论文总字数：39392字

摘 要

约翰·厄普代克是集小说家、诗人、剧作家、散文家和评论家于一身的美国当代文学大师，在近半个世纪的创作生涯中，他获得了几乎所有的文学奖项，被誉为美国“最后一位真正的文人”。无论是在个人生活还是文学生涯中，宗教一直是厄普代克最关注的问题之一，厄普代克对现代宗教思想也具有浓厚的兴趣，因此，宗教经常成为他小说的主题。

《兔子，跑吧》极好地代表了厄普代克的创作天才。该书的出版奠定了他在美国文坛的地位，被评论家公认为是他长篇小说中最杰出的力作。

本论文通过文学与宗教的学科交叉研究，分析了卡尔·巴特的神学思想在小说中的体现；以文本细读的方法，解析小说中的信仰和自我追寻主题，展示现代美国人在两者上的尴尬处境和作者本人在宗教上的矛盾心态。

本文主体部分分为三章。第一章从当时的社会背景、牧师和主人公“兔子”的困惑来揭示当下的信仰危机，展示了一个逐渐失去对上帝信仰的美国社会和深陷其中精神空虚的人们。第二章为这群迷失在精神家园的流浪者指出一线希望，即遵从“上帝就是上帝”的绝对信仰。本章中介绍了对厄普代克影响颇深的神学家卡尔·巴特的理念——上帝是完全的他者，以及这一思想在小说人物和叙述方式上的具体体现。第三章围绕自我追寻引出了在“上帝是完全的他者”前提下，个人行为自由的可能性，并探讨信仰与自我追寻的博弈。

结语部分指出，追寻不可感知的世界或是臣服于可感知的现实，两者难以调和。厄普代克借小说与读者探讨这一困境，并寄予希望——在追求日益丰富的物质以及被物质所挤压的同时，我们需要用内心去感受所处的环境、自然与社会。

关键词：约翰·厄普代克；《兔子，跑吧》；信仰；自我追寻

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

摘要 iv

Introduction 1

Chapter One Belief Crisis 5

1.1 An absurd world 5

1.2 The perplexed minister 6

1.3 Running Rabbit 7

Chapter Two A Beacon in the Dark—God is God 9

2.1 Karl Barth: God is the Wholly Other 9

2.2 “God is God” in “Rabbit” Angstrom 10

2.3 “God is God” in narration of the novel 11

Chapter Three Rabbit’s Self-Pursuit 13

3.1 “I” am free 13

3.2 Saved by faith 14

3.3 The contradiction between faith and ego 14

Conclusion 16

Works Cited 17

Introduction

John Updike is an American novelist, poet, short storywriter, art critic, and literary critic and is generally acknowledged as a contemporary master of literature. Being a prolific writer, he wrote on average a book a year. During his half-century writing career, Updike has won almost all the literary honors including Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, O. Henry Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award and so on. He enjoys the reputation of “America’s last true man of letters” (Prichard 2000). Updike’s fiction is characterized by its attention to the concerns, passions, and sufferings of average Americans; by its emphasis on religious thought; and by its preoccupation with sexuality and sensual details. 

Rabbit, Run is the first novel of Updike’s “Rabbit” series, which takes him thirty years to finish. Set in America in the 1950s, the story depicts how a 26-year-old former high school basketball star named Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, who is not satisfied with his mediocre work and family, and a life without faith, tries to escape the constraints of his life and pursue his belief. By shaping contradictory characters and their inner conflicts towards religion, the novel vividly describes an incompatible living condition of the Americans of that time period.

Offering a significant amount of literary material to critics, Rabbit, Run has long been the favorite of foreign and Chinese research.

Diversity has shown in foreign researches (particularly those in America) since the very beginning. A group of experts who study Updike emerge, such as James Plath, Donald J. Greiner, James A. Schiff, William H. Pritchard, James Yerkes etc., with their research results mainly in the forms of monographs and articles. In 2000, Updike Encyclopedia was published. In 2009, the establishment of “The John Updike Society” and the releasing of its journal The John Updike Review marked the formal front of the Updike research. Foreign studies of Rabbit, Run can be divided into the following four aspects.

First, emphasis is put on the discussion of Updike’s inheritance and absorption of European and American literary tradition. Synchronically, scholars mainly focus on Updike’s different description of the same theme with other contemporary writers. Roben Joseph Nadon compares the city value showed in Updike’s work with that of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Bemard Malamud. Donald J. Greiner compares the adultery from the pen of Updike and Hawthorne. Diachronically, researchers concentrate on Updike’s inheritance of the tradition. William H. Prichard praises Updike as “America’s last man of letters” (Prichard 2000).

