Community in the Eyes of Vacca Vale

The idea of community in The Rabbit Hutch is intriguing; from the novel's start, it is clear that higher-ups in Vacca Vale are set on reforming the community and urbanizing a dying city. The novel mentions the top 10 dying cities list that Vacca Vale earned a spot on, catalyzing the push for an urbanization plan. Despite their blueprints to create a new, vibrant city, their efforts are misplaced. The core of the issue lies in wealth inequality. They can build new and shiny buildings and start new businesses, but without addressing the striking wealth inequality, their city will not be truly successful. 

Through Blandine’s perspective, the reader sees hints of the new city when she is on the phone with her teacher and sees signs in the valley of new apartments being built and at the beginning of the novel when Blandine hijacks the dinner. Though, from the perspective of living in South Bend today, I see the effects of gentrification, and I see significant similarities between The Rabbit Hutch and modern-day South Bend. For example, the rich suburbs are more developed than ever before. The way Blandine describes Mr. Yager’s house in contrast to the suburbs is also incredibly accurate. Rich people in South Bend were and continue to be separated from the rest of the community. They typically live in historical houses like Mr. Yager’s that are downtown, with luscious decorations and antique, spacious rooms, or north of town, in suburbs like what Blandine describes. Rich and poor do not intermingle. Despite the new streets, river lights, and a flourishing downtown, the entire west side of South Bend continues to fall prey to poverty with no end in sight. Mayors and articles turn a blind eye to the striking contrast between rich and poor. Blandine depicts South Bend’s turning point, as they consider different plans to revive the city. Even during this step, the reader observes the lack of social programs or attempts to jump-start the poorer communities. Instead, they hope that stimulating the economy will fix everyone’s issues. 

Blandine focuses mainly on the adverse effects of urbanization in that they planned to cut down trees and ruin forests. Because I do not have memories of South Bend before urbanization, I cannot add to her disdain; however, South Bend is extremely liberal and the city has mobilized several significant efforts to sustain the environment. That being said, the novel’s commentary on the community that Vacca Vale’s leadership imagines is cynical, and for good reason, because the word “community” revolves around people and Vacca Vale’s plan did not revolve around people. It vowed to satisfy capitalism. 

Rabbits and Violence in Vaca Vale

If they were making a list of the many violent creatures of the world, the average person wouldn't think to include a rabbit in the rank. The average person is also unaware of how viciously aggressive a rabbit can be, nor how quick they are to tear each other apart when confined to close quarters. Someone reading Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch would be shocked by the opening scene. Gunty includes an excerpt from a resident of Flint Michigan that reads: "If you don't sell them as pets, you got to get rid of them as meat...If you don't have ten separate cages for them then they start fighting. The males castrate the other males. They do. They chew their balls right off. Then you have a bloody mess." This scene foreshadows an equally gruesome and violent showcase of animalistic aggression that takes place at the end of the novel, in the small, run-down, apartment complex nicknamed the rabbit hutch. The three teenage boys that inhabit apartment C4, Tod, Malik, and Jack murder their fourth roommate, Blandine. Three boys and one girl in a small apartment seem like nothing but trouble, to begin with, but the disaster that occurs is nothing less than shocking. 

Jack and Malik urge Tod to kill Blandine's rescued pet Goat named Hildegard. Tod attempts to resist the peer pressure but eventually raises a knife for the killing blow. It's then that Blandine intervenes and begins to strangle Tod as she tries to wrestle the knife from his hand and is ultimately stabbed to death. Jack recounts the facts with the police he says, "Malik handed Todd the knife...Todd lifted the knife...[a]nd then she was there. Right there. All of a sudden. Blandine"(376). Then, " I pulled down her strap...[s]he lunged for me. I ripped her strap...Blandine reached for Todd's throat"(376). Jack says, "I tore down the top of her dress...Todd's head going purple...[h]e held the knife...[h]e put it into Blandine...[o]nce...[a]gain...[a]gain...[a]gain..." and "[t]here was blood on the floor....[t]here was blood on my feet. The blood was warm like soup...The body bled"(376).  This gruesome scene between four teenagers tapped in a shotty apartment complex is parallel to the scene Gunty includes at the beginning of the novel. Much like rabbits in a hutch, these angsty teenagers have too long been confined to their cage of an apartment. This frustration has caused them to grow violent. Gunty’s metaphorical use of Rabbits in her novel is a message to her readers that if human beings are treated like animals, they will behave like animals. If you trap four teenagers in a little apartment in the dying city of Vaca Vale, they’ll tear each other apart.

