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.