Second, faith, sex and the United States. George Hunt’s John Updike and The Three Great Secret Things: Sex, Religion and Art is one of the representative works. With chapters covering the author's first ten novels, the study focuses on sex, religion, and art as driving forces in Updike's work and is regarded as a useful scholarly companion to anybody doing serious research on Updike.

Third, studies in literary techniques. Research results published such as James Schiff’s Review: John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion. Schiff not only conducts religious studies in Rabbit Tetralogy, but also analyzes the artistic feature of the novel, especially the use of irony, helping readers to know a more comprehensive Updike and his work.

Fourth, interest in interview with Updike has generated rich achievement. James Plath’s Conversations with John Updike can never been bypassed in the research of this marvelous writer. This lively collection of short interviews, magazine and newspaper profiles gives readers an even deeper picture into Updike's art. But more than peeking inside his head, readers also watch him grow from a callow young novelist and short story writer to America's most senior man of letters.

In china, researches in Rabbit series can be dated back to 1979, when Huang Jiade worked out To discuss John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run’. The research history can be divided into two periods. The first period started in 1980s, focusing mainly on translation. The most influential one was the Chinese version of Rabbit Tetralogy put forward by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2007. Since 1990, studies generally concentrated in the following five respects.

First, scholars try to discuss the changing of American society through literary works.

Second, interest is placed on the analysis of religious and philosophical thought reflected in the novel.

Third, character analysis of “Rabbit” Angstrom is a hotspot of “Rabbit” series research.

Fourth, feminism and the origin of Updike’s female consciousness gain more and more concern.

Fifth, cultural interpretation of the novel is of intriguing interest. Jin Hengshan’s Updike and the contemporary American Society—Studies in Updike’s Ten Novels has won good reviews.

Now, Chinese investigation about Updike and his Rabbit, Run has shown two changes:

First, researches have transformed from class analysis to text analysis, introducing more literary theories.

Second, researches have no longer constrained in the syllogism of cultural background, the author’s biography and the meaning of the novel, instead, opinions have involved a bewildered number of aspects including character analysis, writing techniques, cultural interpretation, religious belief, and moral judgments and so on.

Faith, according to Karl Barth, the 20^th century theologian who influenced Updike most, is “humility and joy” (Barth 36). “Faith means refraining from all kinds of murmuring, becoming quiet and letting God, the righteous God, speak with us, for there is no other.”(Barth 36) Since 19^th century, theology has separated from God and Jesus Christ, and become a tool of human. We talk about God by advertising ourselves loudly and boastfully. What Barth emphasizes is a God who gives us grace but also inaccessible and unknowable. Barth puts forward that God is “the Wholly Other” (Barth 84), aiming to divorce God from our human beings. “God is God” (Barth 59) and is not the one that can be imagined or understood by man. By establishing the independence and uniqueness of God, Barth tries to change man’s arrogance and reshape the relationship between God and man. In his point of view, faith is beyond everything and only faith can support our life.

Barth’s expression of “the Wholly Other” and his solifidian idea bring possibility to individual freedom. On one hand, God is inaccessible; on the other hand, one can be saved as long as he has faith. To put it more concisely, man is free on the premise of faith. He can choose his behavior but needs to take responsibility of that. God, although he will not pay for man’s mistakes, he would never abandon his beloved child. In such case, self-pursuit becomes justifiable in the name of faith.

It takes much effort to find those original books. Multi-meaning of language in religion and daily life plus with cultural diversity also adds difficulty in comprehending the content. Fortunately, this problem can be handled through extensive reading of not only original works, but also review articles. Based on interdisciplinary research of literature and religion, and with close reading of the novel, this thesis intends to discuss the subject of faith and self-pursuit, to reveal the conflicts of the two that modern American people encountered, and to unfold the contradictory state of mind of the author. On the other hand, it works hard to enrich Chinese Updike’s research.

The thesis is composed of three chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One concentrates on belief crisis and is developed from the angles of the cultural background of an absurd world, the perplexed minister and running “Rabbit”.

The second chapter offers a beacon of hope—God is God, to those falling in the darkness. Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian who influenced Updike a lot, puts forward that God is the Wholly Other and people should have an absolute faith and trust in God. From Barth’s theories, Updike forms his own thinking on these same matters, reflecting on the character of Angstrom and the narration of the novel—Rabbit, Run.

