Summer of Love?

Defined by William James, pragmatic morality is “whatever works.” Neither reflecting on past experiences nor looking too far ahead, pragmatism sees the situation at hand and responds to it. It is not inherently good or evil, but very neutral thinking. Rabbit Angstrom is a pragmatist, and that fact comes to full fruition during Rabbit Redux.

Like Theodore Deeiser’s Sister Carrie, Rabbit is a “waif amid forces.” In his own world, not ours but the one that John Updike created for him, Rabbit is a reactionary and a fatalist. His actions account for nothing and everything is predetermined. All he can do is attempt to respond to events and occurrences. This is why, in the summer of 1969, he places an American flag decal on the back of his Ford. This is a symbolic sign of protest. He is against the hippies, college students and minorities that are raising their hands and voices in protest of a poor economy, President Nixon and the Vietnam War. Rabbit also has feelings on the war itself; while sitting in a Greek diner with his son, wife and Charlie Stavros, he pleads a case to the peacenik Janice and Charlie that Vietnam would be a better place if it were devoid of human existence. Rabbit is a true member of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” but he is not so silent; nor is he a fan of Nixon saying that he is an ignoramus who happened to end up in the White House. Being an ignoramus himself, Rabbit would wish that Nixon was also a passive character in his own life. Rabbit yearns to find others like him, those few who plod through life without direction and happen into situations that they don’t want to take credit for or realize how the situation was formed. No, Rabbit is alone. In all of Brewer there are precious few who allow themselves to not be the hero of their own life story.

The summer of 1969 dominates the surrounding context of this novel. And though Rabbit would not admit it, he is involved in his own free love situation. Janice, living across town with Charlie, has left Rabbit and Nelson alone in the ranch house in Penn Villas. Rabbit finds himself playing host to Skeeter, a Vietnam vet and possible fugitive as well as Jill, an 18 year old girl from the Connecticut upper crust who has run away from home. Rabbit, passive character that he is, allows them to live rent free and begins sleeping with Jill. Jill also has trysts with Skeeter in exchange for drugs. Pot and heroin abound in this small suburban home. Through nightly readings of Skeeter’s books, Rabbit becomes intimate with black culture and black thinking. These speeches by Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X make the reader see what Rabbit truly lacks: empathy. These speeches ask him to consider something outside of his own skin, and every time he cannot comprehend thinking outside of his own. Rabbit is not empathetic. This is why he is so heartless to his parents, lacking in recognizing what Nelson needs and his failure to see Janice as more than a functionary of his household. Empathy is the key to this novel. Who, in Updike’s world, has it and who doesn’t is what drives the plot and action. Empathy determines why Rabbit can’t move himself forward.