Ruby (age 10) and her younger brother Max (age 4) live alone in a well-kept house in a small village. They appear to have no family except for their maternal grandmother, a sweet elderly woman widowed four years previously. Ruby and Max seem to have an acceptable level of social life with their peers; Ruby engages in girl scouts-like organization and regularly has friends over to play; Max likewise occasionally has friends with which to play. Ruby appears to be the one who is the caregiver for Max, regularly bathing him, dressing him, and feeding him.
Their living arrangement brings about several questions:
-Why is Ruby seeming to be the sole caregiver for Max?
-If there are no parents around, why do the children not live with their grandmother?
-Why are they not allowed to attend school?
-What will happen to these children?
The situation of Max and Ruby appears to stem from a tragic event in the months before we first watch their story. Max and Ruby came from a generally stable household with loving parents...until one day when the parents disappeared. What happened to them?
I suggest that Ruby somehow was responsible for the deaths of her parents. Perhaps they perished in a car crash when she distracted them with a tantrum. Perhaps they died when she accidentally mixed some bathroom chemicals into a cake she made for them. Or perhaps they tripped over and broke their necks when they encountered the legion of Ruby's stuffed animals in the living room.
Ruby might have been responsible, but she was not guilty. Her actions greatly divided the family. The paternal grandparents were upset with what happened and refused to forgive Ruby, and by extension Max, for their son's death. They refuse to have any contact with the children. The maternal grandmother, however, loves the children deeply and has chosen to forgive. While in her elderly state (and perhaps displaying the first signs of dementia) she does not have the ability anymore to raise the children herself, she continues on with the traditional grandmother role of looking in on them and spoiling them when she can before sending them to their own home.
But why does society refuse to provide proper adult supervision for these children? In their particular rabbit community, children who are orphaned, particularly those who caused the death of their children, are not provided foster parents. Rather, the children are left to fend for themselves without the benefit of a proper education. The children may be blessed to have a few neighbors courageous enough to allow their children to play with Ruby, who has generally been ostracized for the death of her parents, but these are the exceptions. Ultimately, their lives within this rabbit culture are not honored as humans are, for rabbits reproduce far too quickly to sustain a stable population count. Rabbit children, particularly orphaned children who had a role in the deaths of their parents, are considered disposable by society as a whole, and if a few die due to neglect, others will soon replace them. They breed like rabbits, after all.
Ruby, however, is still reeling from the loss of her parents and feels especially guilty for their deaths. She has vowed to her rabbit-god that she will care for her brother until he reaches adulthood. Thus she cooks and cleans and tends to his every need, even as she lives off the trust fund that her deceased parents left in their care. She may have the body of a 10-year old, but the scars of her youth have already made her into a middle-aged woman emotionally. Certainly her friends come around occasionally to give her some youthful company, but Ruby will never marry, never find love, and die at a relatively young age due to the stresses of her youth.
Max, having lost his parents at a very young age, will grow up into a young man with many emotional issues. His sister will have done well to have raised him to this age, but having not the parental support he needed he will continually see women as objects for displaced affection. He will go through a series of short-term relationships, often producing bastard rabbit offspring, but rarely will have any contact with his children. His sister Ruby will seek to be a good aunt to these children, but again, being rabbits, there are too many of them to count.
Max and Ruby is a tragic story whose difficulties have only begun when we first begin to view their story.
