Rabbit Run

When Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom returns to Brewer to seek the help of his old high school basketball coach Marty Tothero in John Updike's 'Rabbit Run,' a third-person narrator establishes the scene "Rabbit glances up hopefully at the third-story windows but no light shows" before we are introduced to Tothero by free indirect dialogue and are made privy to Rabbit's thoughts without being placed explicitly inside his head: "Tothero, if he is in there, is still asleep"; this is Rabbit's assumption. Tothero is only hinted at, and is initially characterized as an abstraction. Moreover, greater emphasis is placed on the importance of Rabbit's need to meet with Tothero than on the importance of establishing Tothero as an individual person "[Rabbit] doesn't want to sleep so heavily he will miss Tothero when he comes out. ...He must not miss Tothero." Tothero's character is therefore established first by his relationship to Rabbit, before Rabbit even meets with Tothero himself.

That Tothero is Rabbit's old teacher is not evident until, once again by free indirect dialogue, the observation is made that "[Tothero] has the disciplinarian's trick of waiting a long moment while his words gather weight." Up until this point he is characterized almost entirely through Rabbit's eyes, but when Tothero speaks he reveals a deeper characteristic; that is, a calm sense of reason: "That doesn't sound like very mature behavior," he says of Rabbit's decision to leave his home; and of Janice's out-of-control alcoholism he says: "Perhaps if you had shared this pleasure [of drinking with your wife] she could have controlled it"; and when Rabbit calls Janice "dumb," Tothero replies: "Harry, that's a harsh thing to say. Of any human soul." In spite of this apparent level-headedness, Tothero later contradicts his own advice when he makes even worse comments about women. And further, in spite of the advice he gives Rabbit and the way he chastises him for his decision to leave Janice, he later tells