Word: rabbiting
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...Rabbit is supposed to be the normal guy doing what every other American of his time period is doing. In Updike's previous works--Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich--Rabbit not only followed the times but willingly fit himself to them. In the fifties he was a quiet basketball hero. In the sixties he did drugs and led a varied sexual life. In the seventies he settled down to life on his father...
...eighties, he is doomed to fall apart. Throughout Rabbit at Rest, Updike contends that the eighties are all about disaster. In the opening pages, Updike categorizes the decade as a time of "Everything falling apart, airplanes, bridges, eight years under Reagan of nobody minding the store, making money out of nothing, running up debt, trusting...
...Rabbit is so intrinsically a part of his time that its tagedies soon become his tragedies. As the common "older man" of the eighties buying into the Reagan dream, Rabbit is in less control than ever. Current events foreshadow his own vicissitudes in a Joycean way: the Pan Am explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland happens right before Rabbit's first heart attack; and as Hurricane Hugo kicks into South Carolina, Rabbit has his second, and final, attack. When the eighties inevitably crash, Rabbit and his family tumble with them...
...Rabbit at Rest opens in late 1988 in Florida. Rabbit lives in semi-retirement, no longer a true participant in his culture. Suddenly it baffles him. The novel is divided into three sections: FL, PA and MI (Myocardial Infarction, not Mighigan). These chapters explore his confusion on three levels: first about his retirement, then about his son's drug-fed life and finally about his own body and behavior...
...Florida section describes Rabbit in his retirement. His son, daughter-in-law and their two children make a Christmas visit that forces Rabbit to question his own passivity towards life. He and his son Nelson never really got along, and the visit brings only tension and the realization that something is going wrong with his son and the family business. Although Rabbit tries his best to keep everyone occupied, his plans often go awry. In a sailing trip with his grand-daughter, Judy, Rabbit's boat accidently tips. While he is trying to save her, Rabbit has a heart attack...