Alcohol abuse and dependence is among one of the most prevalent issues in the United States today. It is known to help individuals cope with personal issues and to fix his or her’s emotions positively. However, in relationships like marital, family, and friends, the opposing people can be the target source of negative affection, and may tend to leave them from his or her own fear. In the novel Rabbit, Run, John Updike argues that a partner leaves their spouse in a tough situation when it affects them well enough, eventually making the other partner turn to alcohol to mend his or her problems.
A spouse may leave their partner once finding them in his or her’s stressful problem in order to maintain peace. After Harry Angstrom leaves his wife,
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Following Harry short departure, Janice is left to cope with her issues, as Updike says, “For some reason watching this makes her so nervous that just out of television-watching habit she goes to the kitchen and makes herself a little drink, mostly ice cubes, just to keep sealed shut the great hole that is threatening to pull open inside of her again. She takes just a sip and it’s like a swallow of a light that makes everything clear. She must just arch over this one little gap and at the end of the day after work Harry will be back and no one will ever know, no one will laugh at Mother. She feels like a rainbow arching protectively over Harry, who seems infinitely small under her, like some children’s toy” (271-272). Near the beginning of the passage, Updike uses a metaphor of a ‘great hole that is threatening to pull open inside of her’, to convey the amount of stress that destroys her. Updike uses ‘sealed’ to show that alcohol is Janice’s solution to the stress. Updike uses words like light, clear, small, and rainbow to show that Janice feels simpler with the consumption alcohol, without Harry, her husband, being there to help. In addition to Janice’s emotions, Updike uses the verb ‘arch’ to show that alcohol motivates her to continue to the end of the day. Towards the end of the paragraph, Updike uses a simile, describing Janice as a ‘rainbow