The Rabbits
by Sean Tan
Answer the following questions in full sentences and
include quotations and references to language and
visual techniques where needed.
1. Who is telling the story? What kind of creature are they? Who do
they represent historically?
2. Why are the invaders represented as rabbits? (What do we
associate rabbits with? What is their historical significance? Where
did they come from? What effect have they had on the land?)
3. Describe the landscape in the first two plates – where there are
only a few rabbits? (colours, space, animal life etc).
4. What warnings are offered by the elders? What technique is this?
5. What is the effect of the line ‘More Rabbits came…’?
6. ‘They came by water...’ Describe how the rabbits are depicted in
these plates/frames. How is this depiction achieved? (consider
angles, colour, size)
7. Observe the red flag of the rabbits with the golden symbol
positioned in the top left corner. What may this symbolise? What
symbol on our flag is it similar to?
8. ‘But some of the food made us sick…’. What was it that made the
rabbits sick? Comment on the colour used to show this occurring.
Why have these colours been used?
9. ‘No mountain could stop them; no desert; no river.’ What language
techniques have been used here? What is the effect?
10.Why were there fights? Who won? Why? (What is written on some
of the war machines used by the rabbits?)
11.Describe the colours used in the battle scenes. What do they
symbolise?
12.‘They ate our grass.’ Describe the machines used by the rabbits to
harvest grass. Identify the techniques which have been used here?
What is their intended effect?
13.What was the worst thing that the rabbits did? What is this a
historical allusion to?
14.‘Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.’ Look closely at these plates/frames –
where are the indigenous inhabitants? (Look carefully) How are
they living? What is notably absent from thee scenes which was
everywhere in the first scenes?
15.‘The land is bare and brown…’ What language technique is used?
What visual techniques are used? (angles, colour, contrast in size).
16.List the rhetorical questions which occur in the final two pages.
What have the indigenous inhabitants lost?
17.What is depicted on the last page and inside of the back cover?
How does this scene contrast with the previous few pages?
Writing task
You have been asked to prepare a speech for a group of year 9
students about the ideas/issues represented in the Picture book
‘The Rabbits’. Using what you have learned from answering all
of the above questions, write the lecture (400 words). Be sure to
make detailed reference to the language and visual
techniques used in the book.