Rabbit Run

What’s interesting about the form of the novel is the way Updike’s narrator tells the story, utilizing the present tense and long, sensually descriptive passages. Though he injects no blatant commentary into the novel, the narrator, in some of his language, appears to be chastising Rabbit, shaking his head as he runs off again. The present tense suits Rabbit perfectly, the plot moving forward as instantaneously and suddenly as he does, no time for reflection or self-evaluation, just a stream of cause and effect. He rarely contemplates his actions in relationship to anyone but himself, often only expressing a detached interest in uncovering his own motivations for acting, rather than the implications of those actions on others. Rabbit’s conclusions about his life are almost entirely affected by his immediate surroundings, allowing him to swing wildly from thoughts like, “There is no God; Janice can die” (170) to praying to, “make it be alright” (199). Rabbit, though capable of empathy, tends to block out everything but his own overpowering emotional swings, which makes his decisions unpredictable. As he tells his wife when she asks him to empathize with her after childbirth, “ ‘I can. I can but I don’t want to, it’s not the thing, the thing is how I feel. And I feel like getting out.” (213).