Chapter Three discusses Rabbit’s self-pursuit. Another important implication Updike got from Barth is the relationship between faith and self-existence. Since God is the Wholly Other and is unsearchable, then people have the freedom to express their belief and they can always be saved as long as they stick to the faith. However, when such pursuit of self disguised by faith goes too far, it serves as a contradictory to Barth’s “God is the Wholly Other”. From that, we can see Updike’s choosing from Barth’s ideas and the dilemma the novel exposes.

Chapter One Belief Crisis

Religion has always been Updike’s major concern in his literary career, acting as a driving force to the development of the plot. Being a devout Christian, Updike catches sight of the secularization of Christianity and belief crisis through the particular smell and keen eyesight of a writer.

1.1 An absurd world

The secularization of religion has fragmented Christianity, making it less powerful in the public domain and gradually turning it into a personal hobby or choice. As the main spiritual pillar of American society, the weakened Christianity brings people unprecedented belief crisis.

Traditional doctrine and morality can no longer solve realistic problems; instead, they were used as religious and moral excuses for people’s own sake. The two world wars, the two shocking human slaughters of our history, were committed in the name of maintaining human morality, which are actually bitter irony of religious spirit.

After WWII, the conflict between economy and culture (religion) has arisen gradually. Acting as the decisive force of the capitalist development, the progressing economy has fostered the rising working opportunity and the modernized society by division of labor. With the expanded material desire, an ever conspicuous inclination to pleasure-seeking emerges in the society, serving as a total contradictory to self-discipline, temperance and continence proposed by Christianity. Old value system has been discarded, and the original culture, ethics and religion cannot offer people guidance and comfort under such a new chaos.

According to Updike, traditional Christianity has already lost its original effect on modern life, but become the representative of corruption. Although churches still exist, churchgoing has already become an interest of Sunday morning, but lost its sacred meaning. Meanwhile, modern people find it more and more difficult to understand the order of the society and the meaning of life.

1.2 The perplexed minister

After WWII, American people find modern churches can no longer offer people spiritual hopes because they have split into two extremes: some modern churches become completely secular, while others follow their traditional way of old Christianity culture which advocates absolute faith.

In the novel, Jack Eccles is a secularized minister who devotes himself into mediating conflicts between neighbors or in families by using the morality or human rightness. From Updike’s detailed description of Eccles, we see an image differs broadly from a traditional clergy.

The fair young man with his throat manacled in white lets his car glide diagonally against the curb, yanks on the hand-brake, and shuts off the motor, thus parking on the wrong side of the street, cockeyed. Funny how ministers ignore small law.…” Well, I'm Jack Eccles," this minister says, and consequently laughs a syllable. The white stripe of an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips makes with the echoing collar a comic picture in the car window. He gets out of his car, a' 58 olive Buick four-door, and offers his hand (Updike 97).

According to the description, there’s little religious characteristics left on Eccles. The luxury car he drives and the green color of it are quite ridiculous in the eyes of Rabbit, who regards them as inappropriate to the identity of a minister. What’s more, Eccles breaks the traffic regulation when he parks the car, acting as a funny behavior to Rabbit, a man of order. What makes an obvious contrast with Rabbit’s quitting smoking is Eccles’ way of holding a cigarette, very much like a young boy chasing after fashion.

Other life details of Eccles’ such as his feigned black suit and cheerful house are also not expected to a traditional minister. Besides, he marries a woman who does not even believe in the existence of God.

But those do not mean that Eccles has never been confused about his situation, identity and duties. He once told Rabbit about his father and grandfather:

My grandfather had kept in his religious practice a certain color and a, a rigor that my father had lost. Grandpa felt Daddy was extremely remiss in not having a family worship service every night. My father would say he didn't want to bore his children the way he had been bored with God and anyway what he was the good of worshipping a jungle God in the living-room (Updike 119).

The religious division in his family swamps Eccles into perplexity. When he grows up, he becomes an Episcopal minister who has no faith in God.

When Rabbit told him “There was this thing that wasn’t there….I tell you, I know what it is.”(Updike 125) Eccles asked “What is it? Is it hard or soft? Harry. Is it blue? Is it red? Does it have polka dots?”(Updike 125) Obviously, he does not really know what Rabbit is talking about or searching for. He asks these questions as if he were a child, totally different from the role when he preaches in the church every Sunday. In such case, it is Rabbit who becomes the spiritual boss of Eccles.

