John Updike Rabbit, Run Analysis

Rabbit, Run by John Updike is an easy read that takes place in Pennsylvania where the main character Harry Angstrom, more commonly known as Rabbit, was born and raised by his parents along with his little sister Miriam. Rabbit was a high school basketball star that cannot leave those days behind, even though he is now the manager at MagiPeel vegetable company. Rabbit is described as a six foot three male at the age of twenty-six who is married to Janice Springer. Janice is “a small women whose skin tends toward olive and looks tight” (Updike 8). Janice and Rabbit got married two years after she graduated high school and he was twenty-three. Janice and Rabbit have a little boy named Nelson, who is two and half years old. Rabbit and Janice do
Tothero brings up Rabbits excitement for women to forget about “little mutts like Janice” (Updike 48), when he say’s “this is the night. This is no time for pity. The real women are dropping down out of the trees” (Updike 48). When getting to the bar Rabbit meets Ruth, a very sexual women who happens to be a prostitute, who also is chunky, about five foot eight, blue eyes, and with dirty ginger hair (Updike 48), was a lot of things that Janice was not. Through out the night Rabbit learns about Ruth, how she went to a different school but knew of him because Rabbits school beat hers (Updike 49), birthday months, chop stick preference, even alcoholic beverage preference, and even where each other work. After the dinner, Ruth and Rabbit went back to her apartment. When back at the apartment Rabbit wants Ruth to not use birth control and he wants undress her himself (Updike 67). The situation escalates when Ruth says “do you think we’re married or something the way boss me around” (Updike 67), Rabbit responds with a “Yes, lets be” (Updike 68), in the end they have sexual intercourse. The next day Rabbit left Ruth’s and went home to find the apartment partially empty, and him going to church because its Palm Sunday (Updike 87). This scenario created the option for Rabbit to run away
Rabbit always was looking out for his own interest of freedom, he never would take responsibility for anything he did. Rabbit was very self-centered in the way that he would do anything that made him happy, in addition to getting away from Janice, and when the consequences came or the outcome was not what he wanted he would get angry. Rabbit showed that his freedom was always battling the things he needed to do to be maturing, he never really grew out of his high school maturity. Rabbit’s responsibility always fell short behind his individual freedom in his life because he would run from everything that happened, as stated in examples throughout the paper. Also, with the novels title it just proves how Rabbit runs from everything for his own