A Study Guide for John Updike's "Rabbit, Run"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for John Updike's "Rabbit, Run," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535831727

Book preview

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Rabbit, Run

John Updike

1960

Introduction

Who likes Rabbit, apart from his author? Hermione Lee asks in The New Republic.

Sexist, dumb, lazy, illiterate (he spends the whole novel not finishing a book on American history), a terrible father … an inadequate husband, an unreliable lover, a tiresome lecher, a failing businessman, a cowardly patient, a typically territorial male: What kind of moral vantage point is this?

But, she writes, What redeems Rabbit is that, inside his brutish exterior, he is tender, feminine, and empathetic.

Set in Brewer, Pennsylvania, a fictional counterpart of the real-life city of Reading, Rabbit, Run examines the experiences of a young man who is trapped in an unfulfilling life and his equally unfulfilling attempts to leave his family and find a new life. When the book was first published, it shocked many readers with its explicit descriptions of sexuality, and according to Robert Detweiler in John Updike, some reviewers even speculated that Updike wrote a scandalous novel on purpose to capture the attention of the reading public. However, Detweiler notes, in the ensuing decades, standards of what was appropriate and acceptable in novels have been greatly relaxed, and it can now be appraised much more objectively in terms of its artistic qualities.

Since writing Rabbit, Run, Updike has written three other novels about Rabbit, at approximately ten-year intervals: Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990). Rabbit Angstrom has become Updike's most well-known character, and Rabbit, Run is his most recognized book title. He has won numerous awards and honors and is widely regarded as one of America's great novelists.

Author Biography

I'm a publishing fool, so anything I did not publish must be pretty bad, John Updike told Michael Rogers in Library Journal, and indeed, Updike is widely regarded as one of America's most prolific