Essay Questions

The very first object mentioned in the story is the telephone, yet it is the only previously mentioned objects that the little rabbit does not tell goodnight as part of his ritual. What might be the reason for this rather glaring inconsistency?

The very presence of the phone on the nightstand has led many to suggest that this is not actually the bunny’s own bedroom, but rather his parents or, possibly, the old lady in the chair. The problem with this interpretation is that it seems rather unlikely that no matter how much the parents might love their child they would choose to decorate their own bedroom with scenes from children’s literature. Not to mention that the bed seems more suitable to a single occupant than two and the bookshelf is adorned with stuffed animals and stacked with what appears to be colorful books for kids. A more psychologically speculative theory—albeit just as valid based on the available evidence—suggests that the bunny purposely avoids saying goodnight to the phone because unlike the rest of the objects, he resents it. Logic dictates that the old woman saying hush is not his mother because she is both “old” and she would likely be referred to as his mother if she was. If the only adult present during his nightly ritual is an old lady who is neither his mother nor his father, then perhaps his resentment toward the phone stems from it being the object which he associates with parent absenteeism. A child that young would have little interaction with a phone and so he might have developed a sort of Pavlovian response of associating its ringing with the subsequent departure of his mother or father or both.

Just as many people are bothered that the bunny doesn’t say goodnight to the phone, others complain about the blank page in which he says “goodnight nobody.” What might be the significance of this choice (especially considering that this blank page could have been where he tells the telephone goodnight with no change in the rhythm)?

Most—though admittedly not all—of the items which the bunny addresses directly during his ritual are objects which could potentially become scary in the middle of the night. The moon could cast weird shadows around the room. The kittens and the mouse could make noises in the dark. The portraits of the cow and the bears look a little creepy in the glow of the fireplace. The silhouette of the red balloon as well as the socks and mittens hanging from the frame to dry all carry a possible shock effect for a child waking up from a nightmare. This ritual may not be—as most criticism suggests—as routine as it seems. The ritual may be less saying goodnight to these particular objects than to naming the objects in order to make them less scary. And the “goodnight nobody” page may be his way directly addressing this fear by reminding himself that “there’s nobody there.”

Why might the isolated images of the various individual objects be drawn in black and white while the room as a whole is in color?

Again, this artistic choice makes more sense if the idea is that the ritualistic naming of objects is done not merely as some sort of manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but rather as a concerted strategy to overcome typical childhood fears of the dark and “monsters under the bed.” The isolated “close-up” images of the two paintings, the round table, the old woman, the moon through the window, the kittens, mittens, toy house, mouse, mush and twinkling stars should not be viewed merely as black and white. Think of these as what the objects in the room might look like in the dark when the lights are turned off. As he is naming each of them as a way to control their ability to scare him in the middle of the night, perhaps he is also visualizing what they look when the lights go out.