In Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels,” she describes her encounter with a wild weasel, and how her recent research of the tenacious animal has led her to consider how humans live and what makes us so different from the beasts. Similarly, in a more domestic encounter, I too have been led to consider the nature of human life and why we should behave so differently from our animal counterparts. We can learn many lessons from even the most common creatures, and I feel that there is one perspective in particular we must reconsider adopting; a protective nature of empathy and love that will make us contemplate the difference between survival and living. In part three of her essay, Dillard describes her intimate encounter with a weasel, the indescribable strength of it, and how connecting to the animal’s mind and soul through a single look “felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes” (121). Dillard connected to the …show more content…
Nothing too serious, yet I spent most of my time sleeping and confined myself to my room as not to infect anyone else. Henry laid outside my door for hours, then snuck into my room when I left to grab more tissues. When I returned, he was sitting on my bed, waiting for me; after I climbed in, he leaned his body against my legs and lay his head across my feet. He gently comforted me, and he kept me company silently while I read, worked on homework, and, of course, slept. Although everyone else in the house avoided me like I was the Grim Reaper, Henry loyally remained at my side. He even made sure I was caring for myself, knocking my water cup onto the floor when it was empty and kissing my face when I dozed off with my glasses on. He chose to care for me over himself; not in the mindless, survival driven way of Dillard’s weasel, but in the comforting, caring way of a
Henry was an extremely lonely nine-year-old boy whose greatest wish was to get a dog. His parents were busy with their work most of the time and it seemed that Henry did not have any friends, perhaps because they moved so often. A dog would have provided Henry with unconditional love - something in short supply around his house - and would have been the perfect companion. The problem was, his parents did not want dog, which would have been another obligation and something else to take care of. As emotionally detached as his parents were, something else to take care of was just not desirable.
The first and most obvious change in behavior is shown by comparing Henry?s actions when they stopped at the place with the willows during the road trip and the description of Henry when he first returned home from the war. While resting at the willows, Lyman said, ?Henry was asleep with his arms thrown wide? (366). Henry was completely relaxed. When a dog or cat lies on his back with his belly exposed, he is making himself vulnerable, so therefore this is a sign of trust. Henry is showing a similar trust by lying in that position. This changes drastically when Henry comes home from the war. Lyman states, ?Henry was very different, and I?ll say this: the change was no good. You could hardly expect him to change for the better, I know. But he was quiet, so quiet, and never comfortable sitting still anywhere but always up and moving around? (367). The war has turned him into a very cautious man...
It appears that the war in Vietnam has still gotten into Henry. The war may be over in reality but in his mind it is still going on. This can explain all the agitations and discomfort he has such as not being able to sit still. Based on research, what Henry was experiencing was shellshock from the battlefield from the many soldiers being killed to t...
The short story “The Buffalo” by Clarice Lispector shows us some important things about animal anthropomorphism. Firstly, the attribution of human emotions to animals allows us to more easily empathize with them. Through this, we are able to create intimate bonds with our pets and other animals. Since language figures so heavily into our understanding of empathy, several researchers, such as Hockett and Tomasello, have spent years investigating animal communication and how it relates to human language. Anthropomorphism, while it causes problems such as the devalorization of animal emotions and misattribution, also affords us the opportunity to learn more about ourselves, through the reflection of our own emotions. In this sense, anthropomorphizing animals can be a very useful tool for us, just as it was for the woman in “The Buffalo.”
...vivalist instinct that involves self-preservation. Hobbes, however, is unable to explain altruism, thus we developed the Varied Levels of Survivalism as a layer above his theory. This modification allows for varying motives based on circumstances, all based on survival. Hume takes note of this altruistic tendency but he gives a scenario that is either inapplicable or he does not filter survivalism from humanity. Utilizing Hobbes’ survivalism, Hume’s generosity when capable, and the Varied Levels of Survivalism, we arrive at a viable theory of human nature and explanation of human behavior.
