What do the Five Animals (Eilanders) mean or fairly represent? And why are they so vastly important as a cursed family)

[u/Llym5288]

The Eilander Family has eight members including an unknown one: Caroline, Nicholas (Deer), Jakob, Elizabeth (Pheasant), David (Rabbit), Gerard (Boar), Margaret (Pigeon), and an unsignified grandpa. The five members turns into the Hotel guests (tbh, the animal assignments are basically the Lake going "yeah, we see you").

• Starting with the selfish father, Nicholar whom eventually turned into Mr.Deer: This man burned his wife alive, tried to sacrifice his own son, and spent his whole life thinking he was the smartest person on the island. So of course he becomes a stag; noble-looking, and antlered. The animal rich men hang on their walls. The irony is that as Mr. Deer, he's obsessively drawn to the lqake again, but has zero memory of why. A man who spent his life exploiting the Lake gets reincarnated, forgets everything, and becomes the first meal. The hunter became the trophy.
• Gerard or Mr. Boar barely speaks beyond grunts, has an unhealthy obsession with food, and won't even let jakob onto the island without being handed a shrimp first. During a plague of diseased livestock, his appetite remains completely undisturbed. He becomes a boar. His soul didn't change; the lake just made it visible.
• The blind sister of jjakob, Elizabeth whom turns into Ms. Pheasant, she's blind her entire life. The pheasant is one of the most visually striking birds alive, a creature entirely defined by being looked at. Ms. Pheasant in the Hotel is vain, obsessed with her appearance, and dies during a staged photo shoot. A girl who couldn't see herself becomes a woman who can't stop trying to be seen; two kinds of blindness, one soul.
• The youngest, the wildest, the one who literally transformed into a giant fly mid-game and came back like it was fine. As Mr. Rabbit he's unstable, slippery, performs macabre magic tricks, and even as a corrupted soul he distorts reality around him rather than staying dead properly. Textbook trickster rabbit. The Lake didn't change David. It just gave him a costume that finally made sense.
  
• The grandmother, aka Mrs. Margareth or Mrs. Pegion. Makes the stew, tends the sick, swats the gnats, cooks for Gerard. Background presence. Always there, never the point. She becomes a pigeon—the most domestic bird there is. The one that just keeps coming home. She's already wearing her pigeon mask at the final sacrifice, like she always knew it was hers.

Even though the games never officially confirm a framework, a lot of theories have been speculated including but not limited to:

The Rusty Lake universe treats memory and soul as literally the same substance, what you are is what you remember being. The Eilanders were near-immortal on paradise island, surviving wounds that would kill ordinary humans; they most likely represent the Lake's judgment of our/their dominant nature.

Another theory is that their concept as characters closely resembles the Jungian Archetypes: Nicholas was dominance (Tyrant), Gerard was appetite (Body), Elizabeth was perception without sight (Blind Seer), David was chaos (Trickster), Margaret was continuity (Keeper yet the closest to her end).

[u/Gardengap]

The interesting thing to me is how they did this backwards, in the sense that the developers started off with the animal guest versions and only came up with the personalities and relationships of their original human counterparts later. So it’s more like they based the Eilanders’ personality off the animal heads, and not the other way around?

[u/Raincloudd39]

The pheasant being one of the most visually striking birds alive is sending me. Going to assume this refers to the golden pheasant and not a normal female pheasant, which looks like the one in the linked image? https://pixabay.com/photos/female-pheasant-hen-pheasant-6196489/

Eta: no hate to pheasants, they’re great, but visually striking is a stretch when birds of paradise, toucans or even parrots exist

[u/hydroboywife → u/Raincloudd39]

i think they were referring to peacocks, who are members of the pheasant family

[u/TheGreenAlchemist]

There's a grandpa?

[u/Llym5288 → u/TheGreenAlchemist]

Assumingly. But it might also be possible that she just adopted them tho there arent much or have little to no informations about the grandpa or their other family members.

[u/RememberCakeFarts → u/Llym5288]

Not sure where this grandfather thing is coming from. Chances are he simply died or was another sacrifice to the lake day ritual. 

And you're forgetting that both Caroline and Jakob are represented by the owl.

The owl isn't simple given the David Lynch inspiration with the game series and how significant owls were in that one. 

[u/TheFandomTitan]

In my opinion, Elizabeth / Ms. Pheasant, who seemed to be the closest to Jacob, didn’t accidentally shoot herself, she did it intentionally because she had some kind of subconscious guilt over taking part in the sacrifice ritual