Rabbit Runs Into Middle America

In John Updike's third Rabbit book came in an age where the mystique of life fueled by the countercultural movements and the Vietnam War had died down. His novel entered the literary world at the beginning of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the man at the forefront of the Conservative tide, who encouraged young men and women around America that the way they could obtain their individuality was not through drugs, sex, and experimentation, but through wealth, building on the philosophy of "the tallest man standing out." In a time when billionaire Malcolm Forbes had become popular among young people, and when life had become as tame as it was in the Fifties, Updike published Rabbit is Rich, a novel that portrays Middle America in a light that is far from positive. Instead of a carefree world of wealth and escape from conformity, Updike accentuated upon the fact that individuality in the bourgeoisie society is often defined solely by possessions, and that the lives of these wealthy members of society is often plagued by more problems than they make out. Naturally the literary world gobbled the book up, and Updike received many accolades, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It seemed like a breath of fresh air, and the perfect novel to enter a decade of materialism.

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is indeed rich in this novel. His father-in-law Fred Springer is dead (so are Rabbit's own parents, for that matter), and the ownership of Springer Motors has gone to Janice Angstrom, who submissively allows her husband to run it. Rabbit has a few trifling problems, including a lot of doubt concerning whether or not his former lover Ruth Leonard (Now Ruth Baker) had a baby born of his seed, but for the most part, he is happy. He now plays golf with a group of rich friends, one of whom is Ronnie Harrison, a former teammate of Rabbit, and he has comfortably moved in with Janice's mother, Judith, and slipped into the shoes of Fred Springer. His life seems good, but like always, something goes terribly awry. This time it is his son Nelson, now in his early twenties and attending Kent State (yes, the Kent State where the infamous massacre of four students occurred), but who has come back home on a temporary leave of college, and with a desire to work with Harry at Springer Motors. Which is not to say that Nelson likes his father, he, in fact, hates him vehemently (he blames Harry for the death of Jill, the hippy who lived with the father and son in Rabbit Redux). Apparently Nelson admired his grandfather, and now wants to take up in the family business (this is what he says, but former relations with his grandfather were mostly formal, to say the least). Rabbit opposes this development, wanting, of course, for his son to go to college. In the fashion of all the mobsters in mafia films, Rabbit tells his son to do the exact opposite of what he did, and the aging father naturally meets opposition.

What makes things worse is the arrival of Pru (her nickname is "Prudence"), who is carrying Nelson's baby. The fact that Nelson is now weighed down with a child and forced to soon be married really weighs down on Rabbit, reminding him of his marriage with Janice and the adventures he had in Rabbit, Run as a deadbeat dad, and the Rabbit desperately wants his son to live a different life. The father even goes so far to offer to pay for an abortion for Pru just so his son won't marry her, and this he does on their wedding day (if you were expecting a toned down attitude from Rabbit Angstrom because of his age, you were wrong). Of course, Nelson's plight isn't really the primary concern of Rabbit. What he mostly wants to do is have sex with the wife of one of his golf buddies, and the plot with Nelson is really a secondary concern for Rabbit. As usual, the world revolves around Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom in his mind, and in the way Updike writes. But it is a very good thing in this novel.

Rabbit is at the center of Middle America at a time when life in this country seemed to revolve solely around this scene. He is a remnant of old wealth entering an age of yuppies, although his incompatibility with the times isn't so evident in this novel as it is in Rabbit at Rest. He has money, he has a good life and a now faithful wife, and is in such a good mood he has even befriended Charlie Stavros, the man who had an affair with Rabbit's wife. But the former athlete cannot escape the problems of his son, and it is easy to see that he is deeply perturbed by the problems plaguing Nelson, coming at a time when he has managed to finally stop running from responsibility and accept life. Even though things are good for him, it is obvious that Rabbit is disappointed with his life, perhaps moreso than in the years of drug experimentation in which a Negro pimp and a flower child lived with his him and his son. It is most apparent at the moments when he tries to get his son to weasel out of responsibility, and least present when he is exerting his own authority as father on Nelson, who naturally sees his father as an antagonist. Rabbit lives a good life, but his Nelson seems to never allow him let go for his past sins, and this is what causes Rabbit to reflect on the disappointments of his life, and how he really hasn't been truly happy since the days of his athletic stardom in highschool.

Updike's motif for writing is a mixture of declarative sentences and run-on sentences, but all of it moves at the same beat. The lyrical qualities of his prose are very apparent in this novel, but it is evident that he is less trying to impress and more trying to tell a story. Unlike Rabbit, Run, he avoids long and drawn out introspection, and instead paints a more external picture concerning the life of Rabbit Angstrom, and this is definitely the right way to go. Rabbit is a narcissist whose egotism goes through his character and is evident in all his actions, and even though he is about ponderances, he isn't a very deep person at heart. Staying away from an analyzation of the inner workings of Rabbit, Updike instead concerns himself foremost with the story, and the result is an excellent envisioning of the American middle class. The novel is still about Rabbit at the heart, but its focus has branched out in a way that neither of the two former novels was able to do. Instead of a character study, we get a straight-out portrait of life.