Radio Static

 

In Tess Gunty’s novel, The Rabbit Hutch, Gunty draws heavily on feelings of loneliness and isolation. Throughout the novel, many characters’ lives intertwine within their own stories. However, the gap of “stranger” is never closed. For example, Blandine and Todd live in the same apartment and know nothing about each other. In one moment of the novel, Blandine attempts to watch television alongside Todd. Naturally, both characters are out of their element and the interaction ends with Todd telling Blandine, “‘We happen to live in the same apartment. That’s it. End of story,’” (233). Todd and Blandine share nothing beyond a living space. Their interactions are brief and awkward like many throughout the novel. Additionally, the building itself has very thin walls, yet nobody is completely attuned to what their neighbor is doing. Gunty often zooms in and out of units in the Rabbit Hutch apartment complex and in one such moment a teenage boy thinks, “[Y]ou can hear everyone’s lives progress like radio plays,” (282). By comparing the lives of other residents as radio plays, the idea that you can “change the channel” or listen in on another neighbor’s life springs to my mind. Although many options may be available to tune into, radios channel often have scratches and bad connections, leaving us to fill in the gaps. Once again, the characters are left in a gray area of belonging. Too awkward for casual conversation, but close enough to offer half-hearted smiles.   

As mentioned above, community exists because it is what all characters in the novel lack. Community is the shadow of loneliness directed at the reader. However, it should be noted that Gunty does not leave a forward presentation of community out in full. Although not often, Gunty writes about a newlywed couple who appear to have the healthiest relationship of any other characters. The couple, Hope and Anthony, recently welcomed a new baby. Through their marriage the reader is presented an equal partnership in the novel. Their marriage leaves the reader feeling content to see a relationship that benefits both parties, but prompts the question: What can be considered a community, and at what point does a relationship become community? 

Self-Sabotage and Inevitable Death

In The Rabbit Hutch by Tessa Gunty, readers are able to see into the lives of a torn-down, depressed, and slowly failing post-industrial town, Vacca Vale. Through following the stories of multiple Vacca Vale residents, we see how not only is the town dying, but the self-sabotage and the perpetual cycles the residents experience while trying to discover themselves in what many can consider to be a “dead-end” town. 

Vacca Vale once boasted a booming economy, spurred on by Zorn Automobile, but after the factory closure, Gunty describes the effects as, “Zorn—a superhero in previous generations—became the Vacca Vale bogeyman. Zorn took away Christmas. Zorn was why parents drank themselves out of commission” (177). The use of the word bogeyman is interesting, because the bogeyman is a mythical creature-which connects to themes of the mystics in the book- that is meant to scare children into good behavior. However, Zorn has become more of a parasite that latches onto the lives of its residents and does not allow them to grow out of perpetual cycles of failure and poverty. 

One example that is most prominent of this parasite effect in The Rabbit Hutch is Blandine Watkins, a resident of Vaca Vale who was born into a difficult childhood: one that was marked by absent parents and bouncing through the foster care system. Blandine, however, was an academic stand-out and had the opportunity to study at a prestigious school that would have set her up for future success. Ultimately, due to a variety of factors, she drops out of school and readers begin to see Vacca Vale comprises not only her entire heart, but,”if medical students sliced open her body, they would find a miniature Vacca Vale nestled inside it”” (Gunty 136). 

