Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

Introduction

John Updike in America is often called the most talented and prolific writer of his generation. He worked hard and enthusiastically in all genres: writing novels, short stories, plays, and even poetry (often ironic). John Updike died at the age of seventy-six; the literary world was filled with retrospectives of his life as a prose writer. He had written more than twenty novels, as well as many short stories, essays (including literary criticism), two plays, and even a few books for children (Bailey, 45). Updike's prose seems likely to become a lasting part of the American fiction canon. It is not surprising, therefore, that his poetry has often been overlooked, although he published at least one volume of poems in each decade of his writing life (eight volumes in all, including Endpoint), and his poems appeared in a variety of periodicals ranging from The New Yorker to American Poetry Review. Thus, he produced a very respectable body of poetic work by any standard. Updike's most famous novel, the award of the U.S. National Book Award in 1963 complex, the original composition of the novel makes it possible to make excursions to the past and into the future (Gullette, 85). However in this paper the purpose is to analyze one of his collection names as Rabbit is Rich.

Analysis

Rabbit is Rich is full of richly textured detail. Rabbit Is Rich is a beautifully written portrait of a fascinating, maddening, imperfect but attractive man and the people who come in and out of his life during one very eventful year. It's filled with lots of wonderful, annoying and lovable characters. Harry ruminates endlessly on life and its complexity and mystery. He thinks about religion and wonders about the existence or non-existence of God. He also thinks a lot about sex. Actually, he thinks mostly about sex, in one way or another. In fact, there's quite a lot of sex in the book (some of it pretty raunchy), including an episode where Harry and his wife Janice indulge in a little "wife-swapping" while on a tropical vacation trip with friends from their club back home. The book is written entirely from Harry's point of view, although he doesn't exactly narrate the story (Vidal, 111). Updike uses a sort of stream of consciousness style that's a bit startling at first - Harry's mental gymnastics can be a little challenging to follow. It is the story of a husband who leaves home with fatal consequences, but there is not a trace of melodrama. This is because Rabbit has not at any time the feeling of doing anything wrong. The author never moralizes or justified, merely describes the erratic and capricious impulses of the character. Thus configured immature personality and infinitely selfish Rabbit, unable or parenting or to ensure no one but himself, and leaves emerge without being involved in the story the enormous contempt for him.

Rabbit is a despicable, no doubt. But Updike does not fall into the temptation of showing ...