HE RABBITS ‘The Rabbits’ is an allegorical representation of colonisation, the European invasion of Australia. The story is told by the colonised. For starters, the front and back cover of the picture book is a very powerful image for readers to respond to. We see a huge ship with a pointed prow. At first readers can’t quite make out what the creatures with pin legs are but the title suggests that they are rabbits.
The author also had the characters using the “B” word a lot when they were talking about Curely’s wife and the mother dog. The language also tells you the time period the characters are set in. The last important thing that I chose was repetition. They repeated words and sentences quite a few times; they said them over and over in the book. Lennie said the word “rabbit” because he wanted a pet rabbit and it symbolized him and George getting their own farm.
As a kid you always saw sow bugs in damp and dark areas. According to Melville H. Hatch’s, Records of Terrestrial Isopoda or Sow Bugs from North America, where they researched different sow bugs and stated that the sow bugs are not limited to the sea shore, but they are still sound in wet, dark environments. (Hatch, 1939) Also, in Pill Bugs Up Close, living in damp, dark places keeps the Sow Bugs from drying out. Showing why most of them prefer dark, wet places. Sow bugs also prefer dark, damp, covered places because it keeps them hidden from most of their enemies, according to Pill Bug Biology: A Spider’s Spinach, But a Biologist’s Delight.
She knew you were dumb just as much as I do. Going on about the rabbits we’re going to have, all you remember is them rabbits. We're going to get the jack together and we're going to have a little house and a couple of acres and a cow and some pigs and live of the fat of the land, just like you want. We’ll have that garden we want; with all kinda of vegetables if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some
Lennie is also very pleased with their goal because he will tend the rabbits. Lennie is obsessed with soft feeling objects, which later leads him into trouble. Besides an aim, George and Lennie also have a great plan of how to make their hope come true.
George acts like he is the parent and Lennie is the child in their friendship, which may give evidence why Lennie acts sometimes childish in the book. Lennie tells us that he had the mouse to “put with my thumb while we walked along”. This can give us evidence that he is childlike as he has to fidget and touch things. It reminds the reader of Lennie's mental handicap and how gentle of heart he truly is. Although Lennie killed the mouse, he never meant
According to George, they were going to lynch Spencer 2 Lennie. George telles lennie this story about a ranch with chickens, crops and rabbits. All Lennie seems to care about is the rabbits. I’m really starting to think there is something really wrong with this guy Lennie. When we get to our new job, George has instructed me not to talk.
We see their initial curiosity, darken into bewilderment and, then fear at what the future holds, as the rabbits, just keep on coming. With both the authors being Australian, you can’t help but link it with the European colonisation in the 1700s and the accompanying introduction of Rabbits a previously alien species, into the continent. However it could just as easily be applied to any, country that has been colonised.Sparsely told, just like, The Red Tree, it allows the reader, to make the links, and decide on the ultimate meanings contained within. It could be taken as a simple tale from an alternative point-of-view, but it could
The main characters George Milton and Lennie Small are completely opposite, yet they seem to complete each other. George’s intelligence is average while Lennie’s is more child-like. As a result of Lennie’s child-like mind they face many obstacles that get in the way of accomplishing their dreams. They both work together to achieve their dreams, for George it is a home, and a few acres of land, a place to call his own. As for Lennie, having a child-like mind, his dream is to tend the rabbits.
When deciding how to present a story either in film or book, the director or author and illustrator choose from a variety of techniques in order to best portray their own views on the subject matter. Both Peter Weir directing the film “Witness” and John Marsden and Shaun Tan in producing the book “The Rabbits” seek to highlight a juxtaposition of cultures where one culture is seen as having little value, basically simplistic and unimportant and the controlling culture has a sense of disdain towards them. Both texts seek to provoke empathy towards the downtrodden culture, in turn Amish in “Witness” or Aboriginal in “The Rabbits”, and to encourage the audience to take their point of view, promoting understanding and indeed admiration. Weir uses film and camera techniques and visual imagery to create two