Rather than leaving the town to despair, Blandine returns to it and becomes obsessed with her goal in preventing Vacca Vale from being redeveloped. However, through the book, readers ultimately recognize that Vacca Vale is in need of saving and Blandine’s efforts are in vain. Residents continue to live a life of self-sabotage by not looking to escape the town, and them as well as the town will die. Like the polluted river, “The color of the water was the color of nothing, and it was as though the nothing that always haunted Vacca Vale had materialized into physical substance, one capable of quantifiable damage. The river was everywhere, contaminating the city with itself, insisting that there was no real difference between it and them” (Gunty 247). Like the polluted river which spread the inevitable death of Vacca Vale, the residents too were contaminated and if they did not look to escape, would find themselves in an inevitable death with the city. 

 

The Shared Loneliness in Rabbit Hutch

 In the novel, “The Rabbit Hutch”, by Tess Gunty, we get to see the lives of each of the people who live in the same apartment building. Much of the novel focuses on the loneliness shared amongst all the characters and especially Blandine. We get to see her out of body experiences as she moves throughout the town and see her roommates and old acquaintances. She yearns to be free of her life when she exits her body and says, “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only eighteen years old, but she had spent most of her life wishing for this to happen” (3). Through being free of her body, she is able to feel less lonely as roams the apartment feeling like she is connected with the lives of the other people she lives with. 

This is similar amongst all the people who live in the Rabbit Hutch. They all have their own lives, but share the same loneliness. For example, Blandine doesn’t even know Joane regardless of living in the same apartment building as her. When she talks about Joane she says, “Her solitude is as prominent as the cross around her neck. You could be persuaded you’d never seen her before, even if you passed her daily. You could be persuaded you saw her everyday…She could be your neighbor. She could be your relative. She could be anyone” (22). She describes Joane as being just anyone to show how distant they are, which is a parallel to how distant the occupants are within the Rabbit Hutch. Even after they talk, they still never really become friends. That’s the strangest part about this novel. None of the characters in the apartment have a real connection. Blandine put it best in her discussion with Joane when she says, “Strange to remain strangers with your neighbor, don’t you think?”(28). This is very similar with her other three roommates Jack, Malik, and Todd. As they grew out of the foster system, and have their own lives and stories. Although some of the characters share interactions by the end, they all mirrored a very lonely life throughout the majority of the novel.

So close, but so far: Loneliness and Proximity in The Rabbit Hutch

     In the novel The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty, we see the occupants of the Rabbit Hutch living separate lives. We learn about Hope, and her newborn baby Elijah. We learn about the elderly couple Ida and Reggie who live below. We learn about Joan and her jar of maraschino cherries. We additionally learn about Blandine Watkins, and her three roommates Jack, Malik, and Todd. In the run down town of Vacca Vale, one would think that the community would be a tight knit group. Despite all the beat down aspects of Vacca Vale's exterior, the community could come together and make the present loneliness disappear. But this is not the case in the Rabbit Hutch. The tenants of the Rabbit Hutch live completely different lives, and don't even interact very frequently. But the Rabbit Hutch itself allows for interaction. A teenage boy in apartment C12 declares "the walls of the Rabbit Hutch are so thin, you can hear everyone's lives progress like radio plays" (354). Gunty however, does manage to create some feeling of community between the inhabitants of the Rabbit Hutch, showing how different people with different lives can come together. 

    The character's ever persistent loneliness helps keep the novel interesting. With each character seeming lonelier than the next, we wonder how all of these characters are similar, and how they will connect for the conclusion of the novel. Although none of the tenants in the Rabbit Hutch seem to have a close bond throughout the novel, we learn in the conclusion that living in the Rabbit Hutch actually does form connections between individuals. We see this with Joan when she goes to visit Blandine in the hospital. Joan and Blandine had only had a quick interaction at the laundromat, where Blandine claims "Its weird, right? Living so close to people you know nothing about" (25). But by living so close to each other, Joan feels as if it is acceptable to go and make sure Blandine is alright, and build a relationship within the Rabbit Hutch community. Even if the feeling of community is only presented briefly in the book, the reader can tell that there is a small sense of community for the occupants at the Rabbit Hutch, and that they can support each other as best as they can.  

