Updike's Religious Ideas In Rabbit, Run

John Updike is generally acknowledged as one of the most famous contemporaryAmerican writers,and at the same time he is also a prolific writer. He has won nearlyall of the big literary awards including the Pulitzer prizes and the National BookAward. Religion has always been Updike's major concern both in his personal life andin his literary career. Updike has shown a serious interest in contemporary religiousthought, which is a familiar theme in his works.Rabbit, Run is his second novel, and also the first novel of his "Rabbit'sTetralogy". This novel tells a story about how Harry Angstrom, nicknamed Rabbit,who is not satisfied with the life without faith, tries to escape from the restriction ofsocial conformity to pursue religion. However, there is no denying that Rabbit neverreally escapes from the restriction of social conformity,even after he is confrontedwith God, he returns to reality, because to pursue faith does not mean denying one'sexistence.This novel shows the situation of spiritual crisis of the 1950s' America. At thattime, America had unprecedented economic prosperity on one hand and astonishingspiritual emptiness on the other. Old Christianity had played an important role inpeople's spiritual life, but now it couldn't help people who were suffering seriousspiritual crisis because it had split into two extremes. In this novel, Updike shows hisconcerns toward the changes of Christianity in modern society and presents hisreligious ideas.The novel has attracted many critics' attention since the day of its publication,because the novel mirrors many problems in modern society. Critics expound it fromdifferent perspectives and the author's ideas reflected in this novel have become thefocal points of critics. This thesis focuses on the author's religious ideas based onother people's results of study, and analyses systematically the author's religious ideasand how the author presents his religious views in the novel.The thesis consists of five parts. Following the introduction are three chaptersand the conclusion that expound and summarize the core of the thesis—Updike'sreligious views in Rabbit, Run.In the introduction, Updike's literary achievements and the story of the novel arebriefly introduced.Chapter one deals with the social background of the novel and Updike's religiousideas. It first introduces the social background from the economic points of view andexplains the causes behind spiritual crisis. Then, it explores the two factorsinfluencing Updike's religious ideas: Firstly, Updike's father who was a devout Lutherand played a very important part in initiating Updike's early interest in religion and inhis choosing of religious themes;Secondly, Updike's extensive reading got him muchfamiliar with European philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Barth, whose theorieshave deeply influenced his religious ideas.Chapter two analyzes how modern church has lost its role in offering peoplespiritual sustenance. In 1950s America, Old Christianity had split into two extremes,which made Christianity lose its power for offering people sustenance. In this novel,Updike describes this situation by portraying two modern mainline Christianityministers. Eccles is the representative of people in whom the sacredness ofChristianity has become secular. By abandoning the way of traditional life completelyand regarding his duties of a minister as mediating people's problems in life, he notonly fails to afford people any spiritual pops, but also indulges himself in spiritualcrisis. Quite different from Eccles, Kruppenbach, who is the minister with strong faithin God, lives a traditional life of a minister, and regards converting the listenerswithout intervening in people' private things as a minister's duty. He presents anotherextreme of Christianity, which is too holy. Although he has strong faith in God, hecannot afford people any help in their spirits, either. He is the only person whomRabbit never meets in this novel.Chapter three discusses how Updike presents his religious ideas from the pointsof view of Rabbit's quest for religion and the imagery of religion in this novel.The first section of this part discusses how Updike displays his religious ideasby Rabbit. His view can be seen from Rabbit's image in this novel. Rabbit is anordinary middle class man but he always shows some sacred color in him, alwaysfeels that there is "something" behind his meaningless life for him to find it. In orderto find this "something", Rabbit tries to run from his reality, but every time when hetries to do so he will be drawn back to his reality, even when he confronts with God,he returns to the reality. These several repetitions show that reality is not easy to bedenied, to pursue faith does not mean denying one's existence, because only byshouldering the responsibilities that belong to one can he be a real self.The second part analyzes the imagery of religion. In order to create a religiousatmosphere the author employs many allegorical images to reflect religious meanings.The first image of religion is garden, which is a place full of vitality in the Bible, butin modern society, such a garden is in the charge of an old woman. Only Rabbit canbring vitality to the garden. The second image is water, which means new life cominginto the world in the Bible, but it is associated with death in the novel.The conclusion summarizes Updike's religious views. Updike believes religionis of very importance to the existence of man. However, the completely secularizedchurch cannot provide much reliable and effective help to people who are sufferingfrom loneliness and emptiness caused by the crisis of faith, but at the same time, thetoo holy church, which overemphasizes the pursuit of spiritual life, overemphasizesthe sacred of church is not appropriate for the times, thus, it also cannot afford anyspiritual sustenance to people. In modern society, people should manage to keep theirfaith in the mundane world without denying the existence of their own and try tostrike a balance between the secular world and the sacred world, because only in thisway can religion play an important role in people's life.