Susan Henning Uphauser wrote that "many critics have identified Harry’s running as a religious quest, a search for meaning beyond the natural world." Of all the characters in the novel, he is the only one who senses that there is meaning hidden somewhere in life, that "somewhere behind all this … there's something that wants me to find it." In 1950s American society, which Uphauser characterized as "spiritually suffocating," of course, he cannot find this meaning. Thus, she wrote, "Updike conveys the confusion, meaninglessness, and uncertainty in American society today."
Updike does not present any answers to Harry’s quest; readers don't have any sense that he will ever find what he's looking for or that he will solve his difficulties with
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His response to this value complex is flight, which becomes the dominant mode of Angstrom's quest to define his feelings of spirituality. Lacking a cultural vocabulary to sustain his new feelings, he is only able to flee from what he feels to be a moribund value structure.” For example, when he was getting annoyed with his wife, Janice, he walked out of the house without an explanation, and went to find his old basketball coach to see if he could give Harry a place to stay. Getting annoyed with your wife is not a good enough reason to walk away from her and your child for a couple of days, and by Harry doing this it showed how he lacks maturaty when making decisions. Harry could have easily resolved the issues he had with his wife, but instead he just left. In other situations, though, running away was his best option, like when his newborn baby died, and his wife blamed the baby’s death on Harry, when Harry was not even in the same town when the baby died. When his wife did this, Harry got furious and ran back to wear he came from. Both sides to what Harry does can be understood, but can also be