ut death (Mrs. Smith tells him she is going to die and Rabbit visits Tothero in the hospital after his near-fatal stroke) reveal otherwise. When Janice finally returns home from the hospital, Rabbit wants to make love to her, but his desire for a simple affirmation of the correctness of his choice is spurned, and feeling that he has made a terrible mistake, he flees again.Rabbit's second flight from Janice ushers in one of the most powerful scenes in the novel. In despair over losing Rabbit again, Janice gets drunk and accidently drowns the baby Rebecca in the bathtub. Rabbit had spent the day walking around Brewer instead of returning home to Janice. He doesn't return home because of "the feeling that somewhere there was something better for him than listening to babies cry and cheating people in used-car lots". Told by Eccles of his baby's death, Rabbit returns to Mt. Judge for the funeral. During the service he accuses Janice of being solely responsible for Rebecca's death, and he flees once again up the mountain in search of the straight path.At this point, all avenues seem closed to Rabbit. He tried to find the straight path, a meaningful existence, with and through Eccles, Janice, and Ruth, but nowhere he turns offers him support or authority to show him the way. He devolves into his own passions and solipsism when nothing remains except what lies inside. He tells us that "his life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief".Rabbit returns to Ruth one final time, but she rejects him, calling him "Mr. Death." She tells him of her pregnancy and demands that he divorce his wife or forget about her and the child. He decides to walk around the block to clear his head. The first thing he sees is an "unlit, dark circle in a stone facade". The dark circle represents the fact that Rabbit's circular movement has finally devolved into the smallest possible movement, an entirely subjective movemen...
