The Lives of Animals

“Norma and his mother have never liked each other. Probably his mother would have chosen not to like any woman he married.”

John’s feeling that his mother would not have accepted anyone that he had married cannot be trusted as an accurate representation of Elizabeth’s feelings. He is an unreliable narrator who is biased because he does not value his mother’s views. The discord between Norma and Elizabeth is evident in their treatment and assumptions of one another. 

“His mother is entitled to her convictions, he believes. If she wants to spend her declining years making propaganda against cruelty to animals, that is her right.”

John understands that Elizabeth has a right to her beliefs and actions, but he does not respect her feelings and behaviors. He sees Elizabeth’s opinions as a form of propaganda, and he is bitter about her coming to Appleton College and giving her lectures. John also demonstrates his bias against elderly individuals by using the language “declining years.” “Propaganda” is used as an emotionally charged pejorative to describe Elizabeth’s evidently sincerely held beliefs.

“By treating fellow human beings, beings created in the image of God, like beasts, they had themselves become beasts.”

Elizabeth’s lectures and the subsequent discussions center on the religious perspective of creationism. The arguments rely on the concept that all animals, including humans, were created by the Judeo-Christian God. The reliance on creationism supports Elizabeth’s argument that non-human animals have a right to live and that killing and eating them is unethical.

“Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them.”

Elizabeth compares the Holocaust and the cruelty in the industrial animal markets. She suggests that animal cruelty is, in some ways, worse because animals are bred to be mistreated and killed. Her argument creates a conflict with Abraham Stern, who refuses to come to Elizabeth’s dinner. The comparison acts as an analogy, and it develops the themes of animal cruelty in agriculture and The Distinction Between Animals and Humans.

“I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.”

Elizabeth wants to avoid divisive language, which is ineffective because it leads the other party to feel defensive thereby limiting their ability to integrate new perspectives. Her focus on language and use of repetition and metaphor demonstrates the importance of words, which encompasses the author’s underlying message that literature is important.

“On the contrary, reason looks to me suspiciously like the being of human thought; worse than that, like the being of one tendency in human thought. Reason is the being of a certain spectrum of human thinking.”

Elizabeth argues that humans justify reason’s superiority because human brains are wired to use thinking patterns based on reason. She thinks that animal intelligence should not be tested through comparison to human intelligence. Her remark suggests that humans are anthropocentric, and her discussion reflects the real-world science wars taking place in the scholarly field at the time.

“To be alive is to be a living soul. An animal—and we are all animals—is an embodied soul.”

In her discussion on The Distinction Between Animals and Humans, Elizabeth concludes that animals have an embodied soul just as humans do, completely erasing any distinction between humans and animals. All living creatures experience a sense of being unique to that individual, and as such, treating them with cruelty and killing them when it is not necessary is unethical. She also directly removes the distinction between animals and humans by citing the fact that humans are animals—a widely accepted scientific fact. This is a pertinent detail because several members of her audience work in scientific fields. Elizabeth’s use of scientific facts is an appeal to logos, or logic.

“To me it suggests that the freedom of the of the body to move in space is targeted as the point at which reason can most painfully and effectively harm the being of the other.”

Elizabeth suggests that physical confinement is the worst form of cruelty, which is why humans choose to use prison systems for criminals. This concept is further developed in her second lecture through the poems she shares with her audience. The line serves to both enhance her arguments against animal cruelty and to link together her two lectures.

“The horror is that the killers refused to think themselves into the place of their victims, as did everyone else.”

Sympathy and empathy, Elizabeth believes, are the key qualities of acting humanely. She targets both offenders and bystanders who are complicit with acts of cruelty. Elizabeth is speaking of both the Holocaust and animal cruelty, further developing the Holocaust as a motif and an analogy for modern animal cruelty.

“We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like to think that they woke up haggard in the mornings and died of gnawing cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; that there is no punishment.”

Humans often long for retribution against those who have committed violence, but Elizabeth points out that people who are complicit with or who commit acts of cruelty go unpunished. She suggests that the lack of punishment leads people to feel that they can get away with intense acts of cruelty. Her statements on the Holocaust continue to act as an analogy for the real-world state of industrial animal agriculture, which sees high levels of cruelty that are either socially acceptable or consciously ignored.

“He wishes his mother had not come. It is nice to see her again; it is nice that she should see her grandchildren; it is nice for her to get recognition; but the price he is paying and the price he stands to pay if the visit goes badly seem to him excessive.”

John is characterized as self-centered, self-piteous, and childish. He thinks that he will be negatively impacted by his mother’s visit and believes that his feelings are more important than his mother’s recognition. His self-centered perspective is immature, as he still expects his mother to sacrifice her independence for his benefit. It also demonstrates a lack of social awareness, as it is unlikely that his colleagues would hold him accountable for Elizabeth’s opinions. 

“Perhaps we invented gods so that we could put the blame on them. They gave us permission to eat flesh. They gave us permission to play with unclean things. It’s not our fault, it’s theirs.”

Elizabeth’s hatred for animal cruelty drives her to question whether humans created their religions to justify their acts of cruelty. By shifting the blame for such violence, humans can avoid feeling guilty for their own actions. The assumption of guilt implies that everybody knows what they are doing is wrong; religion becomes a way to escape the guilt of cruelty. The other attendees at the dinner do not comment on Elizabeth’s remark, leaving the reader with a sense of ambiguity regarding their opinions.

