What is the meaning of Frank the Rabbit in ‘Donnie Darko’?
Richard Kelly’s 2001 film Donnie Darko is a cult classic in every sense of the word. It starred Jake Gyllenhaal in the titular lead role as a troubled teenager who discovers the possibility of time travel when he experiences a number of close shaves with death.
The film opens with Donnie sleepwalking outside whilst being allured by a mysterious voice. It is at this point that we are introduced to one of the most iconic characters in Donnie Darko, Frank the Rabbit. He’s a strange figure dressed up in a terrifying rabbit costume who tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
But who or what exactly is Frank, and what does he represent? Spoilers following. When Donnie wakes up from his sleepwalking, he finds that a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom, so had Frank not called him in his sleep, he would likely have died. From this, we can gather that Frank needs Donnie alive for some purpose.
That purpose looks to be to show Donnie what would happen if he had stayed alive. Much of Donnie Darko surrounds the nature of time travel and parallel universes, so we can deduce that the film takes place in two universes, one where Donnie dies from the engine crash and another, perhaps created by Frank (whatever he is), in which he lives. The latter is known as the Tangent Universe.
Oddly enough, though, we discover that Frank is actually Donnie’s older sister’s boyfriend, who later crashes his car into Gretchen, killing her in the process. Donnie’s reaction is to shoot Frank in the eye, and he dies too. A woman known as Grandma Death in the film explains that both Frank and Gretchen are the Manipulated Dead in the fictional book The Philosophy of Time Travel and belong to the alternate universe, having died.
However, the effect of Donnie living in the Tangent Universe is that he knows the world is going to end in just over 28 days, and it is up to him to figure out how to stop that from happening. In that universe, we see the jet engine once again falling from the sky, and Donnie begins to understand that in order to save both Gretchen and Frank from their deaths, he must accept the fact that he has to die.
Hence, him laughing in his bed as the jet engine crashes into his house, killing him in the process. The alternate timeline is solved, and Gretchen and Frank either wake up from bad dreams in the real universe or have some kind of inner understanding that their alternate fate has been resolved. For example, Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend Frank keeps touching his eye (the one Donnie shot him in in the Tangent Universe).
It transpires that the jet engine got stuck between the real universe and the Tangent one, but it can only stay there for a short period of time (around 28 days) before it opens a black hole, destroying both universes. So Frank is solely responsible for using Donnie to resolve the fate of the real universe.
The significance of Frank being dressed in a rabbit costume rather than any other is no mistake. The fact that rabbits weave in and out of tunnels represents the way that Donnie and the Manipulated Dead are able to weave in and out of alternate universes and travel through time.
So, in light of this, we can perceive Frank (the time-travelling rabbit, not Donnie’s sister’s boyfriend) as some kind of beyond-human angel who understands the laws of physics and the fact that the universe is in perilous inevitability. He also understands that Donnie is only likely to want to sacrifice himself for the sake of those he loves, i.e. Gretchen.
On the other hand, perhaps Donnie is the real angel all along, and Frank is merely akin to the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland; follow him and see just how far the rabbit hole goes, in Donnie’s case, to the brink of the destruction of the entire universe. As the rabbit hole is to Alice, the time hole is to Donnie, and both show the respective characters the true reality of things.
Frank is certainly the most iconic part of Donnie Darko and will be remembered as the film’s defining feature. Whether he is a benevolent being who wants to save the universe or he was just a figment of Donnie’s imagination all along – making Donnie the real hero – remains open to interpretation. But he’s a vital part of one of the great cult films of the 2000s, and Richard Kelly’s film would not be the same without him.
