It has been so interesting seeing my pessemistic reading of the short story contrasting with optimistic readings.
Here, I read an optimistic message about the resilience of the human spirit and the power of hope, empathy and connection. You show the rats and rabbits as symbolic of the harsh realities of war versus innocence and resilience.
But with mine, it seems propose a more pessimistic meaning – to let go of the past and enter an uncertain future, with time as inevitable and forgetting as inevitable once moving on. For me, the rats represent the danger of clinging to fading traditions and hopes. The rabbits symbolize the exponential but uncertain promise of the future. I saw the hope as possibly vaporous and dishonest and I was implying that a kind of callousness may be required to move forward from duty and trauma. It may seem easy to walk away towards the crooked man and his promise of a rabbit, his father and sleep and yet, something caused him to remain where he was and it was a very deep something that I don’t know if it can be shaken off easily by a boy who has been through so much already. I’d like to think he could but I don’t know if he would.
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