62 pages • 2-hour read
We Love You, Bunny
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content and cursing.
Authorial Control and Agency Over Narratives
The novel is told from multiple points of view, which allows for different perspectives. However, those perspectives are often in competition with one another, since characters perceive control over a narrative as a way of maintaining power. This type of power can be used to undermine others, or it can be used to deepen self-awareness, leading to a multifaceted exploration of authorial control and agency over narratives.
The main frame narrative, in which the Bunnies recount a long narrative to Samantha while she is held captive in the attic, functions as an assertion of authorial control because the Bunnies are unhappy with how they have been portrayed in Samantha’s novel. They are now going to tell the story, literally in their own voices, and reclaim agency. Ironically, however, the Bunnies struggle to narrate collectively. They often challenge each other’s versions and cut each other off. Moreover, they prove unreliable narrators, and even when they try to cast themselves in a positive light, their narrative makes it clear that they have largely functioned as antagonists. The Bunnies’ attempt at asserting control and agency fails because they operate from a place of ego, competition, and desire.
The Bunnies do allow Aerius to tell part of the story in his own voice, since they include the manuscript that he wrote. However, the Bunnies interrupt Aerius’s story to recenter themselves and assert, “we do need to supplement his narrative here. Say some words on our behalf” (314). They also undermine Aerius’s narrative by implying that he is exaggerating or lying. The Bunnies are always using narrative as a tool to advance their own ends and engage in self-justification, rather than genuine self-reflection or growth.
Aerius, by contrast, takes advantage of the process of narrating his own story to come to a deeper understanding of himself. Aerius is coerced into writing by Ursula, but he quickly takes to the process. From the beginning, he sees writing as a way to connect with a hypothetical reader rather than merely a way to engage in navel-gazing. Perhaps because he is so lonely and isolated, Aerius is drawn to the idea of a “dear Reader [who] will be my most Perfect Friend” (178). He writes with no concept of fame, prestige, or recognition. The process of confiding in his imagined Reader motivates Aerius to finally admit that he was formerly a rabbit, and this revelation helps him to understand the form he is striving to return to. After conversations with Allan and Jonah, Aerius realizes that putting his writing out into the world is the way in which he will achieve freedom. He gives Jonah his notebook and is subsequently able to transform back into rabbit form.
While the Bunnies use narrative as a weapon and a means of asserting dominance, Aerius heeds Jonah’s advice that writing “is not for you to keep or get something out of” (453). By finding this balance between having the right to tell his own story, in his own voice, and the responsibility to surrender this story to the world, Aerius is able to use narrative to achieve true freedom.
The Pain of Unrequited Desire
Aerius inspires lust and longing in virtually all of the characters he encounters, beginning with the Bunnies. While unrequited desire is initially portrayed as grotesque, Aerius himself eventually encounters the pain of longing for someone who doesn’t fully reciprocate his feelings. The novel ultimately depicts the pain of unrequited desire as a quintessential human experience that is neutral and potentially generative.
From the first, the Bunnies display barely concealed lust toward Aerius. When they debate whether to kill or “keep” him, “she said the word keep [and] I heard the true word with our hive mind, which was fuck” (143). Their desire for Aerius is troubling because it motivates them to keep him in captivity even as he longs for freedom and to violate his consent. The Bunnies will later recollect how “he ran away from us […] did not fuck us or even want to make out with us” (319). When Aerius recounts his own narrative, he communicates his disgust and horror at the way that the Bunnies lusted after him.
However, while the Bunnies violate Aerius’s consent, he eventually comes to see how one can suffer from unrequited desire. When Aerius falls for Jonah, he assumes the vulnerable position of trying to seek reassurance and affection. For example, Aerius asks Jonah, “am I there too, in your Heart? And for the first time in my Life, Reader, I truly hated my Self. For asking such a Question. For not being able to help it” (235). Aerius must accept the complication of feeling the same unrequited desire toward Jonah that his captors displayed toward him. Ultimately, Aerius’s experience of unrequited desire does give him some empathy for the Bunnies and connects him to a common human experience of longing and loss.
Acceptance is what ultimately differentiates the unrequited desire experienced by Aerius and the Bunnies. While Aerius never stops loving Jonah, he is able to accept the limitations of their connection while wishing Jonah well. At their final meeting, Aerius gifts Jonah his notebook, symbolizing how he feels gratitude for their connection. The Bunnies, however, never stop trying to claim and dominate Aerius, and they eventually lose him forever. Even in trying to publish their narrative, they continue trying to maintain a type of control over him: When they steal his notebook from Jonah, they symbolically try to reclaim him. Aerius’s desire is ultimately generous and designed to make Jonah happy, while the Bunnies only desire Aerius for their own ends.
Disappointment Over Failed Role Models
Due to the college campus setting, the Bunnies encounter role models and authority figures in the form of their professors, notably Ursula and Allan. They also function as role models to Aerius, who is their creation and, in some sense, their child. Both the Bunnies and Aerius ultimately grapple with the experience of feeling disappointment over failed role models.
Generally, role models are depicted as disappointing when they operate from a place of ego or when the student is not self-aware enough to receive the lessons being taught. For example, the Bunnies are initially devastated to learn that Ursula will not immediately be teaching them, as they initially idolize her. The Bunnies, however, mostly long for Ursula to be their teacher because they believe she will nurture them, lavish them with praise, and never challenge or criticize them.
The Bunnies quickly become disappointed and frustrated with Ursula for refusing to give them what they want. Ursula refuses their pleas to take over fall workshop by telling them to wait until after Christmas, refuses to engage with them when they first tell her the story of creating Aerius, and then finally dismisses their accusations that she has stolen Aerius from them. Particularly because of the way they have built her up in their mind, the Bunnies are crushed when Ursula fails to live up to their expectations that she will “tell us something promising, something specific, something beautiful about ourselves” (363).
The Bunnies are correct that Ursula is failing them: She is entirely preoccupied with her own project of working with Aerius and neglects her students. However, the Bunnies only want attention from a role model when it manifests in a specific form. During their first semester, Allan seems to give them thoughtful and attentive feedback, but they receive this as a kind of violence. The Bunnies are skeptical of Allan because he is a man and therefore are also particularly sensitive toward feedback, which they perceive as aggressive.
The Bunnies’ selfish motives also manifest in how they nurture Aerius. They understand that they have a role to educate him, to “nurture. Teach as only we can. We do the difficult but ultimately very rewarding work of making him better” (152). However, their goal is not to help Aerius achieve independence and understand the world around him. They intend to keep him cloistered away forever and merely want to inculcate him with their own tastes and preferences so that he will come to adore them and treat them with subservience. Much like Ursula, the Bunnies operate primarily from a place of ego.
While Allan is perceived by the Bunnies as a bad teacher and bad role model, he undermines this stereotype during his encounter with Aerius. Allan is kind and compassionate toward Aerius, even when the latter threatens his life. He points out that Aerius has the freedom to make decisions about his own life and doesn’t have to mirror the emotions of the Bunnies. Allan performs one of the most powerful functions of an educator by setting Aerius free from the preconceptions he has inherited. Therefore, while many of the characters are poor role models because they operate from a place of selfishness, it is also clear that role models and teachers can be a force for good.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence