Search for Freedom in John Updike's Of the Farm and Rabbit, Run
John Updike is often celebrated for his novels that depict men struggling against responsibility or enduring personal endeavors. These characters represent a family of weak individuals facing serious emotional turmoil. They are indecisive and self-indulgent, juggling their problems with their personal duties. Two excellent examples are Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old advertising consultant in Of the Farm, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a gadget salesman in Rabbit, Run. Joey spends a conflict-filled week-end on his mother’s farm. Rabbit deals with problems that spring from the desertion of his wife.
Although their situations are different, both characters are on a quest for freedom. Harry’s aversion to growing up and Joey’s desire to break away from his past set the stage for their searches for liberty. Rabbit wants freedom from the emptiness of his marriage, while Joey wants release from his mother’s dominance. To achieve liberty, both characters engage in a form of escape from the source of their problems. Joey, however, is more successful than Harry in his pursuit. John Updike portrays Harry Angstrom from Rabbit, Run and Joey Robinson from Of the Farm as insecure and weak-minded males who use escape to achieve freedom from the responsibilities in their lives.
Rabbit Angstrom’s desperation to hold onto his past contributes to his insecurity and makes him feel vulnerable to even slight intrusions on his freedom. As a former basketball star, Harry experiences overwhelming nostalgia for his early years (Hamilton and Hamilton 140). Running away from Janice, Harry remembers his encounters "…with Miriam [his sister], Mim on his handlebars, Mim on a sled ...
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...cal Essays. Eds. David Thorburn and Howard Eiland. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979. 151-154.
Taylor, Larry E. "The Wide-Hipped Wife and the Painted Landscape: Pastoral Ideals in Of the Farm." Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral Patterns in John Updike’s Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. 102-111. Rpt. in Critical Essays of John Updike. Ed. William R. Macnaughton. Boston: G. K. Hall and Company, 1982. 140-147.
Updike, John. Rabbit, Run. New York: Knopf, Incorporated, 1969.
---. Of the Farm. New York: Knopf, Incorporated, 1965.
Vargo, Edward P. "Shrine and Sanctuary: Of the Farm." Rainstorms and Fire: Ritual in the Novels of John Updike. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1973. 104-123. Rpt. in John Updike: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. David Thorburn and Howard Eiland. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979. 134-150.
Sammy, the protagonist in John Updike’s “A&P,” is a dynamic character because he reveals himself as an immature, teenage boy at the beginning of the story and changes into a mature man at the end. The way Sammy describes his place of work, the customers in the store, and his ultimate choice in the end, prove his change from an immature boy to a chivalrous man. In the beginning, he is unhappy in his place of work, rude in his description of the customers and objectification of the three girls, all of which prove his immaturity. His heroic lifestyle change in the end shows how his change of heart and attitude transform him into mature young man.
Updike, John. "A & P." The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 2nd Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1990. 407-411.
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 1308-1311. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Updike, John “A&P.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 496-501. Print.
John Updike, author of A&P, graphically describes a young man’s coming-of-age story that takes place at an A&P grocery department. Updike gives first person insight into the theme by relying the story through the mind of the main character, Sammy. The author uses the plot to set forth the emotions and actions that Sammy must go through to take his necessary steps into the expedition towards manhood. Updike also takes analogies to another level, while being clever enough to fit it into the theme of the story. John Updike’s combination of plot, point of view, and analogies help glorify the story’s theme of a young man’s desire for more in life and the lessons that come from it.
John Updike's use of descriptive diction, along with his fantastic example of hyperbole in Sammie's (he spelled the main character's name wrong) deep observation of his surroundings forms a well crafted story that envelops the reader in thought on the tough subjects of being a social hero and how far is it worth it in A&P.
