However, Rabbit's life is not all that it appears on the surface, as Updike hastens to demonstrate. The novel's really timeline helps emphasize this fact, as the events take place in 1979 when the unite States is in the midst of a gas crisis. sure as shooting, Updike wishes his readers to see the match between the invoke of the nation and Harry's own life, as some(prenominal) are experiencing shortages of fuel. Harry may be living the 'good life,' just now it no longer seems to satisfy him. Indeed, even while playing golf at the club, he feels an emptiness at the meat of things. Harry explains that he "ais tireda of summer, of golf, of the sun. When he was younger and just fetching up the game a there were shots that seemed like a miraclea" but now it has become "amore like acetify, pleasant work but work, a matter of approximations in the realm of the imperfecta" (Updike 197-98). However, this is moreover a symptom of deeper unrest at bottom Harry's soul, as Updike clearly asserts.
Indeed, the reappearance of Harry's son Nelson seems to send him into a tailspin. Nelson returns home with a pregnant girlfriend, Pru, who he plans to marry. When Harry learns of the news, "Sorrow for the child [Nelson] bleeds upwardly to the ceiling with its blotches of streetlight shuffling through the beech" (Updike 206). It is almos
Clearly, Harry is not fulfilled within his marriage, as his thoughts of Ruth and both his and Janice's participation in the wife-swapping on the Caribbean trip demonstrate, and he is also worried about the state of his son's life.
Harry seems to contemplate the dead and God quite often, which seems to blab out to the unhappiness within him. Rabbit muses: "The dead, Jesus. They were multiplying, and they look up beg you to join them, promising it is all right, it is very soft humble here" (Updike 13). These certainly seem to be the thoughts of a downcast individual. Indeed, at the novel's conclusion, when his granddaughter has been born, Harry's life is still in turmoil. He abide only feel time dwindling down; as he cradles the baby in his arms, Rabbit feels her as just now "His. Another nail in his coffin. His" (Updike 508).
Thus, it would seem that the title source in Updike's Rabbit is Rich cannot truly be considered rich. Certainly Rabbit possesses material wealth, and enjoys the superficial pleasures of suburban living. Inside, however, he is in turmoil. His family situation, including Nelson's predicament and his own strained marriage, only highlight Harry's unease. He is further tortured by thoughts of his ex-lover Ruth and all the others that
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