   

The Role of Masculinity

In the novel, The Rabbit’s Hutch, written by Tess Gunty, a persistent overarching theme is toxic masculinity and the way that gender impacts the lives and actions of all characters, both major and minor. Blandine works in a café, and observes a unique interaction between two customers, one male and the other female. The woman and her child are sitting at a table, when a man walks up to them wanting to sit down with them, despite not knowing them. Throughout the entire interaction, the woman makes it rather clear that she is indeed waiting for the child’s father to come sit down and besides that, does not want to sit with him. Yet, the man is overconfident and is not picking up on the cues given to him. While observing this interaction, Blandine notes, “With his smile, and those jeans, it’s evident to Blandine that no one has ever truly criticized this young man to his face, and that he’s a product of extreme parental love. He believes that the whole world ought to love him like that, Blandine assumes” (77). The man is so oblivious to the fact that his presence is making this woman uncomfortable, yet he feels entitled to sit and talk to this woman because of his role as a man in society. 

The most devastating and cruel manifestation of the theme of masculinity happens at the very end, when we see how brutally Todd, Jack, and Malik treat Blandine in her final moments. Throughout the novel, it is made abundantly clear that these three boys have some kind of loyalty to each other, always excluding Blandine and disregarding her completely. Yet, when Jack decides to strip her of her clothing and Todd brutally stabbing her, this is the ultimate display of cruelty of men. Todd only picks up the knife in the first place because he is pressured to by both Jack and Malik. He wants to conform to masculinity and all the roles a man is supposed to assume. Initially when pressured to sacrifice the goat, the boys were yelling at Todd, “Do it, do it, you fucking pussy. Do it for her. Show her you’re not a fucking pussy. This is the test. Are you a man or a boy? Are you a boy or a girl? Fucking do it” (374). The rhetoric used to force Todd to kill a goat is a strong demonstration of the toxic masculinity in society. To say that someone is a “woman” if they do not want to sacrifice an animal is to say they are weak. The boys consistently make Todd feel inferior and weak, simply because he does not want to do a role they see as the epitome of masculinity. The culmination of all of these feelings inevitably add up and forces Todd to do something unspeakable and portrays the cruelest manifestation of masculinity yet. 

Community in The Rabbit Hutch

    It’s difficult to define what makes a community, whether it’s repeated interactions, genuine friendship, or simple coexistence. “The Rabbit Hutch” explores all three of these between different characters, with various interactions and stories that culminate in a traumatic scene that in some ways binds the characters of the novel. Although “The Rabbit Hutch” is home to isolated individuals with minorly overlapping stories and only the loosest connections to one another, Tess Gunty manages to develop a community between the characters, even if a weak one.

    Joan’s character serves as one of the best representations of how community is built in the novel, demonstrating the way that bonds are formed through shared interactions. One of the first instances of this is her conversation with Blandine in the laundromat. This marks the first direct encounter between characters in different apartments. Blandine herself remarks, “It’s weird, right? Living so close to people you know nothing about” (Gunty 25). Although Joan is uncomfortable with Blandine’s intensity and the idea of having to interact with a stranger, emphasizing the initial isolation of individuals in the apartment, the interaction stays with her as she continues to think about Blandine throughout the novel. 

    In the final scene, Joan makes the surprising decision to visit Blandine in the hospital after she is stabbed. Because of her willingness to overlook Blandine’s screaming in the apartment directly above her, a large part of Joan’s decision is likely due to guilt. However, the act of going to the hospital, especially in a character as socially isolated as herself, is evidence that Joan feels some form of connection to Blandine. The situation highlights the lasting impact of small interactions that can lead to the building of communities. 