Handel’s childhood started out like many great composers. Even though his father saw his skill in music, he was unwilling to let his child journey down the harsh, un-respected, frivolous road of a musician. Instead, he longed for the young Handel to become a businessman or lawyer, but that was soon to change. The Handel’s were very religious people, this quality of which was evidently passed down to George, and were very active in the church. Young George played the postlude in the church and it was during a service that he was discovered by the Duke of Weissenfels. The Duke passionately persuaded George’s father to advance his talent. Eventually, his father succumbed and at the age of 9, George was placed under the only teacher he had during his lifetime, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. By age 11, the prodigy Handel had completed his first composition and could play the organ well enough to substitute for his own teacher, when needed. Between the ages of 17 and 18, Handel moved to Hamburg, Germany to begin his “great search for ways to work out the ideas flooding his mind.” In 1708, he moved to Rome, which certainly catapulted his thinking to a level to create the oratorio, The Resurrection, and his second opera, Aggripina, w...
In the short story “A&P,” John Updike depicts through his static and dynamic characters a time in society where expectations were beginning to change.
Fairy tales are far from bed-time stories, rather they stem from the political and social needs of the lower class over the course of history. History is always changing, whether it is the lower classes overthrowing the upper classes or the upper classes imposing their control on other cultures. Over the course of history the views of the upper class constantly clash with the lower class. A way for the lower class to respond to the upper class is through fairy tales and folk tales.
While fairy tales are entertaining stories and can be used to educate children of the normal social manners of reality; however, it can be used to entertain and educate people of all ages. It can be used as a method of escaping the real world or to teach valuable life lessons than just the normal social mannerisms of society.
George Frederic Handel was born in 1685, in Halle on the Saale River in Thuringia, Germany on February 23rd. Though his father had fully intended and planned for ...
Freedom is what defines an individual, it bestows upon someone the power to act, speak, or think without externally imposed restraints. Therefore, enslavement may be defined as anything that impedes one’s ability to express their freedoms. However, complete uncompromised freedom is virtually impossible to achieve within a society due to the contrasting views of people. Within Mark Twain’s 1885 novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, numerous controversies are prevalent throughout the novel, primarily over the issue of racism and the general topic of enslavement. The characters in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn along with their development take an unmistakable, resilient stand against racism and by doing such in direct relation against the naturalized views of society. Twain’s characters, Jim and Huck are at the focal point of this controversy; they together are enslaved in two particularly different forms, nevertheless they both pursue their freedoms from their enslavements. The development of these characters and the growth of their interdependent relationship generate the structure of the anti-racism message within this novel. Twain’s introductory warning cautions the dangers of finding motives, morals, or plots in his novel, ironically proving the existence of each and encourages the reader to discover them. One of the undisputable major themes that extensively peculated my mind as I read the text regarded the subject of freedom and enslavement. Through Twain’s constant contrasting of freedom and enslavement such as its portrayal of slavery in the form of life on land compared to the freedom on the raft on the Mississippi Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, suggests that people are subject to various ensl...
Frideric Handel was the greatest composer during the Baroque period, one of his famous works was “Julius Caesar” the opera seria.
In this essay I am going to compare and contrast the speakers and the stories of 'Homage to my Hips'; and 'Her Kind';. The speakers in this stories have very different attitudes, and approaches in telling their story about the same topic. While talking about the oppression of women, both Lucille Clifton and Anne Sexton take the own stance on the situation. While Clifton expresses her proud and self-confident attitude, Sexton on the other hand speaks in a very snotty, self-righteous tone. Each of these extremely influential woman, that I will be talking about describe their own individual experiences. These experiences create a very clear, individualistic tone that makes the poems of these two writers differ in many ways.
There are three types of fairy tales that influenced my writing, and they came in different forms as well. They came in movies, plays and simple storybooks. Different people created them, and they all gave me different reasons to like fairy tales and appreciate them to their core. Disney, Shakespeare and the Grimm’s brothers created different forms of fairy tales and I’ve read and watched many of them. They all contained good and bad people, and at the core of each and every one was a sense of happiness, even though some of them were utterly tragic and disheartening.