Let me know if you just want me to try to email it to you tomorrow. It wouldn't send for some reason tonight. Sorry!
Lara Gordon
July 23, 2006
Real Life versus Literature
Many people would enjoy achieving an existence that would allow for them to live their life untroubled by every day burdens and responsibilities. Unfortunately most people do not have this luxury. With age come responsibilities, which often occur in the form of maintaining financial and emotional self sufficiency and even securing these comforts for others in your care. In Rabbit, Run by John Updike, Harry Angstrom struggles with the anxieties that come with marriage and children. He wants to be free from his responsibilities and find happiness. Harry, like some others, tries to take the easy way out of his life and leaves his young pregnant wife, Janice, and son, Nelson. Updike takes his audience on Harry’s journey for happiness, which spans from leaving his wife, to unexpectedly finding a new lover named Ruth, who ultimately conceives his child, and then having to go back to deal with the consequences of his actions.
The literary version of a story such as this varies greatly from the spoken version. In real life there would be small details, gossip, a lesson that would take time to figure out and learn from, and the power for the gossiper to attempt to control the way the listener feels for each individual in the story. In literature, there are opportunities for more details, the chance for the writer to give all sides of the story, and often a lesson to be learned. The writer also has the ability to control how the readers feel toward each character.
The details of a story are very important, but there cannot be too many or too few. Updike does a great job with the details of his characters as seen in the first paragraph where Updike describes Harry Angstrom with such detail that it seems like a movie playing in one’s head, “Rabbit Angstrom, coming up the alley in a business suit, stops and watches, though he’s twenty-six and six three. So tall, he seems an unlikely rabbit, but the breadth of white face, the pallor of his blue irises, and a nervous flutter under his brief nose as he stabs a cigarette into his mouth partially explain the nickname, which was given to him when he too was a boy.” In reality, one might suggest the hair color or the size of the man and not go into seemingly irrelevant detail about his nickname.
When describing a place, Updike paints the picture, to make you feel like you are right there in the moment with the characters. One great description is when Harry is climbing the stairs of a mountain. He looks down and, “In the lower part of his vision the stonewalled cliff rises to his feet foreshortened to the narrowness of a knife; in the upper part the hillside slopes down, faint paths revealed and random clearings and the steps they have climbed (Updike 118).” If trying to describe a scene such as this in real life, one might portray the walkway up the mountain as narrow with steps going up. The speaker might give the name and general idea of what the place is while leaving out specifics of its appearance. In a novel, details are very important to help the reader have a clear picture of the story, while describing something in real life does not involve much detail because the listener is just listening for the main points and can stop the speaker at any point to ask questions.
It would be very difficult to tell a real life story, similar to Rabbit, Run. When gossiping about what is going on with a certain couple, the gossiper may only know one side of the story or may not know the full extent of what both people are thinking. Listeners of the gossiper may form wrong information in their minds because they do not know what the involved parties are fully thinking concerning the situation. In literature, writers have the ability to voice to the reader what everyone in the story is thinking. They also have the ability to withhold information that may not be relevant to the story or save the information for later to create suspense. Updike lets us in on most of what each character is thinking. There is a period of time in the story where Janice had originally stopped drinking before the birth of her new baby but then starts drinking again after Harry leaves her for the second time. Through her thoughts, Updike lets the reader know that she is drinking in order to keep from crying. Drowning away her sorrows in alcohol gives her hope that Harry will come back. While drunk, she accidentally drowns her baby. In reality, if a few friends were discussing the news of the death of Janice’s baby, they might say that she was drunk but never add the reasons behind it. Literature must give important details to help its readers fully understand what is going on in the story but also to know the reasons why. In real life, it is important to give details, as even the minimum will do. Unfortunately, there are times when major details are omitted which would help one better understand.