    Another instance of a seemingly one-time interaction coming back later is Moses being the one to run to Blandine and stop her from bleeding out. Whether or not he would have done that for anyone is unclear, as Moses’s moral compass is a complicated matter in the story. However, Moses’s first meeting with Blandine where he tells her sadly that she’s beautiful may explain his intense protectiveness of her later in the book, where he tells Todd, “I will kill you if you touch her” (377).

    Even if characters pass each other in the halls of The Rabbit Hutch without speaking to or acknowledging each other, there is an unspoken shared history that binds them. Even if a character manages to escape The Rabbit Hut, that history won’t leave them. This connection, however broken, maintains their community. 

Characters Representing Death in The Rabbit Hutch

 

Death and decay are some of the themes that seem to pervade the novel The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. Gunty has even said that staged the world with the idea that most of the characters “already believed they were dead”. Many of the characters either have a close relationship with death or are often described in ways that make them feel disconnected. Not only is town of Vacca Vale described as first on the list of “’Top Ten Dying Cities’” (Gunty 128) but many of its residents act in unusual ways that accentuate this statement. Each of the main characters (namely Blandine and Moses) have rather overt connections with death, but even the minor characters do as well. Joan is one of the few characters whose employment is explained, and she happens to work for a company that plans funerals and writes obituaries. Even a character like the priest who presides over St. Jadwiga comments on his desire to escape from his life saying, “the collar is starting to choke me… It’s going to be hell getting free of this collar” (198). His explicit use of “hell” is particularly striking given his role as a priest and because of the other references made to mystics throughout the novel.

               More specifically in the main characters, we see this repeated theme that suggests the characters are already dead best through Blandine. She is obsessed with the idea of “exiting her body” (1 Gunty) as it comes up at the start of several chapters throughout the novel, and she is given the idea by other mystics who had experienced great pain in their deaths in the past. In addition, Blandine is described as a bizarre and alien (58), as well as having “inhuman qualities” and being “cold and faraway. Otherworldly. Astral” (102). This diction is what helps underscore Blandine’s connection to death and the afterlife. Similarly, one of the first things Blandine says in the book is directed at Joan when she asks, “do you believe in an afterlife?” (25). Blandine also compares her physical body to the entire town of Vacca Vale, which relates back to the idea of death when you consider that it was labeled a dying city. This helps show that Blandine also views herself as dying. This theme of death is accentuated by the very end of the book, when Blandine has finally “exited her body” and she speaks to Joan in the hospital and in response to Joan stating that she was awake, Blandine says, “I am… Are you?” (396). This line suggests that Blandine’s spiritual awakening (similar to those of the mystics) is a sign that she is the only one in the town that is no longer dead.

Vacca Vale and the Feeling of Isolation

 

Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch explores the lives of various people all somehow tied to Vacca Vale, Indiana. Vacca Vale appears to be a blackhole that forces the characters in the book to confront their faults and fears. In this way, many characters, such as Blandine and Hope, find themselves alone in their struggle for normalcy, creating isolation and loneliness. For example, Blandine struggles greatly with socialization, especially with her roommates, and most often is secluded in her room reading about mystics and working on what I would describe as “voodoo.” Despite all having come from the foster system and being around the same age, Blandine is unable to have conversations with Jack, Malik, and Todd and finds herself in admittedly weird and random situations. Beyond this, Blandine is borderline obsessed with stopping the renovation of Vacca Vale and goes to great lengths, like ambushing the investors dinner or planning the attack on Pinky’s apartment. While she is devoted and seems to be championing an environmental and social issue, no one else is opposed to the renovation plan. Therefore, she feels like she alone must be the one to stop the plan and save Vacca Vale. While speaking to Jack in Pinky’s apartment she states, “’We can’t leave Vacca Vale,’ she finally murmurs, eyes on the fishbowl of political pins. We’re the only ones who can save it’” (Gunty 219). It may seem that once Vacca Vale is saved Blandine will escape her loneliness, but Gunty shows that Vacca Vale will not be saved and that Blandine will never leave. This is interesting as her devotion to the town has gone unexplained and Gunty makes it clear that Blandine was a smart girl with opportunities. It seems that she may have isolated herself within Vacca Vale and now will no longer be able to escape it. On the other hand, Hope, the mother of a newborn baby, experiences a different kind of loneliness that leaves her isolated. In the beginning chapters of the novel, it is revealed that Hope is unable to look into the eyes of her baby, calling it a “morta[l] fear” and its eyes “terrifying.” Hope describes the measures she takes, such as trying to entertain the baby and dressing it in new colors, but nothing seems to shake the fear she feels. She plays with the idea of admitting this to her husband, but ultimately keeps it to herself. Due to this, Hope is alone with the fear of her baby’s eyes, which only allows it to manifest and deepen within her. If she is unable to tell her husband, the man who she has committed her life to and shares a child with, then it seems that she will not be able to tell anyone else. Both Blandine’s and Hope’s condition paints a picture that life in Vacca Vale is isolating and lonely and does not provide an optimistic outlook for them. It appears that without outside help, they will be unable to overcome their isolation.

