Bunny

From Lostpedia

"Rabbit" redirects here. For the Season 1 episode, see: White Rabbit.

Rabbit #8

Rabbit #8 in the cage, appearing lifeless, after Ben shook it furiously

Rabbit #8, safe and sound, pulled out of Ben's bag

Young Ben pulls out a rabbit from his bag

Alex preparing white rabbit

White-furred, red-eyed, sometimes number-painted rabbits or bunnies have appeared on multiple occasions in the show. The first rabbit appears in "Every Man for Himself". It is first presented in a small steel cage, placed above Sawyer's chest by Ben. The rabbit has the number 8 painted onto his fur. Ben then shakes the cage violently, and the rabbit quivers, then falls still. Ben tells Sawyer the bunny is dead and had a pacemaker in him, which due to 8's anxiety, caused its heart to explode. Later, 8 is oddly in Ben's bag when they make the trek to the Hydra Island lookout, and is alive and okay. Ben says that he only gave the bunny a sedative, and then places it back in his bag.

A different rabbit appears in "The Man Behind the Curtain" where Ben as a child owns a similar, white, red-eyed young rabbit which he keeps in his room as a pet. He later brings the bunny to the sonic fence in a bag and pushes the bunny toward the pylons to see if the fence is truely deactivated. It works, and Ben follows the white rabbit through the fence, then scoops up the bunny and places him back in the bag.

The logo for the DHARMA Initiative station named "The Looking Glass" is a white rabbit. As well as this, Alex is seen in flashback skinning another rabbit. ("Greatest Hits")

Trivia

• The bunny is a White New Zealand.
• The #8 bunny is an obvious reference to a Stephen King book entitled On Writing. In the nonfiction book, a writing exercise asks the reader to analyze an albino rabbit in a cage with the number 8 written on its back.
• The rabbit #8 writing exercise is used to prove a point about "telepathy."
• Sawyer is seen in prison reading Of Mice and Men, and he makes several references to the book throughout the episode, as does Ben eventually. In the book, the mentally challenged character Lenny's obsession with rabbits is a key plot element.
• The idea of the white rabbit is a running theme of the show, even referenced in one episode title, Season 1 episode 5, "White Rabbit". Ironically, most characters are led out into the jungle after their white rabbits (as when Jack follows Christian in the episode that introduced the idea), but Sawyer is led to remain caged after he sees the real white rabbit.

• The idea of a character following a white rabbit can be traced back to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There" by Lewis Carroll. Both stories had the "Alice character" experiencing an amazing journey when her insatiable curiosity roused her to follow a nervous white rabbit into a cave-like opening

• Rabbits are a symbol for fertility, a theme which surrounds the Others.
  • Rabbits were killed in an early and well-known pregnancy test. The urine of pregnant women contains human chorionic gonadotropin, which causes changes to a female rabbit's ovaries when it is injected. Early pregnancy tests involved injecting the urine and then killing the rabbit and inspecting its ovaries.[1]
• In "Fire + Water", young Charlie wears slippers resembling rabbits.
• In "Confidence Man", Sawyer is reading Watership Down, a novel featuring rabbits as protagonists.
• The Blue Danube is the second part of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
• In "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead", Hurley finds a keyring that has a rabbit's foot on it.
• In "Greatest Hits", Alex is preparing a white rabbit's meat.
• Lost: The Complete Third Season (DVD) Commentary by Damon Lindelof: "Ben's penchant for numbering his rabbits "probably has something to do with fertility experiments."
• In "The Other Woman", Locke prepares a rabbit for Ben, who asks Locke if the rabbit had a number on it.

Outside of Lost episodes

The Orchid Orientation Film

In the orientation film (discovered in Norway) for "Station 6 - The Orchid" Marvin Candle holds up a rabbit with the number 15 on it. After a moment, it is shown that behind him a second rabbit with the number 15 sitting on the top shelf of the metal shelving unit. Candle and his assistants are upset by the second 15 and Candle moves away from it, saying the two cannot be close together. The film abruptly ends and restarts with only one 15. The film implies there is a significant population of white rabbits in The Orchid.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse suggest that fans curious about Charlotte's discovery of a polar bear skeleton in Tunisia watch the Orchid video, and further draw a link between the polar bear with the bunny in the video. (Official Lost Podcast/February 19, 2008)

Games

• White rabbits appear in both Lost: The Mobile Game and Lost: iPod Game.

External links

• Entertainment Weekly - Oct 31, 2006 article by Jeff Jensen on the possible connection with Stephen King