Desires And Bondages

John Updike(1932-2009) is one of the most famous novelists in the contemporary America and has regularly been nominated for the Nobel Prize until his death.As one of the few prolific writers in the contemporary United States,in all his life,Updike has created a body of literary works by averaging two books a year for over forty years, Rabbit tetralogy,which is considered as the epic of the modern America,takes John Updike nearly thirty years to complete.As his masterpiece,Rabbit tetralogy,has brought him great reputation and honors including all major prizes and awards for literal achievements in the United States.Up to now,great achievements have been made on the study of Updike and his tetralogy both at home and abroad.After the publication of Rabbit at Rest,commentators and researchers have bestowed more attention on the common problems with the Rabbit saga as a whole.Though the Rabbit saga is a tetralogy,each novel is of an independent existence with the characteristics of the times,reflecting the people's mental states and social contradictions of the era.And Rabbit Is Rich,the third novel of the tetralogy,has brought him Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards,and the National Book Critics Circle Award.Though Rabbit Is Rich has won the largest number of awards,the scholars in the study of Updike have paid little attention to this brilliant novel,especially after the completion of the whole saga when very few people make a separate study on it.The content of Rabbit Is Rich with its unique features is somewhat different from the other three novels of the tetralogy.In this novel,Updike,for the first time,portrays Rabbit as the representative on behalf of the American middle class instead of the poor portrait in the first two Rabbit series,though he is famous for his expert at depicting the real middle-class's spiritual life and the realistic social problems.In Rabbit Is Rich,Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom belongs to the American middle-class and has been living a real affluent life with harmonious marriage life after having received the inherence of his father-in-law.But behind the unprecedented "harmony",there is the corrosion of the spirit and the deterioration of social morality.Rabbit abandons his pursuit of faith.He is struggling in "materialistic desires" and "spiritual bondages" and has lost himself in hedonic life and sexual adventures.At the same time,the society and his family,his friends, even he himself are living in the shadow of death.Based on the story of Rabbit Is Rich and with the famous sociologist Daniel Bell's theory about cultural contradictions of capitalism,this thesis is designed to make a study on the hedonism in capitalistic societies in order to probe the "materialistic desires" and "spiritual bondages" of American middle class.This thesis consists of four chapters with an introduction and a conclusion.Introduction is a bird view of John Updike and his Rabbit Is Rich and a brief command on the studies on Updike and his works both at home and abroad.And the significance of the study of Rabbit Is Rich.Chapter one focuses on Daniel Bell' theory about cultural contradictions of capitalism in order to study the hedonism of American middle class by analyzing the hedonic life reflected in Rabbit Is Rich.Chapter two is an analysis of the relationships between his relatives and friends.With the analysis,the author will make an exploration into the kinship and friendship between the American middle-class members in order to study their materialistic desires and spiritual bondages.Chapter Three makes an illustration of the American middle-class hedonism by way of an exploration of Rabbit's spiritual bondages and desires for wealth and sex.In this chapter,the author will try to probe the hedonic life of the American middle class by illustrating Rabbit's fear for losing of his wealth and his sexual relations with his wife and other women resting with his great desires for property.And by a discussion on the game of wife-swapping in Rabbit Is Rich,the author will attempt to reveal the hollow spiritual life and the lack of religious belief and social morality in The United States.Chapter four is a study on the physical and spiritual corruptions of Harry,lack of the resources and even the deterioration of the social morality along with the decline of capitalist society.Conclusion is the summary of the thesis.With the analysis of Updike's Rabbit Is Rich, the thesis tries to study the changes at aspect of Rabbit's spirit and life style after he inherited his father-in-law's estate.And finally it exposes the American middle-class desire and spiritual bondages and even the prospect of social decline.