I want to find a language that my heart speaks fluently
Мда каждый раз когда случается какая то хуйня остро ощущается отсутствие близкого человека. Я конечно одиночка, но это задевает еще больше. Ничего не добиваюсь и ничего не заслуживаю ;)
see the THING IS I don't feel like I ever worked hard enough to have "earned" the burnout, which is. probably how we got here.
(I wouldve added images beside the first one from the book with highlights to provide evidence for a statement but like damn, tumblr wont let me for some reason. i'll try from a different device later)
I think Bunny was also supposed to be the picture of innocence.
I know what you're thinking: how can a loudmouth bigoted ass character 😒 be innocent? I'm with you. Surprisingly, Donna wrote extremely 3 dimensional characters. Sometimes, to really understand a certain character, you have to look at all their aspects, zoom out of the negatives (which Richard would have preferred to remain zoomed in on to justify his compliance in the murder of someone who considered him a friend) and look at them as a WHOLE.
Let's define the word innocence in this context with the help of my sturdy old friend, Google.
1. The obvious, Bunny committed no crime. He was innocent in the legal sense.
2. Without experience
We can say he was less experienced in the basics of life (was 24, didn't have a bank account, couldn't even drive i think? We never see Bunny drive. Didn't even have finances or know how to manage them-clearly. He might not even have understood the gravity of his over-spending nature)
3. Lacking
Clearly, when compared to his peers, he was lacking;
Financial help from his family (except when it came to comparing him to Richard). You could argue the twins were as poor as him- its mentioned in the book. But the case here is different. Bunny's parents were rich, yet he was not. The twins came from a middle class family, and they had their grandmother sending them money. Someone was taking care of them. Bunny had been thrown into boarding schools his whole life and learned to "fend" for himself by becoming a thief and a mooch. Two very different lifestyles.
He could also be considered to lack in academics. He struggled with dyslexia (and I think also ADHD), which is implied to have affected his studies/studious motivation
Bunny was also lacking in pretentiousness; and I'd wager that, though he probably was insecure, he wasn't insecure in a way that made him chase an aesthetic to such a fatal degree. Yes he was a man of illusions, yes he kept these illusions up to maintain a certain image of himself (in that regard, he was very similar to Richard, whose narration of Bunny is usually judgmental). But Bunny was not pretentious like Henry, Julian etc were. He wasn't walling himself in to be an elitist in a scholarly way, I think this fact is reflected in the fact that he had friends and connections outside of the class.
4. Not responsible for a crime but suffering it's consequences
Bunny isn't involved in the bacchanal, yet he suffers its consequence. He finds out about it, has multiple breakdowns to the point of getting drunk and writing an absolutely insane letter to a teacher with his feelings and suspicions bared, and he also opens up to Richard in his drunken carelessness. A mistake which cost him his life. He wasn't just killed because he was annoying, or that he knew too much-- Bunny had to die because he couldn't deal with the weight of knowing what had been done. Or perhaps, he couldn't deal with what the reality of his closest friend was.
5. Not corrupted
Easily, Bunny isn't corrupted with what I call " visions of grandeur" like everyone else in the class is. They all thought they were something. Henry and Julian especially. They were obsessed with ideals that, in a practical sense, ran the risk of polarizing their own selves. We could also speak on the fact he technically wasn't free from moral wrong. He was homophobic, rude, kind of hateful. But in a more fundamental way, he wasn't corrupted in the sense that he did anything that was major AND physically wrong.
I know verbal offences are valid too, and I'm not excusing his hatred/hate speech, I'm just saying.
Even him stealing that goddamn cake from the fridge or something, which Richard tried to conveniently paint as "he doesnt care for people (forget that he can't read)". YES, stealing other people's food is bad, but is it (done for survival?) as bad as:
incest (also pre-unhinged Charles, I dont know if what the twins did was consensual or if Charles used to force himself on Camilla or use an abusive dynamic to make her submit. I think that only came on after Bunny died, but idk)
poisoning someone's dogs
killing a baby chick or whatever weird shit richard did as a kid. and then as an adult the many questionable things he did
francis lowkey seemed like a sexual predator and i understand this might make people upset but i feel like he preyed on Charles' weakened mental / alcoholic state to sleep with him when charles (despite being bi) was not comfortable with the fact that he was attracted to men and wouldnt sleep with francis when he was sober.
Julian is just all wrong
6. Simple ; naive
So, without repeating anything- I genuinely feel like Bunny was so simple sometimes he was genuinely a dumbass. His death itself....how did he see the man he KNEW wanted to kill him (and I know this because in the letter to Julian, Bunny explicitly mentions "He" (Henry, not "THEY" the class) is going to kill him)
He sees them all there and still lets his guard down. He was so naive, that despite his very real paranoia of being stalked/killed, he still engaged with them like they were just a bunch of friends.
Another thing, child-like attributes are often related to naivety. (Him bouncing on everyone's beds that one morning, he was hyper, couldn't regulate his emotions, even his anger and aggression was very childish/immature in nature)
7. Not intended to cause harm
This is the only one I disagree with, because this was the only sense in which Bunny was NOT innocent. He very much had antagonistic qualities and intended to cause emotional harm to those he didn't like.
But yeah, overall, he practically fits the innocent role, which is why i think, after his death, things take such dark turns-- the reader loses their innocence too, in a sense, with the things that are revealed about the twins, about Charles, about Francis/Charles, about that one awful moment where Richard thinks the vilest shit about Camilla. The group starts falling apart and becomes disillusioned with each other- Richard starts seeing everyone for who they are, as well. His irritation towards Henry and the rest becomes palpable, and he also realizes his true friends could have been Judy etc (the normal students).
To lose one's innocence, we first have to encounter a scenario or go through something that gives us a greater awareness of the pain or the evil we are surrounded by. Here, losing Bunny was the catalyst in making Richard (and by extension, us) realize the characters and situations for what they really were.
Study of a ref on Pinterest, except it’s Regulus.
bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.
I hate how I can never get along with her. It will not work out I shall repeat it more consistently. It didnt work out before and it never will
Are you okay they ask I respond as quickly as I can so they will not notice the earthquakes in my voice or the tsunamis in my eyes or the drought in my heart.
Ellen Everett