Rabbit, Run | Themes
The Quest
In John Updike, Susan Henning Uphauser wrote that "many critics have identified Rabbit's running as a religious quest, a search for meaning beyond the natural world." Of all the characters in the novel, he is the only one who senses that there is meaning hidden somewhere in life, that "somewhere behind all this there's something that wants me to find it." In 1950s American society, which Uphauser characterized as "spiritually suffocating," of course, he cannot find this meaning. Thus, she wrote, "Updike conveys the confusion, meaninglessness, and uncertainty...
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