In "Rabbit in Mixer Survives," Granddad is a sympathetic character in part because, even though the little rabbits he is "boring" with his story see him as pathetic, the reader knows that his story is mostly true. While his endless retelling of this adventure might make him a bit of a bore, he is a kindly figure who thinks that the younger rabbits' request to hear his story again is an honest one, and not a way to make him seem ridiculous.

They believe that the old rabbit is deluded or senile, that he has told the story so many times, "he now believes it's true," but we readers of course know that he did survive this terrible ordeal which has "encased him in a block of time / Eighteen inches long." The end of the poem, in which the rabbit presumably is killed by a hunter, adds a bitter twist. We sympathize with the old rabbit because, like him, we readers understand how one's life can be defined by a random, meaningless accident.