Words and Images in The Rabbits

Victorian Curriculum Outcome: Understand and explain how combinations of words and images in texts are used to represent particular groups in society, and how texts position readers in relation to those groups (VCELT405)

PART ONE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORDS AND IMAGES - HOW THEY INTERACT TO CREATE MEANING

“When people talk about illustrations in books, it often sounds like words are in charge and the pictures are just following the order. But I think that in picture books it’s different. In picture books, words and pictures are a fantastic double act, each doing a different job, maybe even telling a different story- but you need both of them to have the whole story.”

Mini Grey (2006)

We live in a ‘word-centred world’ and tend to privilege words over pictures. Although this is often not the case with picture books as images are often assigned equal weight and value, if not more. As we know, it is both the words and the images which play a powerful role in the creation of meaning in picture books. However, words and pictures do not always interact in the exact same way in every picture book and there are different types of relationships between the two.

Here are five different interactions between words and pictures:

1. Words and pictures tell the exact same story as each other
2. Words and pictures each contribute information to one story (they fill in the gaps left by the other)
3. Word and pictures enhance each other’s meaning (images supports words and the words depend on the images)
4. Words and images provide alternative information or contradict each other in some way
5. Words and pictures flatly contradict each other

PART TWO: WORDS AND IMAGES IN THE RABBITS

In The Rabbits, we can see various interactions between words and images. For example, in the spread below, the words and images enhance each other’s meaning. The words tell us that the rabbits ‘came by water’; however, it does not tell us that the rabbits came by ship- a ship which we immediately see takes up a very large part of the double spread. Here we can see that words rely on the image and the image not only supports the words, but elaborates and expands on the meaning created by the words.

In this next spread, we are told that “there were too many rabbits” and these words are supported in the image as we see rabbits with guns lined up as far as the eye can see. Thus, the words and the image work together in telling the same story.

In the following spread, the words and image both fill in the gaps left by the other. In the spread shown below the reader is told that the natives have ‘lost the fights’. However, it is the visual of countless native skeletons culred up and buried beneath the ground that fills in the gaps of this somewhat vague statement and leaves the reader speechess at the meaning conveyed. The natives have not just ‘lost the fights’, they have lost their lives.  

So now that you have been given a brief examples of how words and pictures interact together in The Rabbits to tell the same story, as well as the role they play in meaning making and the reader’s interpretation of the text, let’s now look at how images and words might interact to tell a slightly different story.

In the final spread, the one shown above, the image shows one rabbit and one native sitting opposite each other with equally dejected postures. Here, we are seeing a new side of the rabbits we have not seen before. In previous spreads the rabbits’ backs are almost always perfectly straight, possibly to represent their supposed superiority (how they think that they are better than the natives). However, in this last image, the rabbit shown is sitting in similarly to the native: slumped over looking defeated. What commentary does the text make about the happiness of the rabbits, in spite of all their ‘achievements’?

Secondly, throughout the books “us” has clearly referred to the natives. However, with both the rabbit and the native looking equally lost and defeated, the text makes us question who “us” really refers to. As readers, we are positioned to view the destruction and devastation which results from the actions of the rabbits, and through it all, life is shown to lose its happiness as colour slowly fades from the images. So yes, the text does ask who will save the natives, but through the meaning conveyed in the images, we can also ask, “Who will save the rabbits? Who will save them from themselves?”

Remember: EVERYTHING IS DONE FOR A REASON.

Complete the following sentences:

The large border around the image makes the two characters inside feel/look__________________. Neither of them look________________ or ________________. I think this shows the reader that both of them are ________________.

The use of ______________ (cool/warm) colours like __________ and __________ are used to make the reader feel _______________.

As previously discussed, we know that The Rabbits is an a__________. We know that the _______ symbolise the British, the colonisers. We know that the _____________ represent the colonised, the Indigenous Australians.


So then, what commentary might text be making about these particular groups of people?

Leave a comment below describing how you think the particular groups in society (i.e. the British colonisers and the colonised Indigenous Australians) are shown and how you think the text encourages readers to agree.