Rabbit, Run”, “Rabbit Redux”, “Rabbit Is Rich”
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Vilnius Pedagogical University Faculty of Foreign Languages Department of English Philology Master Paper Inga Banytė American Life and Values in John Updike’s Trilogy “Rabbit, Run”, “Rabbit Redux”, “Rabbit is Rich”. Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of MA in English Philology. Academic Advisor: dr. D. Miniotaitė VILNIUS 2005 Introduction The aims of the Paper are to describe the mid – twentieth century social, economic, ideological and cultural processes in America and show the gradual formation of mass society with its shifting values in American writer’s John Updike’s trilogy “ Rabbit, Run” (1960), “Rubbit Redux “ (1971) and “ Rabbit is Rich” (1981). Using the descriptive method, we will try to rediscover American life since the 1950s and understand the human condition in America today. In the introduction I will describe American life in the 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s with the characteristic social, economic and cultural events and changes of each decade. I will also introduce John Updike as one of the most accomplished American writers, and discuss the reflection of the American reality since the 1950s in his fiction, emphasizing the most characteristic features and dominant thematic concerns of his works. Finally, I will present J. Updike’s “Rabbit” novels , each reflecting a certain decade, starting with the 1950s and finishing with the 1970s, with their own social and cultural climate. In the third part of the Paper we will watcth the main character Harry Angstom in different phases of his evolutionary process. I will try to show the protagonist’s gradual loss of his individuality and spirituality against the background of different social and cultural processes in America. Through Harry Angstom we will see the formation of mass society in the second half of the twenticth century. In the fourth part of the Paper we will observe the decline of tradicional values in America. Through tht characters of “ Rabbit” trilogy I will analyse the dissolution of marriage and family life, and the lack of meaningful work in contemporary America. In order to discuss J. Updike’s literary work with its reflection of American life since the 1950s, we should, first of all, consider the era with its own climate in which every artist lives and through his own unique vision transforms his experience into a work of art. When World War II came to an end soon after the holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a new age was ushered in. The 1950s – “ that period of new cosmopolitanism, new 1 affluence and Cold War” ( 20,292) – roughly started with the death of the great American war-leader Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, and continued through the Truman and Eisenhower administrations which followed. It was an era when American influence spread its commodities, its trade, its mass culture, its achievements in science and the arts, and its institutions and styles almost everywhere. The 1950s saw the delayed impact of modernization and technology in everyday life, left over from the 1920s – before the Great Depression. World War II brought the United States out of the depression, and the 1950s provided most Americans with time to enjoy long-awaited material prosperity. The country experienced phenomenal economic growth which had different sources. The automobile industry was partially responsible, as the number of automobiles produced annually quadrupled between 1946 and 1955. A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages, expanded. The rise in defense spending as the Cold War escalated also played a part. After 1945 the major corporations in America grew large. Firms with holdings in a variety of industries led the way together with smaller franchise operations like McDonald’s fast-food restaurants. Workers found their own lives changing as industrial America changed. By 1956 a majority held white-collar jobs, working as corporate managers, teachers, salespersons and office emplyees. More and more Americans now considered themselves part of the middle class. But “ perhaps the most noticeable change of all in this period was the expansion of the suburbs” (31,288). Easy credit, cheap fuel, mass production of housing and cars were among the factors encouraging Americans to more off the farms and out of the cities into new communities – “ with homes that all looked alike – using techniques of mass production” (19,293). As suburbs grew, businesses moved into the new areas. Large shopping centres containing a great variety of stores changed consumer patterns. Television, too, had a powerful impact on social and economic patterns. Developed in the 1930s , it was not widely marketed until after the war. In 1950 “consumers were buying 250,000 sets a month, and by 1960 three- quarters of all families owned at least one set. In the middle of the decade, the average family watched television four to five hours a day” (19,294). Children watched popular shows; older viewers preferred situation comedies. Americans of all ages became exposed to increasingly sophisticated advertisements for products said to be necessary for the good life. 2 Americans were offered the good life with its real and symbolic marks of success – house, car, television, and home appliances. The age of so-called comfort began. American society followed conventional values and group norms. Sociologist David Riesman called this new society “other- directed” in his influential book “ The Lonely Crowd”, and maintained that such societies lead to stability as well as comformity (19,297). Television contributed to the homogenizing trend by providing young and old with a shared experience reflecting accepted social patterns. Similarly, philosopher and critic William Barrett in his book “ Irrational Man” observes that the last gigantic step forward in the spread of technologism has been the development of mass art and mass media of communication: the machine no longer fabricates only material products, it also makes minds. Millions of people live by the stereotypes of mass art, while human reality is fast disappearing. W. Barrett further writes “if here and there in the lonely crowd... a face is lit by a human gleam, it quickly goes vacant again in the hypnotized stare at the TV screen” (16,239). Critic Ihab Hassan provides an ironic image of man from mass society: “Together with his family as with himself, he expects any day the ambidextrous automaton, to fulfill all his physical needs at home; meanwhile, there is the astonished and astonishing muse of TV to provide his spiritual sustenance, and when the evening is done, he can sleep with an easy conscience, after the usual dose of Miltown, in the knowledge that when he wakes up at least one of the insolent chariots in his two-car garage will be ready to transport him to another appointment with a white-collar day....Happy, adjusted, prosperous, without an enemy or thought in the world, the American Adam fulfills his manifest destiny in the republic of consumers” (14,63). The surface image of contemporary American culture seems to be removed from spontaneity and spirituality. The enforced homogeneity of contemporary life and the compulsive materialism of the American tradition brought problems of alienation, and a sense of entering a world of moral emptiness and isolated insecurity. American life seemed to have been deprived of many of its certaities, creating a feeling of vacancy. Furthermore, the appearance of mass society during the affluent 1950s meant the disappearance of individuality and the loss of originality as many people conformed to the cultural norms of the decade. The alienation and stress underlying the 1950s found outward expression in the 1960s in the United States in the Civil Rights Movements, feminism, protests against the Vietnam 3 War, minority activism and the arrival of a counterculture. “It was an age of new theories, new arts, new consciousness...To some it represented the breakthrough into a new , unauthoritarian era of modern thought, cool, unrepressive, hedonistic, innovatory, a moral, erotic and intellectual millennium;to others it was a period of the collapse of fundamental social and moral values, a time of serious damage that only a return to more traditional moral and religious virtues could redeem” (20,325). The 1960s began with a period of extended optimism that was spread by President Kennedy whose “liberal reputation stems more from his style and ideals than from the implementatation of his policies” (19,306). He wanted to exert strong leadership to extend economic benefits to all citizens. That optimism was short, as in 1963 , the assassination of President Kennedy produced a nationwide emotional crisis. After his death he was seen as a liberal force for change. The decade is described dramatic also because of 1968 – the year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, a spokesman for civil rights, and Robert F. Kennedy, the most exciting political figure in the country who spoke for the disadvantaged and who opposed the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy were two important figures in the Civil Rights Movement. In the struggle for equality, black Americans sought reform through peaceful confrontation at first. They tried to capture media attention organizing “freedom rides”, in which blacks and whites boarded buses heading South toward segregated terminals where they expected confrontation. They also organized rallies with songs and speeches with the final address of Martin Luther King. But some blacks were disillusioned by the notions of nonviolence and preached the need for black power to be achieved by whatever means necessary. Though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave black American citizens effective political and social equality, race riots broke out in several big cities in 1966 and 1967. The war in Vietnam was another source of outrage and protest as “ America’s political leaders, many of the protesters agreed, rode roughshod over all the individualistic and libertarian principles in whose name the republic had been founded” (20,341).