Week 3 Post # 2

Morrison pulls us into the lives of her characters and their personal affairs and intimate details. We are given the history of them, not just the stand-alone-present-day life they lead. Instead she opens their world to us, giving us a chance to form our opinions of them. We get other attitudes from various characters yet there are never any undertones of a feeling for them. This is something we must create alone.

So too does Updike portray Rabbit and the characters around him. We come in contact with this man, unknowing what we are about to get into. Yet through the development of the story we are forced to make up our own minds from the opinionated viewpoints we receive throughout the novel. We learn some of his past, his inner thoughts, and his psychological needs that never seem to be met. We wonder why he is the way he is, and in any other light we would peg him as a scoundrel. Updike, like Morrison, manages to bring Rabbit to life and forces us to risk our opinion on him.

Both authors excel in a sense of realness that translates to both their characters and their environments. We come to understand them; picking them apart and assembling them back together. Because of this we begin to relate to them and accept them in our world as someone we know.