The Dark Side of the Internet in The Rabbit Hutch

 Social media creates a community of people worldwide, but just like in the real world, some people make it an unwelcoming environment. The ability to hide behind a screen gives people the confidence to comment on things they would never say, and the idea of becoming famous one day sends people into a craze to make their name known, no matter the cost. Tess Gunty explores the everyday toxicity behind the screen in her novel The Rabbit Hutch. Through her book, Gunty adds moments to discuss further the harmful nature of being able to hide online and the thirst for fame in our society. 

The first place readers see social media in the book is at the online obituary service, Restinpeace.com, where Joan works. Her job is to remove harmful comments online trolls leave about the deceased. “ ‘You would be surprised,’ she often tells people, ‘by how cruel people can be to the dead’ ” (Gunty, 39). Gunty uses this quote to illustrate the safety people often feel about saying hurtful things online rather than in person. Her point is further emphasized by the fact that people are saying harmful things about the dead, who can not stand up for themselves. It is such a common problem that they have a job that must exist to ensure that family members and grievers going to the website for comfort do not have to read hurtful comments about their loved ones. The ability to hide behind a username is not the only harm of social media. It can be just as dangerous to want to be seen and known as your username. 

One of the characters in the book, Malik, wants to be famous and believes he will be. He happens to film his friend, Todd, stabbing their roommate, Blandine,  and his first instinct is to post it on YouTube. While Blandien is bleeding, “Malik grinned at his phone. A grin I’ve never seen before. A face you’d carve into a pumpkin” (Gunty, 377). Instead of feeling scared, he is happy about what happened. He knows it will make him famous, which excites him. In today’s culture, some people will do anything to get their name known, even if that means harming someone else, just as Malik shows. 

It is nearly impossible to avoid the online society our world has created. Even if you can circumvent the network, there is no way to escape the effect on humanity. While the harmful nature is discussed often, Gunty adds to the discussion with her book. She helps to create a picture of how dangerous social media can be for those who may not understand the harm. Gunty uses her voice to aid the conversation of the dark places behind the screen.

The Feeling of Entrapment in "The Rabbit Hutch"

 In The Rabbit Hutch, Gunty illustrates each one of her central characters as trapped in their own life. Throughout the novel, she consistently focuses on Blandine, often letting the other characters fall to the side as she examines how Blandine is trapped in her life and desperate to get free from herself. Through the examination of Blandine’s struggles, the feeling of entrapment displayed in the other characters becomes clearer and easier to understand.  

From the moment the novel begins, it is clear that Blandine is determined to free herself from her own body and life. It’s explained that, “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only eighteen years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen” (Gunty, 1). Blandine has suffered from a sordid past that has trapped her in a body she has learned to hate. Not knowing where to turn to or what she believes, she becomes determined to learn how to exit her body and escape the feelings she’s been trapped in. 

