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| Edition: | G K Hall & Co (Hardcover) |
| Author: | John Updike |
| Published: | September 1996 |
| Pages: | 448 |
| ISBN 10: | 0783818238 |
| Used: | $5.00 (7) |
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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, his former high school girlfriend. 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. He soon returns home, however, where he visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero.
Tothero introduces Rabbit to Ruth Leonard, who is a part-time prostitute, and they begin a three month affair. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents' house. Rabbit, jealous of a past fling between Ruth and a local man, compels Ruth to perform fellatio, and on the same night Janice goes into labor. Rabbit leaves Ruth and 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 fueled by the flirtatious overtones, Lucy Eccles, the minister's wife, makes an ambiguous invitation to Rabbit to come into the Eccles' home. When he refuses, she slams the door on him. Rabbit returns to his apartment, encourages Janice to have a whiskey, then pressure her toward having sex in spite of her postnatal condition. When she refuses Rabbit leaves and turns back 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 of her pregnancy. Though Rabbit is relieved to discover she has not had an abortion, he is unwilling to divorce Janice. Rabbit 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.
