Allegory: Terrible Things

Allegory is the literature work with two levels of meaning, a literal one and a symbolic one. In the book "Terrible Things" written by Eve Bunting, the author created different animals in the forest to symbolize the different kinds of people that were slaughtered by Nazis Hitler. Instead of directly place real people in the story, Bunting could send the message through forest animals who played the role as human species.
When the white rabbits saw the shadows and evil eyes of the terrible things that are taking away other animals species by species, they just felt careless and relieved that they weren't the one who were being taken away. This is substituting the scene where certain groups of people carelessly let other groups like Gypse, Jews, disabled, homosexuals and Catholics being taken away by Nazis to be tortured. They would felt relieved that they weren't same people as those people and they were all focusing on prejudices of those animals.
But later on, the terrible things once more came back get the white rabbits as well. The white rabbits were freaking out and screaming out for help from others. But it was too late; no one was hardly left to help them. Few of them could survive at the end. They questioned themselves that what if they have cared and helped others when they were being taken by Nazis who also are just one of many groups of people. They wondered if they could have stopped the tragedy of losing those people to the terrible things if they have stuck together with one another and fight against them.
These few left animals among white rabbits also represent the people back then, those of few who survived. The author is precisely criticizing the people who survived and or excluded from Nazis' lists of genocides. They turned away from people who were holocausted by Nazis when they could have actually all stuck together and protect each other from Nazis just because they were safe, that they were not the one who were being slaughted. Then when they realized the Nazis were coming after them, they wanted and expected someone to come rescue them. But there were no other people left to rescue them because they were all taken when they turned their back at them.
The story itself primarily shows how careless and prejudice animals and white rabbits are, but to go deeper inside, the whole plot represented the real human society with the genocide based on prejudice. In this Allegory, Bunting used the animals to show the different kinds of people, misjudged by stereotypes, and turned away by others who refused to step forward and help them fight against discrimination and the holocaust.