When visiting the Lutheran minister Fritz Kruppenbach, Eccles was criticized by the old man as doing the Devil’s work. According to Kruppenbach, the real spirit of religion is belief in God and one should not be confused with morality. Kruppenbach asked Eccles “Don’t you believe in damnation?”(Updike 160) Interestingly, when Eccles was a child, his father mentioned Eccles’s grandfather and then asked him “Has he made you believe in Hell?”(Updike 119) It seems that this faith problem has puzzled Eccles for half a lifetime. So when he left Kruppenbach, he felt “like a scolded child” (Updike 160).

Overall, Eccles is a loser in religious belief; and his failure represents the ineffectualness of modern church in America.

1.3 Running Rabbit

The running of “Rabbit” Angstrom is what activates this character and constitutes the most important part of his personal charm. In the novel, Rabbit pursues his personal fulfillment through a series of running, circling around the endless circulation of breaking up and reconciling with the society.

Rabbit used to be a well-known basketball player, but now he works as a salesman. It can be assumed that Rabbit does the present job partially because he was a star; and celebrity effect has been reasonably and effectively used in the exchange of commodities. In other word, when promoting the products, Rabbit is also selling himself. The fact that the former basketball star reduces to a quasi-commodity definitely cannot be accepted easily by Rabbit. What’s more, his nasty room and sloppy wife form a contrast with a life he has experienced in the basketball court, leading him to generate a strong sense of loss and an overwhelming impulse to escape.

As a matter of fact, Rabbit is trapped in the conflict between reality and fantasy, with the latter actually based on the middle class family ideal, another kind of reality. When he defies the society through escaping, he’s also overturning the fantasy that he keeps seeking for. In this case, he is not only the defender but also the destroyer of his fantasy.

In the novel, Rabbit is one of the few devout religious followers. Although he cares little about different rites of religion, he does believe that God exists in all things. However, when he really needs the support of faith, it doesn’t work. He waits at the hospital when Janice’s going to give birth to their new baby and the thoughts comes to his mind: “His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purposes, a magic dance empty of belief. There is no God; Janice can die” (Updike 184).

On one hand, Rabbit worries about Janice, on the other hand, he blames himself for his irresponsible behavior and his relationship with Ruth. Obviously, in real life, when he is in desperate need of belief, his so called belief leaves him away. The death of his daughter even makes him throw doubt upon God. “He thinks how easy it was, yet in all His strength God did nothing. Just that little rubber stopper to lift.” (Updike 255)

When discussing the meaning of Rabbit, Run, Updike indicates that the novel intends to investigate us human beings’ dilemma through the aspect of theology. Indeed, we read from Updike that after the toppling of traditional values, American people have gradually lost their spiritual support, thus encountering an unprecedented belief crisis.

Chapter Two A Beacon in the Dark—God is God

The duty of a serious realistic writer is to describe the real society and the people in it through an objective writing style; and the literary work not only shows the author’s understanding and interpretation of the social background, but also reflects his exploration to the issue and his expectation to the future. Encountering with such belief crisis and plight, Updike tries to convey through “Rabbit” Angstrom that only a strong sense of belief and trust in God can comfort people and offer them a beacon of light in the darkness of belief crisis.

2.1 Karl Barth: God is the Wholly Other

Influenced by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, Updike has a belief in absolute faith and a transcendental God.

Barth is against liberal or humanistic theology. Since modern times, there jumps a God extended by many scientific concepts, based on human’s wills and expectations. Barth criticizes “haven’t we just measured God with our standards, conceived God with our conceptions, wished for a God according to our wishes?” (Barth 58) Indeed, for their personal interests and purposes, human beings have made a god for themselves, after their image, through a thousand different ways. The most obvious example is the world war, committed in the name of safeguarding public morals, but actually serving as a great contradictory to Christian doctrines.

As a result, Barth’s “God is God” wakes people up. He insists that God is not only unprovable and unsearchable, but is also inconceivable. God is “the Wholly Other”. It is a thoroughly unilateral way from God to human. “The Bible does not tell us how we are supposed to talk with God, but rather what God says to us. It does not say how we are to find our way to him, but how God has sought and found the way to us.” (Barth 55) In other words, we should not let our faith be wasted on convincing ourselves and others about our unbelief. We should use all our power to accept what God is constantly offering us, to wakefully and prayerfully follow what God does, and to trust everything to him. “In this way, the righteousness of God, far, strange, high, becomes our possession and our great hope…And our faith is the victory that overcomes the world.” (Barth 36)

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