The “Extra Dimension”: Character Names in Updike's “Rabbit” Trilogy

Reminiscing recently about Pennsylvania family names, John Updike remarked: "Updike ... savored of high expectations and good self-regard; it was also ... used more than once in Hollywood movies for comic minor characters, winning howls of local laughter" ("Personal History" 52). Though Updike's sensitivity for naming may not be rooted in such childhood experience, his earliest published poems reveal humor in his exploitation of names. Undoubtedly this device had been honed by his editing of the Shillington High School Chatterbox and the brash Harvard Lampoon, and his avid reading of The New Yorker.1 Updike learned quite early to exploit "the general associations of the name .... [and] the associations of the name that are derived from history and literature" (Hamiltons 54). Although Updike's interest in allegorical naming is most obvious in his early work, his attention to "general associations" becomes complex, since to make "patterns," to "insert secrets" into his books signify for him what it means to be a writer.2 As Updike remarked, "I am rather mystical about the naming of characters in my books ... ," and JOB he tries to fmd "this extra dimension.,,3 The names of the characters in the "Rabbit" trilogy intensify the unity of the "Rabbit" chronicle and provide a sense of serious and witty interconnectedness of the most isolated and ordinary people.4 Such patterns are employed throughout Updike's "Rabbit" trilogy to create character names with ambiguity, wit and irony. Such naming advances theme, deepens characterization, and heightens meaning. Naturally, Updike shows these concerns throughout his work, from his frrst stories in the ,Fifties to his most recent ones collected in Trost Me, and from his frrst novel, The Poorhouse Fair, to his most recent, S. Not only does Updike enjoy using names as classical analogues in The Centaur, or as Hawthorne allusions in A Month of Sundays ,Roger's Version, andS., but his characters themselves sometimes reveal an interest in naming. Joey in Of The Fann resembles Adam in naming animals