Literature analysis of Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole

The Symbolism of the Rabbit Hole

David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole, which he adapted into a screenplay directed by John Cameron Mitchell, concerns a married couple coping with the death of their son, with complications brought in by the wife's sister and mother and ultimately by the teenager that killed young Danny with his car (though through no real fault of his own). Each of the characters in the play has their own way of dealing with Danny's death and how it has affected their future and their lives, but a part of each of their coping mechanisms involves a great deal of escapism, or pretending the world exists in a way that it does not. This is exemplified to varying degrees and in many different ways by each of the characters, and an investigation of four of these characters and the ways in which they go down their own "rabbit holes" -- their journeys to imagined realities -- reveals a great deal about the impact and meaning of the play.

The explicit concept of the rabbit hole isn't introduced until late in the play, when Jason re-enters Becca and Howie's lives. Jason is the teenager that was driving along when Danny ran into the street after the family dog and Jason hit him; though Danny's father Howie wants nothing to do with Jason, Becca talks with him. He tells her that he imagines complete alternate realities, where people who have died in this reality continue existing, and describes "rabbit holes" as a way of reaching these realities. Jason explicitly and consciously imagines other places where Danny could be a live, that is, as a way of coping with his feelings of guilt and grief arising from his role (however accidental) in Danny's death. The fact that this isn't explicitly described until the end of the play is quite telling, however, as though it should not be revealed so clearly right away.

Izzy, Becca's sister, is the first character to demonstrate the action of creating alternate realities in order to feel better about the world she occupies. The story opens with Izzy telling Becca about a confrontation in a bar with some random woman who accused Izzy of sleeping with her boyfriend. It is eventually revealed that Izzy did, in fact, sleep with this woman's boyfriend and is actually pregnant with his child, and this presents two fictions or "alternate realities" that Izzy perpetuates for a time. First, she pretends to be innocent of infidelity -- or assisting in another's infidelity, at least -- when she is most definitely not innocent in this regard, and second she tries to ignore, avoid, or imagine away the fact of her pregnancy for some time before it is revealed, possibly as a way of lessening her pain and likely as a way of lessening Becca's pain from the loss of her own child. Pretending, then, or creating illusions through these "rabbit holes" of the imagination, is at least a way that Izzy deals with conflict and potential pain if not a more consistent character trait.

Howie, Danny's father, immerses himself in fantasy worlds in a more direct and apparent way than Izzy but a more indirect way than Jason. Instead of actually dealing with a future life where Danny is dead, Howie watches old home movies of Danny, immersing himself in the world of the past. Though not exactly the same type of imagining or pretending that the other characters engage in, Howie is still creating a false alternate world with these home movies. He has disappeared through a rabbit hole to a world that used to exist and doesn't any longer, and is in this way perhaps worse than an imagined future.