We Love You, Bunny

Aerius’s violent actions add dramatic tension to the novel since the campus is now in a state of high alert as “the Psycho was on the Loose” (239). Aerius now risks capture by either the Bunnies, if they find him, or anyone who might identify him as the man who killed Tyler. His next set of murders at the bar results from further confusion about language: He takes it at face value when the two men joke, “we are both Allan” (257). These additional murders place Aerius in even more jeopardy.

Aerius chooses to submit to a second captivity, this time with the Poets, because he is frightened and disappointed by the world he has encountered. Aerius exemplifies the theme of The Pain of Unrequited Desire: Since he is so crushed by Jonah not falling in love with him, he merely thinks, “anyway, what had I to live for?” (261) as the Poets are carrying him back to their home. As time passes and autumn transitions into early winter, Awad uses the technique of pathetic fallacy, in which the outer world mirrors a character’s inner state, to embody Aerius’s weary, lovelorn condition. Aerius becomes drained and despondent as the New England setting becomes colder and darker, ushering in a “Time of gray Skies and Snow” (277).

This period of lassitude is interrupted by a visit from the famous poet Leonard Coel, or “the Immortal.” Leonard’s name is likely an allusion to the Canadian musician and poet Leonard Cohen. Leonard and Aerius briefly bond because the famous poet can sense Aerius’s authenticity and is impressed that the latter doesn’t try to flatter him. However, when Leonard uses language figuratively in the poem he is reciting, referring to himself as the reincarnation of the poet Allen Ginsberg (a Beat poet famous for Howl and other works), Aerius commits another murder.

Leonard’s murder is more explicitly positioned as a transformation: Unlike in the other instances where Aerius immediately fled from the scene, he is able in this case to observe that the dead body strangely vanishes. A mysterious rabbit appears, implying that Leonard may have been transformed into an animal. Within the world of the novel, death is not necessarily final but may instead be part of a process of transmutation and even transitioning into a more authentic self.

Although Aerius does not fully understand what he keeps pining for, he feels a longing for a time and place “where you know the Language of the Moon and the Wind and the Grasses” (287). By being placed in a mortal, human body, Aerius has become subject to human emotions and frailties and distanced from a connection to the natural world. Language sometimes helps and sometimes hinders him because he often struggles to find words that can actually express his inner experiences. Aerius’s longing to return to his animal form becomes conflated with a desire to escape from human mortality.

Aerius’s second captivity with the Poets echoes his first captivity with the Bunnies. Like the Bunnies, the Poets see Aerius as something to possess and consume in hopes of fueling their own creativity, once more reflecting Authorial Control and Agency Over Narratives. He observes that the Poets have “a wild Wanting that afeared me. It reminded me of my Keepers, of the Attic Times” (268). The Bunnies, the Poets, and later, Ursula, will all show the same rapacious desire to use Aerius toward their own ends, implying that creativity can become a kind of reckless appetite. Since Aerius is pure and untouched by human experience, they sense a kind of authenticity in him that they long to access and harness for their own means. Aerius does have marginally more freedom during his second captivity and, to some degree, imprisons himself due to his sadness and pining for Jonah, noting, “a kind of heavy Melancholy had overtaken my Spirit” (268). The more of human existence that he experiences, the less free he becomes.

Aerius eventually enters into a third captivity, this time with Ursula. Her cottage, as well as her name, evokes allusions to a witch from fairy tales and folklore. Aerius is mistrustful of her but also feels compelled because Ursula “had a Power greater than the Poets, greater than my Keepers” (303). While Ursula occasionally laments her age, complaining that “she’d felt so dried up, barren” (304), her greater maturity gives her greater power than the young students in the MFA cohort. She can more skillfully take control of Aerius and assert her will over him.