The image of the “detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown’s head, made out of vegetables” (Dillard) evokes an unforgettable haunting that would journey with Dillard and me wherever we go. Although Annie Dillard’s disarranged ramblings are mentioned here and there, she is always able to relate back to them with a connection. The jumbled ramblings illustrate that the human thought process is not always consistently straightforward and directly logical to one’s mind. While trying to grasp the workings of the total eclipse, she compared how it did not make sense to food; “given a flashlight, a grapefruit, two oranges, and fifteen years, we still could not figure out” (Dillard). Near the end, Dillard relates the smiling vegetable clown
These behaviors reflect the animal’s human-like intelligence, such as Abel and Betty the crow snagging meat from difficult locations, to Koko the gorilla learning sign language. Rifkin refutes the claim that animals are not self-aware by presenting examples from philosophers and animals behaviorists. Their study finds that animals are able to have a sense of individualism such as “an orangutan named Chantek who… used a mirror to groom his teeth and adjusted his sunglasses.” All of these acts, which are so reminiscent of the way humans operate, makes it hard for us not to empathize with their compassion and see a bit of ourselves in these creatures. However, in spite of animals exhibiting great behavior, the mistreatment of animals is still experienced in labs, fashion industries, factory farming, and various other
Judith Beveridge uses many language techniques to attract her reader’s attention to the negative effects of keeping animals captive. The Giraffe is depicted as a crippled, lonely, and unhealthy animal as a result of being held in captivity. The use of a personification in the line “Her gaze has the loneliness of smoke” emphasises how lonely the Giraffe is as a result of being isolated for so long, eventually leading to having empty, blank, expressionless eyes.
In “Living Like Weasels,” by Annie Dillard explains her experience with a weasel and why we should live like one. She begins, describing the weasel nature saying that they sleep in an underground den, with his tail draped over his nose. The weasel stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds. Also, weasels live off instinct, biting his prey at the neck splitting the jugular vein or crunching on the brain at the base of the prey skull not letting go. While Dillard was at a place called Hollins Ponds where she goes to escape reality she comes across this weasel that tapped into her thoughts as she did the same. Then she describes this moment as two lovers looking at each other, or deadly enemies that met unexpectedly on an path. Finally, from her experience with a weasel she believes that we all should live like one.
literary works “Why I Hunt” and “Am I Blue?”. In Both works, animals play a large part in the lives of authors
"Everyone is influenced by their childhood. The things I write about and illustrate come from a vast range of inputs, from the earliest impressions of a little child, others from things I saw yesterday and still others from completely out of the blue, though no doubt they owe their arrival to some stimulus, albeit unconscious. I have a great love of wildlife, inherited from my parents, which show through in my subject matter, though always with a view to the humorous—not as a reflective device but as a reflection of my own fairly happy nature.
“[This book is] perhaps the most successful and beloved animal story ever written” (reviewer of The Junior Book of Authors, 2002). She created a book so powerful that it moves the human heart, with her strong and successful attempt “to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses” (“Anna Sewell,” 2002). So she effectively saved horses from abuse while sending people on a fantastic journey.
People today always humanize non human beings. Whenever you name your pet, you make it more human. However, cattle on farms are numbered. We choose what we want to humanize, and put more value on animals we have humanized. Your pet you would no longer see as a resource with a name like Ringo or Grizzly, but 157 is who is going to be your steak next week. A harsh, but true reality. We do it to “the prevention of human pain than we do for preventing such things as freedom infringements, ad have been more through in our anthropomorphic transference,” (Guthrie 224). Guthrie believes that through anthropomorphic
In this paper, I am going to argue that Peter Singer is right to claim that human suffering and animal suffering should be given equal consideration. Even though animals are not intellectually or physically at the same level as us humans, they can still feel pain when hurt. (48)
watching them, the animals are unhappy, and they suffer. Therefore, this essay will argue why