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Rabbit, Run Happy Endings Essay, Research Paper

A Race to Find Happiness

There is something extraordinarily powerful about the euphoria associated with happiness. What causes this and where does it come from? Some say it has to do with a completeness in one’s self, a sense of well being and understanding. It also comes from living for the present, and living for the future; from making others happy, and from enjoying our enemies’ misery; from being with others, and from living in peaceful solitude. Different people experience different exhilarating emotions that are played through the acts of living. It is from this that we open our eyes to see what is fresh, for one’s state of happiness or unhappiness colors everything else.

People who are happy perceive the world as safer, make decisions more easily, rate job applicants more favorably, and report greater satisfaction with their whole lives. When your mood is gloomy, life as a whole seems depressing. Let your mood brighten, and suddenly your relationships, your self-image, and your hopes for the future all seem more promising. In John Updike’s novel, rabbit, run, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a man who wants constant change. He hasn’t found his happiness so he runs away from what he knows as life to something new, in hopes that he can find his answer. For some people happiness is a walk in the woods, a sunny view of a waterfall, or some other experience of the tranquility and beauty of unspoiled places. Such settings may free us from stress that triggers bad moods or may put us in touch with a place in ourselves that is beyond unhappiness. For Rabbit it seems to be women and sexual compatibility and being in control.

Rabbit’s passions flowed along the path of lust and sexual fulfillment. When he was with Ruth, everything seemed to be about being pleased sexually and having it whenever he was in need. He thought merely of himself and not of the desires that Ruth might have, or what she might want in their relationship. He barely even noticed how sick she had gotten and failed to realize that it was because she was pregnant. He wanted sex and he would take it anyway he could. In the time period that this took place, his desires posed as a problem. Elaine Tyler May quotes in Sex, Women and the Bomb, “Sexual ‘deviants’ were allegedly security risks because they could be easily seduced, blackmailed, or tempted to join subversive organizations, since they lacked the will and moral stamina to resist.” (May, 95). For Rabbit he couldn’t say, “no” and wouldn’t say, “no”. Sex was his way out; it was the cure to his problems and it made him happy. He did not think about his family and what running away would do to them. He was not the typical 1950’s family man that everyone watched on TV. That is not what Updike was trying to get across.

The 1950’s were a funny decade in regards to family values and the way a family should be run. Though at the time it seemed natural. The woman ran the house in the sense of the children and raising them properly. The wives did the cooking, the cleaning, the yard work, and the bussing of the children, while the men took on a job to bring in the income. It was the wife’s job to make sure that dinner was on the table when the father came home from work. Television during this time period exemplified the priorities in a women’s life by showing programs such as Father Knows Best, and The Life of Riley. Steven Mintz said in his chapter Families of the Fifties, “Television programs conveyed cultural images as strong and as influential on the viewer as the commercials which financed the new medium. Each night on TV, screen stars projected conceptions of masculinity and femininity, parenthood, and childhood and adolescence to millions of viewers.” Though this still happens in today’s world, TV was more of an influence during the 50’s, only because TV was brand new to most families. It gave the idea that marriage and family was the most important part of a person’s life. Marriage was a sacrament that everyone needed to make.

The 1950’s brought about many ideas of what marriage should be. They felt that marriages would bring about happiness. “Young adults of the 1950’s married in unprecedented numbers. They married earlier than other twentieth-century Americans, and they had more children and bore them faster.” (Mintz, 178). People felt that if you didn’t get married right away then you were doomed to be alone and unhappy for the rest of your life, there must be something wrong with you if you weren’t married by your mid twenties. “During the postwar period, marriage was seen as an essential ingredient for a full and happy life. Fewer than one American in ten believed that an unmarried person could be happy.” (Mintz, 180). Maybe that is a partial reason why Rabbit married Janice. “He married relatively late, when he was twenty-three and she was two years out of high school.” (Updike, 11). In his decade, 23 years old was supposedly late to get married. Today that’s the age that people are finally getting there lives in order, and for most people today that’s not even close to the age of marriage.

So we ask why then did Rabbit finally decide to get married at such a “late” age? It was getting Janice pregnant that finally pushed the button. But he was happy about it, for that gave him his reason to get married. It was the right thing to do, but it was also a way out of where his life was leading. “Husbands, especially fathers, wore the badge of “family man” as a sign of virility and patriotism. There is no question that the social pressure to appear mature, responsible, “normal” and patriotic, contributed to the rush into marriage.” (May, 98). He could turn himself into that “family man” that everyone looked up to and respected. He got the job that would give him a good

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