jackrabbit

The jackrabbit is a creature of the arid, waterless desert country that Kino and Juana must cross when they flee La Paz after the pearl has brought violence and pursuit upon their family. It appears only once in the narrative, during the family's panicked flight toward the high stone mountains, but its brief presence carries the weight of the natural world's indifference to human suffering and the harshness of the environment that now encloses the fugitives.

Encounter During the Flight

As Kino and Juana struggle westward through the dry, broken terrain, the land is waterless, furred with cacti that can store water and with great-rooted brush that reaches deep into the earth for a little moisture. Underfoot is not soil but broken rock, split into small cubes and great slabs, none of it water-rounded. Little tufts of sad dry grass grow between the stones, grass that has sprouted with one single rain and headed, dropped its seed, and died. Horned toads watch the family go by and turn their little pivoting dragon heads. And then, in this desolate landscape, a great jackrabbit, disturbed in his shade, bumps away and hides behind the nearest rock. The jackrabbit's reaction is purely instinctive—it is a creature of the desert, startled from its rest, and it seeks the nearest cover. It does not observe the humans with curiosity or fear beyond the immediate need to escape; it simply removes itself from their path. The jackrabbit's flight mirrors, in miniature, the family's own flight, but without the weight of hope, fear, or purpose that drives Kino and Juana. The animal acts on a single, uncomplicated impulse: to avoid danger and return to stillness.

The Landscape of Pursuit

The jackrabbit belongs to a landscape that is defined by scarcity and survival. The singing heat lies over this desert country, and ahead the stone mountains look cool and welcoming, but the journey is brutal. Kino knows what will happen: a little way along the road the trackers will become aware that they have missed the path, and they will come back, searching and judging, and in a little while they will find the place where Kino and Juana have rested. From there it will be easy for them—these little stones, the fallen leaves and the whipped branches, the scuffed places where a foot has slipped. The jackrabbit, like the horned toads and the sad dry grass, is part of a world that offers no concealment and no comfort. The animal's ability to hide behind a rock is a luxury the humans cannot afford; their trail is too long, their pursuers too skilled. The jackrabbit's simple, successful evasion stands in stark contrast to the family's doomed attempt to escape the trackers who are as sensitive as hounds and can follow the trail of a bighorn sheep in the stone mountains.

Narrative Significance

The jackrabbit is one of several desert animals that populate the landscape of Kino's flight, including horned toads, coyotes, owls, and the large animal that lumbered away crackling the undergrowth. These creatures are not symbolic in any heavy-handed way; rather, they are part of the natural texture of the world Steinbeck creates, a world that is indifferent to human plans and human suffering. The jackrabbit, disturbed from its shade, bumps away and hides—it does not witness, does not judge, does not remember. Its appearance underscores the isolation of Kino and Juana: they are no longer part of the human community that once surrounded them, but are now reduced to moving through a landscape where even the animals are strangers, where every creature is either prey or predator, and where the only law is survival. The jackrabbit's brief, unremarkable flight is a reminder that in this world, to be disturbed is to flee, and to flee is to live—a lesson Kino and Juana are learning at a terrible cost.