Who's the protagonist?

John Updike is great at writing about people. His character's feel real, like somebody you might meet in everyday life. Rabbit Angstrom is no exception. He's a real person whom you can relate to, but he's a complete jerk. In Rabbit Run, Updike makes you take sides with Rabbit. His wife, by his own claim, is dumb. He feels trapped by his life. So he runs away.

Although his wife is pregnant, he runs off and ends up living with a prostitute with whom he falls in love and wants to start a life with, all the while ignoring the life that he simply walked away from. Through all the events of the book, he ends up going back to his wife, but not until he turns his lover's life upside down, knocking her up in the process.

Rabbit may be the protagonist of the novel, but all the while you have to loath his actions. You keep wanting things to go his way, but he keeps on making bad decisions and putting his foot in his mouth. The more you want him to do right, the more he does wrong. There are no characters in this book who aren't flawed, but that's real life. Rabbit is human and we get to share his life with him, for better or for worse.