Why no evocative death in "Rabbit Is Rich"?

Cafe Society
1

I’m a big fan of the Rabbit novels by John Updike, and have read or listened to them multiple times.

Each of the first two novels, Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, feature a death at the end, and the manner of death is highly evocative. In the first novel, a baby is accidentally drowned in a bath tub, and in the second, a young woman is burned to death in a house fire. Updike was a devout Christian, and the deaths by water and fire must be Biblical allusions.

But in the third novel, Rabbit Is Rich, there’s nothing like that. Towards the end, Rabbit and his wife Janice finally buy a house of their own after having lived in her mother’s house for many years. This seems to be the “big change” that the novel needs in order to carry the Rabbit saga forward, but compared to the first two endings, it’s rather light.

Or I must be missing something. If so, then what is the major catastrophe towards the end of this third novel, that the first two led me to expect?

2

i think he dies of a heart attack either at the end of this book or the next one

3

Wow, I haven’t read the “Rabbit” books since I was in high school, and I’m sure that much of the subtlety went right over my teenage head. I did enjoy the them, though. To be honest, the sex scenes are what I remember most. They were instructive for a young virgin.

Now I want to re-read them and see if I can respond to your question. Stay tuned, maybe in six months I’ll have followed through …

4

That’s the ending of Rabbit at Rest. I can’t remember what happens at the end of Rabbit is Rich.

5

I’m a fan of the Rabbit series, as well. I seem to remember reading a review–Maybe in the New Yorker?–when the book came out that the death in the book is the death of God, but I can’t recall what the rationale for that argument was, and I don’t have the book, itself with me. Not that Updike believed God was dead, more that America had replaced God with the empty pleasures of sex, television, drugs.

I seem to recall Rabbit brooding a lot about the dead in this book, especially his infant daughter, so maybe no one dies in Rabbit is Rich, but death is as present there as in any of his other novels.

6

The (somewhat) impending death of Rabbit’s MIL is implied, but that actually occurs only at some point between the end of this novel and the beginning of the next one.

7

That’s true. I have to confess, Rabbit Redux is my least favorite in the series. It’s not that I thought it was a lesser book, merely that it seemed so dark, and I found Jill’s death even more troubling than Rebecca’s in the first book. Maybe that’s because I’m phobic about fire.

8

I just realized it sounds like I got confused and thought we were talking about Rabbit Redux. Just tired and letting my thoughts meander around the Rabbit books.