However, after getting hopelessly lost he returns to his home town and, not wanting to go home, visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero.

That night Harry has dinner with Tothero and two girls one of whom, Ruth Leonard, is a part-time prostitute. They begin a two-month affair and Harry moves into her apartment. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents' house and a local minister, Jack Eccles, befriends Harry in a futile attempt to get him to reconcile with his wife. However, on the night that Janice gives birth, Rabbit, jealous of a past fling between Ruth and Ronnie Harrison, compels Ruth to perform fellatio. Almost immediately afterwards, Rabbit hears from Eccles about the birth and leaves a distraught Ruth behind as he rushes to the hospital.

Janice gives birth to a baby girl, whom she and Rabbit name Rebecca June. Rabbit returns to live with his wife, and accepts a job at his father-in-law's car dealership. Rabbit attends church one morning and, after walking the minister's wife Lucy home, interprets an invitation from her to come in for a coffee as a sexual advance. When he refuses, she slams the door on him in apparent disgust. Rabbit returns to his apartment, encourages Janice to have a whiskey, then pressures her toward having sex in spite of her postnatal condition. When she refuses Rabbit leaves and attempts to return to Ruth.

Fearing Rabbit has abandoned her again, Janice begins drinking heavily that morning, and accidentally drowns their infant daughter Rebecca June. Rabbit returns to Janice and Nelson, suggesting a reconciliation is possible as Rabbit seeks peace. Tothero visits Rabbit and suggests that the thing he is looking for probably does not exist. At the child's funeral Rabbit's internal and external conflicts result in a sudden proclamation of his innocence in the baby's death. He then runs from the graveyard, pursued by Jack Eccles, until he becomes lost.

After wandering in the woods, Rabbit returns to Ruth and learns that she is pregnant by him. Though Rabbit is relieved to discover she has not had an abortion, he is unwilling to divorce Janice. Rabbit seemingly abandons Ruth, chasing the fleeting feeling he has attempted to grasp during the course of the novel. Rabbit's fate is uncertain as the novel concludes.

Characters

• Harry Angstrom, a.k.a. Rabbit, a 26-year-old man. Married to Janice Angstrom. He was a basketball star in high school and begins the novel as a kitchen gadget salesman.
• Miriam Angstrom, a.k.a Mim, Rabbit's 19-year-old sister.
• Mr. Angstrom, Rabbit's father.
• Mrs. Angstrom, Rabbit's mother.
• Janice Angstrom, Rabbit's wife.
• Nelson Angstrom, Harry's and Janice's 2-year-old son.
• Rebecca June Angstrom, Harry's and Janice's infant daughter. Janice accidentally drowns her in a bath while drunk.
• Mr. Springer, Janice's father. A used car dealer.
• Mrs. Springer, Janice's mother. She is harshly critical of Harry when he leaves Janice.
• Jack Eccles, a young Episcopalian minister. He tries to mend Harry's and Janice's broken marriage.
• Lucy Eccles, Jack Eccles's wife. She blames the lack of love in her marriage with Jack on his job taking up too much of his time.
• Fritz Kruppenbach, the Angstroms' Lutheran minister.
• Ruth Leonard, Rabbit's mistress. She is a prostitute and lives alone in a small apartment. She is weight-conscious. She lives with Harry for three months.
• Margaret Kosko, a friend of Ruth's. Probably also a prostitute. She is contemptuous of Tothero.
• Mrs. Smith, a widow whose garden Rabbit looks after while away from his wife. She is 73 years old.
• Marty Tothero, Rabbit's former basketball coach. He was popular in high school but got dismissed from his job due to a 'scandal'. He cheats on his wife but gives marital advice to Harry. After suffering two strokes, he becomes disabled.
• Ronnie Harrison, One of Rabbit's former basketball team-mates. He has slept with Margaret Kosko and Ruth Leonard.

Rabbit and Angstrom

A rabbit is "a person likened to a rabbit, typically in being timid or ineffectual; a poor or novice player" and "a runner who intentionally sets a fast pace for a teammate during a long-distance race."

Besides its other associations, Updike may have chosen the name Rabbit for his character for its echo of Sinclair Lewis's Babbit, whose main theme "focuses on the power of conformity, and the vacuity of middle-class American life."

Updike said in interviews that the name Angstrom was inspired by his reading of Kierkegaard and meant to suggest 'stream of Angst'.

References to other works

• Previously, Updike had written a short story entitled Ace In The Hole, and to a lesser extent a poem, Ex-Basketball Player, with similar themes to Rabbit Run.
• John Updike said that he wrote Rabbit, Run in response to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and tried to depict "what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt."
• To a lesser extent, echoes of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye can also be found.
• The screenplay for 8 Mile by Scott Silver opens with a quote from Rabbit, Run: "If you have the guts to be yourself...other people'll pay your price," and the main character is nicknamed "Rabbit."

Literary significance

The text of the novel went through several rewrites. Knopf originally required Updike to cut some "sexually explicit passages," but he restored and rewrote the book for the 1963 Penguin edition and again for the 1995 Everyman's omnibus edition.

Though it had been done earlier, as in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Camus' The Fall, Updike's novel is noted as being one of several well regarded, early usages of the present tense. Updike stated:

In Rabbit, Run, I liked writing in the present tense. You can move between minds, between thoughts and objects and events with a curious ease not available to the past tense. I don't know if it is clear to the reader as it is to the person writing, but there are kinds of poetry, kinds of music you can strike off in the present tense.

Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Film adaptation

In 1970, the novel was made into a film directed by Jack Smight and starring James Caan as Rabbit, Carrie Snodgress as Janice and Jack Albertson as Marty. The script was co-written by Updike and Howard B. Kreitsek. The poster reads, "3 months ago Rabbit Angstrom ran out to buy his wife cigarettes. He hasn't come home yet."

References

• Updike, John (12 November 1960). Rabbit, Run (1st ed. ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)

External links

• Rabbit, Run study guide, themes, quotes, teachers' guide
• Rabbit, Run Map