Lispector's The Buffalo

When interacting with animals, it is tempting to correlate their behaviors with human emotion. It allows us to empathize with animals in a way that would be impossible otherwise, which is why researchers like Charles Hockett and Michael Tomasello spend so much time and effort studying animal communication and, more specifically, why animals are unable to learn human language. The downsides to crediting animals with human emotions, such as misattribution and devalorization of the animals’ own emotions, pale in comparison to the benefits we can receive from doing so, both socially and individually. As we can see from the short story “The Buffalo” by Clarice Lispector, anthropomorphizing animals affords us a stronger empathic connection with them, which can help us better understand ourselves and our emotions.

Giving animals credit for human emotions allows us to empathize with them. The woman in “The Buffalo” longs to empathize with an animal, one who can “teach her to keep her own hatred. . . .which belonged to her by right but which she could not attain in grief” (Lispector, 1972: p. 152). As a recently devastated woman, all she wants to do is loathe the man who broke her heart, but she is unable to do so because of her undeniable love for him. She believes that an animal can best demonstrate the feeling she cannot find on her own. When she comes across the buffalo, she is finally able to understand the feeling of hatred within her, because the buffalo’s passivity reflects her subconsciously projected emotions. In doing this, she is able to empathize with the animal and learn more about herself.

Just as the woman in the story found hatred through the buffalo, so can we also use animals to understand ourselves. In fact, the misat...

... middle of paper ...

...that she couldn’t find before.

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.”