Rabbit at Rest in John

Rabbit at Rest

In John Updike's Rabbit at Rest the protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is a 55-year-old male who is, fittingly enough, more than 40 pounds overweight. The novel paints a picture of the excesses and the mindlessness in the lifestyle of the American middle class during the 1980's.

Harry has a voracious appetite. He likes "anything salty and easy to chew." This translates to Planters peanut bars, California corn chips, Macadamia nuts, pretzels, as well as candied yams, pecan pie, Key-lime pie and vanilla Cameos. Harry's addiction to eating is a vain attempt to fill the void he feels in his life as he is unable to comprehend its meaning or purpose. Consequently he eats anything and everything, to the detriment of his own health and he has a heart attack. While in the hospital he hears his doctor tell Janice that "it's the usual thing tired and stiff and full of crud. it's a typical American heart, for his age and economic status." Harry's own heart is not too good and in fact symbolizes the heart of America.

The novel opens in Florida where Harry and his wife Janice are spending their fifth winter since buying the condo. Updike, alluding to the urban sprawl of the eighties, tells of the time when Harry and Janice bought the place in 1984, and you could still see snatches of the Gulf from their balcony. They were so excited they bought a telescope. "In the years since, their view of the water has been built shut…skyscraper hotels arising along the shore the color of oatmeal." He goes on to lament, "Now, with the jets and Social Security and the national sun worship they can't build fast enough."

Updike admonishes the political savvy of Americans during the eighties. He remarks, through Harry, that "Under Reagan it was like anesthesia." As for the election of 1988 between George Bush and Michael Dukakis, Bernie, one of Harry's buddies remarks, "Dukakis tried to talk intelligently to the American people and we weren't ready for it. Bush talked to us like we were a bunch of morons and we ate it up." He comments further, "After eight years of Reagan I would have though more people would have been more sore than they were. If you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system; either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be."

The author reflects on the treatment of the elderly and infirm. Harry says, "You wonder if we haven't gone overboard in catering to cripples." In essence he's referring collectively to the retired elderly, Thelma, a former mistress who suffers from lupus, and an AIDS patient who exploits his disease as a way of eluding professional responsibility. And there is Nelson, Harry's son, a drug addict whose dependence is pushing him toward a mental breakdown.

Updike touches on the spiritual awareness of American's during a conversation between Harry and his friend Charlie Stavos. "What do you think you are champ?" asks Charlie when Harry questions his choice to have pig valve replacement surgery. "A god made one of a kind with an immortal soul breathed in. A vehicle of grace. A battle field of good and evil. An apprentice angel. All those things they tried to teach you in Sunday school, or really didn't try very hard to teach you, just let them drift in and out of the pamphlets back there in that church basement buried deeper in his mind than an air-raid shelter."

In the course of the novel, Updike comments on the overabundance of information available through the media. "There is just no end to it, no end of information," says Harry. News of Tiananmen Square, First Dog Millie, elections in Poland, and Mike Schmidt's retirement, it's all right there, in front of him, like oxygen. His every thought is mediated by television, by the advertisers. His life, he reflects sadly, near the end of the book "seems no realer than the lives on TV shows," except that his is not interrupted every six minutes by commercial breaks.

Harry and Janice leave their son Nelson to run the family business, a Toyota Dealership. Nelson has a drug addiction, cocaine and some crack, and goes through $200,000 of the businesses money. Though Harry and Janice send him to a rehabilitation centre, Toyota strips the garage of its franchise.