Bunnies
The most significant imagery in the book is established by the title. The first-person narrator opens her story by describing a group of fellow female students collectively known as the Bunnies. "How fiercely they gripped each other’s pink-and-white bodies, forming a hot little circle of such rib-crushing love and understanding it took my breath away. And then the nuzzling of ski-jump noses, peach fuzzy cheeks." Right from the beginning the line separating literal bunnies and these metaphorical bunnies is blurred. This imagery of mutual personification and anthropomorphism between rabbits and humans will continue relentlessly throughout the narrative.
Feathery Ava
Before joining the Bunnies, the narrator has a best friend who just may be a little more than just a friend. She is quickly delineated through imagery as the anti-Bunny. "I look at her different-colored eyes, her bleached and feathery hair that is the antithesis of Bunny hair, cut asymmetrically and shaved in places, her fishnet veil that she wears like a threshold to be crossed only if you dare." The key component here is that description of Ava's hair as the specific element making her the anti-Bunny. Ava's feathery hair is referenced well in excess of a dozen times in the novel. Actual feathers will prove far more important in a far ghastlier way to the narrative of the Bunnies than one would ever think.
Swans
"I find the invitation in my school mailbox, expertly folded into a white origami swan...upon which one of them has drawn a rudimentary face with magenta ink. Two bleeding dots for eyes—one on either side of its very sharp beak, which, with the help of some dimples and inky lipstick—appear to be smiling at me." This imagery presents the moment at which the protagonist is invited to become a Bunny. Oddly, the invitation features a swan, but not a rabbit or hare. As the story plays out, swan imagery will become omnipresent in ways ranging from sweet to gruesome.
Creepy Doll
The Bunnies all get very non-ironic nicknames like Cupcake, Vignette, and the Duchess. "I look into the amber eyes of the one I call Creepy Doll. Because she reminds me of the creepy dolls I used to want when I was little, with their saucer eyes and their velvet dresses, their Shirley Temple curls of blood-red hair and their Cupid’s-bow lips molded into little pink oh!’s of wonder at the world." This paradoxical and ambivalent description of Creepy Doll is a reflection of the group as a whole. While the application of the nickname lacks irony, the same cannot be said of its origin. Creepy could seem a questionable description for dolls combining the treacly sweetness of Shirley Temple and the elegance of velvet.
