Paper Topic:

supercomputers

Other can Rabbit understand how death and suffering are redeemed and made good

The evocation of Jesus in the above passage is no accident , for Rabbit 's role as mystic does make a tidy parallel with this curious reading of Christ 's earthly mission . Which is not to say that Rabbit is a Christfigure ' Rather , he operates as an ironic Christ-like saint ' When Rabbit at one point goes so far as to compare himself to Jesus , Eccles does not contradict him , pointing out instead that Christ did say . that saints shouldn 't

marry (128 . Updike reinforces this trope via numerous incidental details , such as the episode in which Rabbit looks at a painting of Joseph and the child Jesus : the glass this print is protected by gives back to Rabbit the shadow of his own head (107 . To be sure , Rabbit 's saintliness , his godliness , is solipsistic - in the passage above he becomes , in a sense , the center of the universe - but such self-absorption is , for Updike , a necessary component of individuality . It is this version of faith that Updike draws upon to develop his portrait of Rabbit , the saintly rake

Subjectivity is heroic , Rabbit is a saint . His feeling that there is an unseen world is instinctive ' the narrator asserts , and more of his actions than anyone suspects constitute transactions with it (201 . The light behind a circular rose window on the front of a church seems to him a hole punched in reality to show the abstract brilliance burning underneath (90 , while the mere sight of children dressed for church strikes him as visual proof of the unseen world (99 . God 's existence is obvious to Rabbit . Rabbit clings to his faith that behind the visible world lies an unseen world that not only redeems all but also...

2 pages

31.0 KB

Free sing-up