The Story Archive

Rabbit, Run

John Updike · 1960 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Harry Angstrom, twenty-six, demonstrates a kitchen gadget in the dime stores of Brewer, Pennsylvania, where nobody has forgotten what he did on a basketball court. One evening he walks out on his pregnant wife and son, drives south, turns back, and takes up with a call girl a few streets away while a young minister works to talk him home. Updike wrote in the present tense to hold the reader inside Rabbit's skin, and went back to him every decade.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalTragedy
Theme
Freedom vs FateThe American DreamGuilt & ConscienceIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Anti-HeroEverymanWanderer
Plot structure
The ChaseIronic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The JourneyThe Threshold
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
RealistLyricalIronic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

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