These feelings started with the lack of emotional stability throughout her childhood spent in the foster system. Blandine longed for love and support, but didn’t know where to find it until she met her music teacher, James Yager. From the beginning, the love and support James gave Blandine was tainted, but she didn’t know what it looked like to be authentically taken care of, so she continued to draw closer to him. Eventually, she learned the truth of her relationship with James. She realized that “The moment [she] felt most alive, she was nothing but a variable” (Gunty, 145).

After being failed by the only person she ever gave her trust to, Blandine becomes determined to finally free herself from the life she’s lived and body she inhabits. She abandons her relationships and pursues isolation. She begins to enthusiastically study the history of female catholic mystics, and she strives to be like them in her day to day life. She convinces herself that she is trapped in her own life and the only way to find freedom is by exiting her body.

This feeling of entrapment is displayed in an extreme way in Blandine that makes it easier to see how other characters feel trapped in their own lives too. For example, just like Blandine attempts to escape her body through the study of catholic mysticism, Moses attempts to escape his body and “disease” through covering himself in glow stick residue. Both are desperate to be freed from their past, but neither one of them knows how to do so. 

In the end, there is no character in The Rabbit Hutch that is literally or physically entrapped, but each character is figuratively and emotionally trapped. Each one has a troubled past and a present filled with troubles, and each one is desperate to free themselves from the stress of it all. 

The Role of Social Media in The Rabbit Hutch

    Social media and the role it plays in people’s everyday lives is a very important theme in the novel The Rabbit Hutch. Tess Gunty makes a lot of commentary about the negative effects of social media throughout the book. Her commentary through each character's interactions with social media perpetuates the theme that social media can be very harmful.

    One of the first instances of characters in The Rabbit Hutch interacting with social media involves Joan Kowalski. Her job is entirely involved with the internet, censoring people’s comments on obituaries. While working, Joan deletes Moses’ comment on his mother's obituary, which he claims “an offense like that cannot go unpunished,” and ends up stalking Joan (Gunty 95). This interaction through social media lays the groundwork for Moses’ significance as a character in the book. We get an insight into what condition that he believes he has- the Toll. Through Joan’s perspectives, we see that Joan is not hiding herself on the internet and consequently opens herself up to be easily tracked down and followed by Moses. 

    Joan is only one of many characters in this book that has negative interactions due to the internet and social media. After Blandine drops out of high school due to her failed relationship with James, she gets a message from a former student, Zoe. The message that Zoe sends is vague but powerful. She writes to Blandine “So he got you too?” which makes Blandine rethink her entire relationship with James (Gunty 147). Although their relationship was already over and ruined, this added fuel to the fire as Blandine was led to believe that she was the only one that James chose to be involved with at her school. This affects their interactions later on in the book, where Blandine realizes that if James denies being with Zoe, he likely does the same when asked about Blandine.

    

    The last, but most terrifying, use of social media in the book is the video that Malik posts to YouTube. While Blandine is being attacked by Todd at the end of the book, Malik and Jack do not attempt to help. Rather, Malik records Blandine being assaulted and decides to post it online to boost his internet presence and help him with his path to stardom (Gunty 353). This is extremely troubling, and Gunty likely included this abuse of social media to show how dangerous the internet can be even before anything gets published. 

    Social media is a prevalent theme in this novel and shows the worst parts of it. Gunty’s inclusion of social media in the book not only makes the book scarier, it also tells the readers how dangerous it can be. Whether it is a comment being deleted, someone sending an eerie message, or posting a violating video, social media in The Rabbit Hutch tells the audience to be careful.

Good and/or Bad?

            Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is full of numerous quirky and eccentric characters. Each individual feels colored in with such weirdly unique actions and emotions they feel oddly real. No character better embodies this than Moses Robert Blitz. Moses struggles heavily with maternal issues that have seemingly sent his life down a dark path and turned him into a bad person. However, during an unplanned confession Father Tim tells him he isn’t a bad person. Father Tim is correct in his belief that it’s absurd to call an entire person a single thing. This belief means there is hope yet for other characters of Vacca Vale to become better people in the near future.

