1096 Updike, John
so that he can leave the store without fussing with
his coat and boots, thus making a clean and suave
getaway. Instead, he is free to “saunter into the elec-
tric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the
night before.” One can imagine the self-conscious
swagger with which Sammy, figuring himself as a
western-style hero, departs from the building, assert-
ing in his stance his superiority over the goings-on
therein. However, in this sentence in which he sug-
gests his heroic departure, Sammy also reveals that
he is not the self-made hero that he imagines him-
self to be. He has told his audience that his mother
has ironed his shirt for him, so the audience can
infer that he is not completely independent.
In the end, after Sammy has left the grocery
store, the stage on which he has somewhat unsuc-
cessfully performed as a hero, he enters the real
world, as if for the first time. He recognizes that
his actions were theatricality without sufficient sub-
stance, that he was playing a role. He was bored at
work and looking for some excitement, so he over-
reacted and caused himself to look foolish. However,
he ends his narrative on a dubiously positive note:
Because he “felt how hard the world was going to
be” to him from that point on, he sets himself up as
being potentially capable of heroism in his future
endeavors. He will fight through difficult circum-
stances in order to achieve any goals that he sets for
himself.
Maura Grace Harrington
uPDikE, JoHN Rabbit, Run (1960)
Rabbit, Run is the first novel of a series that ends
up spanning more than 30 years—40, if we include
Rabbit Remembered (2001), a novella that acts as
a coda to the quartet. Composed of Rabbit, Run
(1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981),
and Rabbit at Rest (1990), the Rabbit Quartet
details the multiple highs and lows in the adult
life of the unlikely hero Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.
Harry, whom only the narrator calls Rabbit, is
26, underemployed, unhappily married, a perennial
dreamer, and unfit for fatherhood when Rabbit, Run
opens. The same should be said about him at novel’s
end. He still runs away from his wife and son. He
still returns home to them and their ramshackle
suburban apartment. He still does what he wants
and what he does not want. A sense of entrapment
still limits any freedom that he finds. And this is
what makes the problematic Harry so compelling, so
likable and dislikable, so complex—so real.
Over the single spring season of 1958 during
which Rabbit, Run takes place, Harry leaves his
alcoholic wife Janice three times; spends two months
living with a prostitute whom he unknowingly (and
stupidly) impregnates; works at three different jobs;
barely speaks to his toddler son; loses his newborn
daughter to drowning; and spends much time golf-
ing with the Reverend Eccles, the only person in
town with any faith in Harry. At the heart of Harry’s
restiveness and impulsiveness is his nostalgic focus
on his high-school stardom. On the basketball court,
Rabbit made no mistakes—and never fouled. How-
ever, the rules (and expectations) of the everyday
world are far less clear.
As well as the themes of freedom, parenthood,
nostalgia, social class, success, and violence,
John Updike (1932-2009) also explores grief,
guilt, community, ethics, and justice.
Jason S. PolleySocIaL cLaSS in Rabbit, Run
Once Harry Angstrom arrives at his “scabby clap-
board” apartment after yet another day of demon-
strating the MagiPeel Peeler at local five-and-dime
stores, he is careful not to knock the television from
its stand when he opens the closet door. One time
Janice Angstrom, née Springer, his 20-year-old
wife of two years, nearly toppled the $149 televi-
sion set “smash on the floor” when accessing the
closet. (When pregnant or drunk, she is clumsy
and panicky.) He carefully hangs his suit jacket. He
must wear it again tomorrow; he has only two. After
latching the closet, its door swings open, as always.
Everything around Harry is falling apart despite his
love of order and tidiness. And things get worse as
John Updike’s Rabbit, Run develops.
The young couple immediately engages in what
appears to be a characteristic squabble. The tired
husband indignant, the pregnant wife drunken,
Harry leaves to retrieve first their car and then their
son. Each is stationed at the house of a different set
of grandparents under a logic that Harry cannot