An Analysis Of Rabbit’s Unhappy Marriage In John Updike’s Rabbit, Run

As we know, among contemporary Ameircan novelists, John Updike is one of themost talented writers of marirage fiction. Updike retains different rfom other writersof his age in his unique treatment of the institution of marriage. In his marriage storiesand novels, Updike usually portrays his characters as greedy, spoiled children. Theyare arfaid to take the responsibility that will make them return to the daily routine ofhome and unchangeable everyday life. In Updike’s description, he focuses on thechildishness and absurd behavior of the characters. There is no doubt that Rabbit，Runis the most representative one on marriage.In this thesis, rfom the angle of traditional literature and art cirticism, the motif ofthe novel-marirage is used as the main research object to analyze several mariragecases in the novels，which aim to figure out the reasons for the unhappy marriage, andthe countermeasures taken for the unsuccessful marriages so as to provide someadvice for readers to solve the similar problems in the marriage.Accordingly, the thesis falls into five parts，including an introduction and a_conclusion. In the introduction, my thesis first deals with an introduction to Updikeand Rabbit, Run, which includes the author’s life，expeirences, major works and somebasic contents of the book. And then my thesis overviews the previous research on thenovel at home and abroad.In the second part, my thesis presents some unhappy marirage paradigm inUpdike’s short stories and other novels on marriage birefly with the purpose of givingprominence to Rabbit in Rabbit, Run. By contrast, my thesis points out that besidesthe shortcomings in the paradigm, Rabbit has many other weaknesses, which makehim doomed to fall into the unhappy marirage dilemma.The third part serves as the maiii body of the thesis. Here this essay cracks thepasswords of a happy marirage and points out several factors that have an importantimpact on mairtal happiness. And then this part mainly makes an analysis on thecauses of Rabbit’s unfortunate marriage. My thesis points out that emotionalimmatuirty and selifshness, sexual incompatibility and the pressures exetred upon the’young by their parents are the main reasons for the youngs unfortunate marirage.In the fourth part, my thesis illustrates two strategies that Rabbit has adopted whenfacing all kinds of problems in marriage so as to point out that it is the unsuccessful strategies that bring about his unsuccessful marriage and at last he has to resort toescape as the only measure.The last part draws a conclusion of the whole study, and at the same time,explores some measures for modern people to deal with all kinds of problems in themarirage.