Moses Robert Blitz has instances in the book where he does both morally good and bad things. Father Tim told him, “It would be absurd to describe a whole person as good or bad. You’re just a series of messy, contradicting behaviors, like everyone else” (198). Moses breaking into people’s homes to scare them is obviously not a good thing to do. This alone however does not make him an entirely awful person. While talking on the phone with his ex, Moses again engages in behavior that would not be labelled as kind. He verbally abuses his ex and thinks to himself, “He knows that if he can make her feel small enough, he can make her do anything” (264). Based off of this alone it would be fair enough to write of Moses as a generally awful person. However, later on in the novel he displays some better qualities. We see this when he first meets Blandine and calls her beautiful. This is not a catcall but instead is a genuine compliment given to her. He isn’t trying to be creepy. Moses is also likely responsible for saving Blandine’s life. When he appeared at the wrong door and saw Blandine bleeding from the stab wounds he immediately jumped into help. If he had not packed her wounds with his own belt she could’ve bled out and died. These examples show an entire person cannot be summed up into one word because who they are and how they act is so much more than that. To a certain extent one should even feel more understanding and sympathetic towards Moses because of his loveless upbringing.  

Outside of Moses, the other characters in the novel also have both potential for good and bad. The novel is filled with many examples of other characters acting less than admirable. Many of these characters, however, also have moments where they truly act like a good person. Much like Moses everybody has the potential to do good and should not feel like they are inherently bad because of certain actions.

From Violent YouTube Videos to Internet Trolls: A Discussion of the Dark Side of Internet Use in "The Rabbit Hutch"

    Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is an unpredictable novel that illustrates the unique personalities found in an apartment complex in Indiana, colloquially known as The Rabbit Hutch. Despite the range of individuals that inhibit The Rabbit Hutch, nearly every resident interacts with media, the Internet, or social media. Interestingly, the characters’ media usage is exclusively portrayed in a negative light. In Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch, negative portrayals of media use highlight how the Internet motivates people and media platforms to accumulate views at any cost, and how social media use significantly influences a person’s self-esteem.

    Throughout The Rabbit Hutch, Gunty critiques news outlets and social media users for producing content to maximize views. For example, while visiting Blandine in the hospital, Joan describes that the stabbing incident was “no longer front-page material, already approaching irrelevance” (392). Here, two days after Blandine was stabbed by her roommate, the local news has already found more newsworthy content for the front page. It is reasonable to assume that such an unsettling event would reside on the front page for more than two days; therefore, the short-lived nature of Blandine’s stabbing highlights how news media are more concerned with producing content that will attract views than with reporting important information. Malik’s YouTube video is another example of social media inspiring people to post content that gains views. After getting sent the link to the video of Blandine getting stabbed, Sapphire, who shared a foster family with Malik, describes, “By then the video boasts nearly 2,000 views [...] Malik always loved attention: she believes that he is capable of hurting someone for it” (356). Here, Sapphire reveals that Malik posted violent content to receive views. This frightening reality highlights an issue with social media use: people are willing to compromise their morality to achieve virtual popularity. Ultimately, social media use and news media have negative implications when content is produced for the sole purpose of attracting views.

    Another negative implication of social media and Internet use is their ability to control a user’s self-worth. For example, when introducing the residents of apartment C10, the narrator reveals that a new mother is struggling with motherhood. On the Internet, the mother reads, “You are a psychopath, the Mommy Blogs concluded. You are a threat to us all” (7). This quote illuminates the false information that circulates in social media groups across the Internet. Here, the mother is being shamed for not immediately loving motherhood. This virtual guilt-tripping highlights the judgmental side of social media, which can negatively impact a person’s self-esteem and confidence.

    Overall, negative displays of media use in The Rabbit Hutch emphasize how the Internet and social media impact a user’s self-worth, and how social media content creators and news outlets prioritize gaining views above all. Although engaging with social media and the Internet is often regarded as positive and enjoyable, through the numerous instances of Internet and social media use in The Rabbit Hutch, Gunty points out the problematic aspects of media use.