Summary (Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised
Edition)  In Rabbit Redux, Rabbit believes that the whole United
States is doing what he did ten years earlier. Rabbit appears to
have made his peace with the world and has settled down to
fulfill his various obligations. He works as a typesetter in the
same shop where his father has worked for more than thirty
years. (He works at a trade, however, that is soon to be
replaced by a new technology.) In this novel, Rabbit is more a
passive listener and observer than a searcher. The racial and
cultural turmoil that he sees on television literally comes into
his home, and Rabbit is forced to be a student of his times.
Updike uses this rather feckless working-class man in small-city
Pennsylvania as a foil to the upheavals sweeping the United
States during the late 1960’s.  The landing of Americans on the
moon, which Rabbit, like millions of others, watches on
television, is a fitting analogue or metaphor for the cultural
shifts of the decade. The astronauts,