“Understanding a thing often looks to me like playing with one of those Rubik cubes. Once you have made all the little bricks snap into place, hey presto, you understand. It makes sense if you live inside a Rubik cube, but if you don’t…”

Elizabeth presents the idea that understanding is relative rather than absolute and cannot encapsulate all objective reality. Knowledge is relative to one’s patterns of thinking. She insinuates that animal species have their own types of understanding that humans are unable to comprehend, and she suggests that human understanding is different from rather than superior to other species’ understandings.

“It’s the kind of easy, shallow relativism that impresses freshmen. Respect for everyone’s worldview, the cow’s worldview, the squirrel’s worldview, and so forth. In the end it leads to total intellectual paralysis.”

Norma belittles Elizabeth’s intellect by calling it shallow. Norma disagrees with Elizabeth’s views and disrespects Elizabeth as a person. The language Norma uses reflects Elizabeth’s earlier remarks against using cheap-shots and divisive language. Norma’s disagreement also reflects the dysfunction in the family, and it characterizes her as resentful and academically disrespectful.

“The body is as the body moves, or as the currents of life move within it. The poems ask us to imagine our way into that way of moving, to inhabit that body.”

All animals experience being within their bodies. Elizabeth claims that poets can help people imagine what it is like to experience the being of another species by evoking imagery of movement. This argument extends beyond the literal material of the book and alludes to the importance of literature. Literature, Coetzee suggests, can better the world by helping people broaden their perspectives, thereby increasing empathy and sympathy—key traits of humanity. 

“We need factories of death; we need factory animals. Chicago showed us the way; it was from the Chicago stockyards that the Nazis learned how to process bodies.”

An attendee asks Elizabeth to clarify the connection between her first and second lectures, and she returns to the analogy of the Holocaust and animal cruelty, citing how concentration camps were modeled after Western industrial animal agriculture. Her remark serves to connect the two lectures, and it also develops the idea that the human population has grown too high for animal agriculture to be performed humanely. While she notes the problem, Elizabeth does not present potential solutions, reflecting her general confusion and inability to “know” a way forward.

“But let us also push Swift’s fable to its limits and recognize that, in history, embracing the status of man has entailed slaughtering and enslaving a race of divine or else divinely created beings and bringing down on ourselves a curse thereby.”

Elizabeth criticizes the concept of human superiority through the tale of Gulliver’s Travels. The sense of speciesist superiority lends itself to slavery, cruelty, and killing of other humans. Her remark suggests that, since humans have become aware of this facet of the human condition, they should work to overcome their sense of superiority rather than use it to justify violence.

“People complain that we treat animals like objects, but in fact we treat them like prisoners of war. Do you know that when zoos were first opened to the public, the keepers had to protect the animals against attacks by spectators?”

Elizabeth’s remark compliments John’s statement that humans “detest” animals. This reflects the tendency Western cultures have to ostracize the weak and acts as a stark criticism of human nature in contemporary Western cultures.

“They may beat us yet. They will certainly outlast us.”

Elizabeth discusses that rats are thriving in a human-centric world and that they will outlive people. She alludes to the idea that humans will drive themselves into extinction. Elizabeth’s musings on human extinction challenge anthropocentric views that favor rationality and science by reminding her audience of the universe’s indifference to human existence.

“While I concede your main point about Western cultural arrogance, I do think it is appropriate that those who pioneered the industrialization of animal lives and the commodification of animal flesh should be at the forefront of trying to atone for it.”

Metafiction often contains passages where an author’s own views stand out through direct dialogue that is unchallenged or otherwise accepted by all characters present. Coetzee uses this scene and Elizabeth’s remarks to directly criticize real-world Western culture and call for solutions to be put into place for unsustainable agricultural practices.

“So let me just make one observation: that the program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your way out of a sterile maze, ignoring the fact that if the researcher who designed the maze were to be parachuted into the jungles of Borneo, he or she would be dead of starvation in a week.”

Elizabeth uses analogy to depict the flaw of anthropocentric science: If humans were asked to survive in another animal’s habitat, they would most likely be unable to survive and could be considered “unintelligent” for their failures. She argues that other animals have intelligence specific to their needs, just as humans have reason, which suits their needs. The remark also highlights the subjectivity of science, reflecting the science wars of the 1990s.

“If the last common ground that I have with him is reason, and if reason is what sets me apart from the veal calf, then thank you but no thank you, I’ll talk to someone else.”

O’ Hearne’s suggestion that animals do not care about life offends Elizabeth, and she refuses to participate in the discussion. She does not value O’Hearne’s chain of reasoning, and she views his language as divisive. Her statement supports her earlier argument that human reasoning is not the pinnacle of intelligence and supports the notion that literature, empathy, and sympathy are just as—if not more—important than reason.

“It’s a sick game, and I’m not having the children play it against me.”

Norma views vegetarianism as a way to control others, and she is upset that Elizabeth shares her views with the children. She cites Kafka and argues that she does not want the children to make her feel guilty for her dietary choices. However, this suggests that Norma feels that eating meat is something to feel guilty about and that she is entitled to avoiding that guilt. Norma does not want Elizabeth holding power over her children, nor does she want the children holding power over her. Norma is unable to process Elizabeth’s claims on an academically rational level because she is worried about power dynamics. The theme of Dysfunctional Families and Power culminates in Norma’s desire to hold power over her family. Norma’s inability to rationally process Elizabeth’s claims emphasizes Elizabeth’s devaluing of rational thought.