Introduction: Margaret Atwood
in “Animal Victims” from Survival speaks about the dangers caused by
human beings, especially the Canadians to animals. In symbolic tone, she also
talks about how like animals, the Canadians are victimised by Americans, the
imperialists. While she searches for animal stories in Canadian literature, she
gets awe-struck as she comes across the animal stories written by Ernest
Thompson Seton and Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and also some other Canadian
authors. Their stories reflect the very Canadian psyche. The Canadian ‘animal
stories’ as a genre differs from English and American animal stories. So, she
contradicts Alex Lucas’ views found in “A Literary History of Canada” through
this essay, “Animal Victims”.
British Animal Stories: The Canadian
literary ‘genre’ and its approach to the subject, animal-victim is unique. In
British Literature, for example, in Kipling’s “Mowgli” Kenneth Grahame’s “The
Wind in the Willows” and Beatrix Potter’s “Tales” animals are personified and
so they are benign like the while rabbits in “Allice in Wonderland”. The
animals have an organized hierarchy like the one in human world. When these
animal tales were translated into other forms like cartoon movies, and
song-dance, the animals were given human speech and human nature.
American Animal Stories: However, in
American animal stories these animals are able to speak English but they are
not the centre of action, because these stories are ‘hunting stories’ which
depend on human or animal hunters. For example, the white whale in “Moby-Dick”
the bear in Faulkner’s “The Bear” the lion in Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life
of Francis Macomber” the grizzlies in Mailer’s “Why Are We in Viet Name?” are
endowed with magic symbolic qualities. So, the hunters try to match themselves
against these animals and finally conquer them by killing. “Winning” over
“Nature” enhances their stature. In fact, in American animal stories the
success of the animal lies in terms of adjustment to people – as in Jack
London’s “White Frog”. However, in the animal stories of Seton and Roberts, (the
authors who are part Canadian and part American) the death of the animals is
seen as tragic or pathetic because the stories are told from the point of view
of animals.
Canadian Animal Stories: English animal
stories are about “social relation”, Americans’ are about “People killing
animals” and the Canadians’ are about “animals being killed”. For example, in
“Moby-Dick” the white whale exclaims “Why is that strange man chasing me around
with a harpoon”? and so we mourn for the struggle of the whaler but in
Canadian, E.J. Pratt’s “The Cachalot” we mourn for the death of the whale.
However, all these animal stories have tragic tone. Seton in the Preface of
“Wild Animals I Have Known” states that “wild animal always has a tragic
end”. But in reality, it is not the
animal which speaks and writes about its story but it is people who write it,
like how the “Indian stories” until recently were written by the White people.
In Seton and Roberts stories animals are
killed either by another animal or by men. Seton reverse the
“Nature-as-Monster” pattern in “Lobo”, “The Springfield Fox” and “Redruff” and
writes that animals in these stories suffered or killed by men and not by other
animals. Hence Atwood says that “Seton and Roberts suggest “pathetic” than
“tragic” end because in ‘tragic’ the hero should possess some tragic-flaw but
in ‘pathos’ as a literary mode simply demands that an innocent victim suffer”.
To explain ‘animal victim’ by Seton, Atwood also quotes the essay “Lives on the
Hunted: The Canadian Animal Story and the National Identity” by James Polk. So
according to Atwood one can understand the Canadian psyche from the animal
stories. She painfully says that in Seton’s and Roberts’ stories only the
individual animal is killed by men but in Fred Bodsworth’s “The Last of the
Curlews” and Farley Mowat’s “Cry Wolf”, the Canadian concern on doomed-and-slaughtered-animals
spreads far beyond the range of the ‘animal story’. The editor, Michael
Ondaatjee of the book, “The Broken Ark” in the editor’s note reveals that in Seton-and-Roberts
tradition men do not want to classify or treat animals as pets.
In Alden Nowlan’s “The Bull Moose” the
moose is tortured before being killed, but the man is portrayed as a
scarified-God-figure. In stories such as “Cain” and The Bull Calf” by Irving
Layton, “Mountain” by Bill Bissett and the poem, “The Death of Animal” by Al
Purdy, and “God Sour the Milk of the Knacking Wench” by Alden Nowlan the
animals are shown as worth-sacrificing creatures.
