on talking animals
Dec. 19th, 2002 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubHere's what I wrote about Walter Wangerin's The Book of the Dun Cow:
It's not that talking-animal stories are racist. They may metaphorically equate many species with one, so the many map onto subgroups of the one: different sorts of people, with their differences exaggerated beyond those really present within the human species. Or they may not, either because the animals are not animals (William Steig), or because they are not people (E. B. White). And that exaggeration doesn't bother me a bit when it's painted on to characters -- a doggy one, a mousy one -- in a story that seems to antecede it (Walter Brooks).
What can bother me is when a story seems built around the animals' stock traits. Each kind of animal gets one or two named representatives. Species is destiny. I'm not prepared to argue that this poisons the mind of the reader, but it sets my teeth on edge.
I could try to claim it's just a matter of lazy characterization. In truth I'm not sure it is at all, and anyway I think I could have overlooked it here if I weren't already looking askance at the book's progressive credentials. Am I unreasonable to be annoyed by the admitted sexual dimorphism in chickens when it's transposed into people-chickens who question it, who lament the position of the rooster standing alone with only his harem, but who must conclude that it is by the will of God?
All this is to say that the book, though well done, was not my cup of tea. It is a fable in which an army of barnyard and woodland animals, led spiritually and temporally by the rooster Chanticleer, is called on to thwart the Serpent's attempt to escape his prison and rule all of God's creation. The story is vigorously told, and quite likely allegorically encodes more sophistication than I am aware of.
It's not that talking-animal stories are racist. They may metaphorically equate many species with one, so the many map onto subgroups of the one: different sorts of people, with their differences exaggerated beyond those really present within the human species. Or they may not, either because the animals are not animals (William Steig), or because they are not people (E. B. White). And that exaggeration doesn't bother me a bit when it's painted on to characters -- a doggy one, a mousy one -- in a story that seems to antecede it (Walter Brooks).
What can bother me is when a story seems built around the animals' stock traits. Each kind of animal gets one or two named representatives. Species is destiny. I'm not prepared to argue that this poisons the mind of the reader, but it sets my teeth on edge.
I could try to claim it's just a matter of lazy characterization. In truth I'm not sure it is at all, and anyway I think I could have overlooked it here if I weren't already looking askance at the book's progressive credentials. Am I unreasonable to be annoyed by the admitted sexual dimorphism in chickens when it's transposed into people-chickens who question it, who lament the position of the rooster standing alone with only his harem, but who must conclude that it is by the will of God?
All this is to say that the book, though well done, was not my cup of tea. It is a fable in which an army of barnyard and woodland animals, led spiritually and temporally by the rooster Chanticleer, is called on to thwart the Serpent's attempt to escape his prison and rule all of God's creation. The story is vigorously told, and quite likely allegorically encodes more sophistication than I am aware of.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-19 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-12-19 02:35 pm (UTC)Hmm, a skim didn't find the hen/rooster passage I was going on about. Oh well.