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What Is The Theme Of Colonisation In The Rabbits

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The Rabbits John Marsden and Shaun Tan 'The Rabbits' is a picture book written by John Marsden and Shaun Tan that uses anthropomorphism to convey a story of colonisation. Despite the small amount of text in the book, it seems to offer many deep meanings. Because of this, Marsden and Tan heavily rely on their illustrations to convey themes using this such as symbolism, motifs, characterisation, and colour. By doing this, they make the book relatable not just to Australian Indigenous people, but to Indigenous people from all over who have had to experience colonisation. The clear depictions make the concepts understandable to all people Colonisation is investigated heavily through the book by use of characterisation. The colonisation theme is first seen in the contrasting characterisation of the rabbits and the numbats. The numbats are depicted as gentle, peaceful creatures who are deeply connected with their land. While the rabbits are shown off as ruthless, inexorable people who have no problem making the land into their ideations. This is shown on the first page where you can see numbats …show more content…

The theme of destruction is shown at the very beginning of the book where you can see the lizard looking in the distance at what appears to be a smoke stack with it, a flock of birds fleeing the area. The birds are meaningful to this first motif because birds are designed to flee from danger. This alone shows us that the smoke stacks bring danger and unpleasantness. With every page that presents new damage to the numbats and their land, the smokestacks seem to double or multiply in size. Moreover, the colours used also play a big part in the theme of destruction, the pages shown before the rabbits came are displayed as a pallet of muted red earth tones. Though after the rabbits came and bought things from their home country the land is shown to have artificial colours of nearly

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