Late 20th Century
Canadian Literature:
Dave Godfrey’s “Death Goes Better with Coca-Cola” is also about animal as
victim. But the link such as ‘death with coca-cola’ has a significant relevance
to Konrad Lorenz’s book “On Aggression” because in the book Lorenz portrays the
destructive effect of the so called “higher culture”. Like this “The Generation
of Hunters” has an allusion such as ‘America – ‘the conquering nation’ is the
killer and ‘Canadians’ are the killed. In fact, Canadians too are hunters of
moose or fish which is like that of American towards them. In Aldon Nowlan’s
poem, the hunter image of Americans hunting the Canadians continues. According
to Nowlan, as the Americans gets bored off hunting animals turn their attention
on Canadians: “Canada is the place where Americans now come to hunt. The dead
bear is Canadian, a trophy to be taken from ‘here to ‘there’ and ‘there’ is
seen as civilized, safe, non-wild, a place of rituals that have lost their
meaning and of fake surfaces, of living skins turned into rugs. The function of
the Canadian ‘guides’ is curious; they are the middlemen, converting their own
live reality to dead trophies so they can sell it” (Survival 80). Thus,
in Canadian literature ‘animal as victim’ is a persistent image.
Scientific Survey: A Biologist,
Desmond Morris conducted a survey of people’s reactions to animals and the
discovery is that ‘the animals’ that people choose depend on the size of it and
also the age of people: small children like ‘parental’ animals like bear and
elephant; slightly older children prefer white mice and squirrels; adolescents
like companion or sexual-power figures like dogs and horses; childless couples
tend to favour cats, lapdogs and house birds; elderly people in England tend to
identify with threatened or nearly-extinct species. But in Canada people join
in animal-salvation campaigns such as protest over slaughter of baby seals and
the wolf. But Canadians are interested in ‘fur trade’. So according to Atwood,
from the point of view of animals Canadians are as bad as the people involved
in slave-trade.
New Revelation and Perception: However,
Canadians empathy for animals has a new revelation in the present century as
they realized that they are also at near-extinct as a nation: “the culture
threatens the ‘animal’ within them”.
Seton says that “The animals are us”. In Quebec, the animal story is
different because the French Canadians view themselves as animals that are
victimized, conquered and exploited. For example, in Seton’s “The Trail of the
Sandhill Stag” the narrator corners a stag after a long hunt but can’t shoot
because during the meaningful gaze he realizes that the stag is his brother. The
French Canadians’ views differ from the English Canadians’ because the English
psyche always thinks about “winning over”. In Morris’ findings it is noted that
the English Canadians identify themselves with animal image as they feel that
they are ‘threatened victims, because they need to confront the “superior alien
technology”. So, Atwood views this transformation invariably in the “Position”
matrix. According to her “there comes a point at which seeing yourself as a
victimized animal -naming your conditions, as the crucial step from the
ignorance of Position One through the knowledge of Position Two to the
self-respect of Position Three – can become the need to see yourself as a
victimized animal, and at the point you will be locked into Position Two,
unable to go any further”. (Survival 82).
This instinct of ‘Positions’ is explored
in Graeme Gibson’s “Five Legs” and “Communion” Putting Gibson’s patterns
together we find “animal victim’ in Canada. In another version of “Communion”
by Riton, the central character like Felix escapes to America but finally dies while
trying to save his American identity. He killed a child accidently like how
Felix who killed his pet dog and becomes a psychotic to kill himself. So
according to Atwood, Canadians are in two conditions (i) exploited victims and
(ii) those who need to be exploited victims – the first could be changed by
altering the external environment but the second also involves the alteration
of self, of the way we see ourselves.
Optimism in Canadian Literature: Still Canadian
Literature finds tone of optimism by the contributions of writers like Michael
Ondaatje. In his animal poems, the animals are more likely to incorporate
vitality and energy than to be suffering victims. Joe Rosenblatt’s book,
“Brumblebee Dithyramb” has a number of animal poems, in which Rosenblatt sees
animals as “centres of irrepressible vitality” which cannot be matched with
human vitality. In Layton’s poem “A Tall Man Executes A Jig” a tall man in his
venture of finding revelation resists temptation, witnesses the suffering but
does not curse. Ultimately, he wins in the end. This kind of optimism,
according to Atwood certainly withholds the spirit and identity of Canadians in
the international arena.
Conclusion: Thus, in “Animal
Victims” Atwood brings out the thematic pattern, ‘animal victim’ in Canadian
literature in two senses – one is that the Canadians’ animal killing nature and
the second is that the Canadians as ‘killed’ or ‘the pathetic victims’ in the
hands of Americans or the so-called higher-culture or technology. According to
Atwood the great Canadian animal-victim tradition is akin to the Tall Man’s
experience – the “restraint is heroic”.