While details are an important part, most readers look for a moral of the story. In literature, there is usually a lesson to be learned; however, there doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it’s easy to recognize what the lesson is, like in Rabbit, Run. Updike uses Coach Tothero to show Harry the lesson he must learn from this part of his life, “Right and wrong aren’t dropped from the sky. We, We make them, Against misery. Invariably, Harry, invariably misery follows their disobedience. Not our own, often at first not our own (Updike 286).” Tothero is trying to point out to Harry that people have different moral standards. Harry broke his own moral standards and has to deal with the consequences of his actions. In real life, it is harder to see the lessons that we should learn. It is helpful when you have someone point it out to you, but it usually takes time to figure out the lessons of life. Literature seems to be easier to analyze than real life when looking for the lessons to be learned, mostly because the reader has access to the whole story and can step back and look at the whole picture. In real life, it is harder to step back and look at the whole picture while also realizing the lesson to be learned.
Authors have a lot of control over their audience. While they can pick different lessons to be learned, they can also pick which character they want the audience to like most or how they want the audience to feel about a certain character. In Rabbit, Run, Updike utilizes his ability to control how his audience perceives his characters by making them feel sympathy, frustration, sorrow, and even anger towards a character. For Harry, Updike makes his audience feel sorry for him at first because his wife is a pregnant alcoholic and a messy one at that. But when he leaves her, the audience feels frustrated with his behavior and the decisions he has made. For example, when Harry decides to go home with Ruth that first night after meeting her, the audience will feel anger towards his actions. The audience feels frustrated that he continuously tries to run back to Ruth every time something goes wrong at the house with Janice.
When first reading the book, Updike makes his audience feel frustrated with Janice, the pregnant wife, because she is such a drunk. But later after Harry has left her, you feel sympathy for her. Later in the story when she starts drinking again and accidentally drowns her baby, the audience feels frustrated again and angered by her lack of responsibility.
Because of the way Harry treats Ruth, the lover, the audience is made to feel sympathy for her. Harry uses her as if she were a “beckon call” type of girl. He says he loves her, but it is not a true love that can last.
As for the boy, Nelson, the audience feels much sorrow for him because of all that he must go through at such a young age (his father leaving, his mother’s alcoholism, and the death of his new baby sister).
In the same way that authors can control the way the audience feels for characters, people in real life can control the way others feel for the people they are talking about. People can exaggerate good things or bad things about people to make the listener feel a certain way about the person being discussed. They can manipulate the story to make it seem as though one person is better than another or deserves more sympathy than another. The way an audience perceives characters can be changed through the use of a few choice words and descriptions.
While there are similarities between literature and telling stories, such as the power to control how the audience will feel for the characters, there are also differences. Examples of this would include the difficulty of a character discovering the lesson to be learned, the different points of view that can be seen or understood, and the amount of detail that can be added.
When discussing stories in real life, it is easy to overlook certain parts of the story or leave them out. Details are never a big part of a story as people normally tell the main points such as what happened and where. Often times the story can be biased or one-sided. The listener can’t get the full story unless they ask the other people involved. There are always lessons to be learned in life, but they can be hard to point out and may take time to figure out. In real life, the story teller always has the capability to use words in such a way to make the listener perceive the characters the way the story teller wants them to.
In literature, the author has a lot more time to put in all that one would normally miss out on in real life. Writers can add all the detail that they would like. They can give complete descriptions of the characters and the places the characters go. They have the opportunity to tell what each character is thinking so that the reader knows and understands all sides of the story. The lesson to be learned, if one exists, can be difficult or easy to pull out, depending on what the writer wants. Finally, the writer has control through the use of words to make the audience feel for and identify with the characters.
John Updike gives great examples of descriptive details while telling the whole story, teaching a lesson, and controlling how the audience perceives the characters of his story. If told in real life, the audience’s thoughts may be controlled but other details could unfortunately be left out. People may not hear of all the grand descriptions of the people and the sights, all the characters points of view, the lesson that Harry learns, nor how Harry ultimately found happiness while maintaining all his responsibilities.
