e realizes that "the clutter behind him in the room--the Old-fashioned glass with its corrupt dregs, the choked ashtray balanced on the easy-chair arm, the rumpled rug, the floppy stacks of slippery newspapers, the kid's toys here and there broken and stuck and jammed," is not Rabbit; yet the disorganized mess "clings to his back like a tightening net" . He longs for order, neatness, and a straight and clear road ahead. The chaos of his home symbolizes the ugliness and unbearable frustration his life seems to be heading toward.On impulse, Rabbit snatches his car from Janice's parent's house and heads south towards a mythic land of peaceful orderliness on a beach of the Gulf of Mexico. This avenue is spoiled for him, however, when he finds that the regions he travels through resemble the landscape around Brewer, a tight mesh that constricts him. Updike states: "At the upper edge of his headlight beams the naked tree-twigs make the same net. Indeed the net seems thicker now" . Even the songs on the radio remind him of Brewer. His journey, and the map that represents it, begins to seem another trap: "The names melt away and he sees the map whole, a net, all those red lines and blue lines and stars, a net he is somewhere caught in". He has an image of himself "going right down the middle, right into the broad soft belly of the land . . ." . Like the golf ball in flight, Rabbit seeks a straight path uncluttered by confusion, frustration, and messiness. Yet the roads he drives bend him west, and he is eventually pulled back home. He returns not to Janice, but to his old coach and mentor, Tothero. This completes the first cycle in the novel and sets the framework for each of Rabbit's successive movements.The next cycle begins with Rabbit's introduction to the prostitute Ruth. After only one night with her he decides to move in because he is unable to face his old life with Janice; however, the very tendrils of the net that drew him back from h...
