The Overstory

by

Richard Powers

Rubin Rabinowski Character Analysis

Rubin Rabinowski is a psychology professor at Fortuna College and author of the book The Ape Inside Us, which inspires the young Adam Appich to study psychology. Years later as Adam’s professor, Rabinowski dies of a heart attack in the middle of a lecture. No one helps him until it’s too late, and Adam even thinks that Rabinowski is trying to demonstrate the “bystander effect” instead of actually experiencing a crisis.

Rubin Rabinowski Quotes in The Overstory

The The Overstory quotes below are all either spoken by Rubin Rabinowski or refer to Rubin Rabinowski. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Humans and Trees Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Roots—Adam Appich Quotes

Adam can’t stop reading. Again and again, the book shows how so-called Homo sapiens fail at even the simplest logic problems. But they're fast and fantastic at figuring out who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down, who should be heaped with praise and who must be punished without mercy. Ability to execute simple acts of reason? Feeble. Skill at herding each other? Utterly, endlessly brilliant. Whole new rooms open up in Adam's brain, ready to be furnished.

Related Characters: Adam Appich/Maple, Rubin Rabinowski
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Trunk Quotes

"It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"

A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."

"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."

A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."

"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?"

"Because if there were a real problem, surely someone—"

"—lots of people would already have—"

Related Characters: Olivia Vandergriff/Maidenhair (speaker), Nicholas Hoel/Watchman (speaker), Adam Appich/Maple (speaker), Rubin Rabinowski
Page Number: 321
Explanation and Analysis:
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Rubin Rabinowski Quotes in The Overstory

The The Overstory quotes below are all either spoken by Rubin Rabinowski or refer to Rubin Rabinowski. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Humans and Trees Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Roots—Adam Appich Quotes

Adam can’t stop reading. Again and again, the book shows how so-called Homo sapiens fail at even the simplest logic problems. But they're fast and fantastic at figuring out who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down, who should be heaped with praise and who must be punished without mercy. Ability to execute simple acts of reason? Feeble. Skill at herding each other? Utterly, endlessly brilliant. Whole new rooms open up in Adam's brain, ready to be furnished.

Related Characters: Adam Appich/Maple, Rubin Rabinowski
Page Number: 61
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Trunk Quotes

"It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"

A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."

"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."

A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."

"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?"

"Because if there were a real problem, surely someone—"

"—lots of people would already have—"

Related Characters: Olivia Vandergriff/Maidenhair (speaker), Nicholas Hoel/Watchman (speaker), Adam Appich/Maple (speaker), Rubin Rabinowski
Page Number: 321
Explanation and Analysis: