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| american novels | |
| 1960 novels | |
| novels by john updike | |
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It was then made into a 1970 movie starring James Caan . Harry Angstrom is 26, married to a high school girlfriend, and has a 2-year-old son and a job selling a kitchen gadget. Rightly or wrongly, 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 empty. After a minor quarrel with his pregnant wife, Janice, Harry leaves her and moves in with a sometimes-prostitute, Ruth, who is mystified by him but sees some good in him. Reverend Eccles, from his in-laws' church, tries to befriend Harry with an eye towards mending the Angstrom marriage. Not knowing that Ruth is pregnant with his baby, Harry leaves Ruth when Rev. Eccles calls to tell him that Janice is in labor. To Harry's surprise, Janice welcomes him back. For a while, it seems as the new baby will help bring Harry and Janice back together, but after another quarrel, Harry leaves again and Janice, having drunk too much, accidentally drowns the baby in the bathtub. The terrible experience leaves Harry filled with guilt, which comes to a head when he makes a scene in the funeral and flees. Harry returns to Ruth and learns she's pregnant; Ruth challenges him to either marry her or never see her again. The novel ends with Harry, as so often, literally running, unable to decide between Janice and Ruth. The novel might be described as Christian Existentialist ---Harry feels insignificant and struggles to find a meaning behind existence. (His name, Angstrom, is that of a unit of length used for measuring sub-microscopic distances.) It is arguable whether Harry is selfish or simply so alienated that he cannot make contact with other people. Besides its Christian themes, ''Rabbit, Run'' shares two other Updike qualities: a candid treatment of sex, and close attention to the details of modern American life. Here is a paragraph from the novel. Harry sleeps fitfully the night before his daughter's funeral: During this stolen doze he has a vivid dream. He is alone on a large sporting field, or vacant lot, littered with small pebbles. In the sky two perfect disks, identical in size but the one a dense white and the other slightly transparent, move toward each other slowly; the pale one is directly above the dense one. At the moment they touch he feels frightened and a voice like over a loudspeaker at a track meet announces, "The cowslip swallows up the elder." The downward gliding of the top one continues steadily until the other, though the stronger, is totally eclipsed, and just one circle is before his eyes, pale and pure. He understands: "the cowslip" is the moon, and "the elder" the sun, and that what he has witnessed is the explanation of death: lovely life eclipsed by lovely death. Intensely relieved and excited, he realizes he must go forth from this field and found a new religion. There is a feeling of the disks, and the echo of the voice, bending over him importunately, and he opens his eyes. Janice stands by the bed in a brown skirt and a pink sleeveless blouse. There is a drab thickness of fat under her chin he has never noticed before. He is surprised to be on his back; he almost always sleeps on his stomach. He realizes it was a dream, that he has nothing to tell the world, and the knot regathers in his chest. In getting out of bed he kisses the back of her hand, which is hanging by her side helpless and raw. |
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