When you turn on the television and
see a lion ripping a gazelle to bits ,we as humans are disgusted and saddened
by the lion’s vulgarity. In truth humans do the same things but always worst.
In the novel Life of Pi by
Yann Martel, a young boy Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger which
in fact is a character created by Pi to protect his humanity. Similarly, in the
novel Animal Farm by George
Orwell, the author uses animals to represent the unkind acts of human beings.
The authors both use animals to hide the
darkness created by our dreadful humanity, which is multiplying.
George Orwell and Yann Martel used
animals in their stories to show that to put a human in an animals spot would
not only make sense, but makes more sense. Humans are animals and we often
forget this when we get tied up in society and our adapted communities. George Orwell, author of Animal Farm deliberately replaced humans with farm animals
specifically pigs because of our similarities with pigs. In Life
of Pi, Pi tells the investigators two stories and states if he replaces
the animals with humans “neither makes a factual difference. ” (Martel, pg351) Neither
makes a difference because we are animals and the story’s outcome will still be
the same.
Pigs are intelligent, clean and
social creatures, who are capable of forming thoughts like “All animals are
equal but some are more equal then others.” (Orwell, pg64) Pigs are the leaders
in animal farm because of their alikeness with humans. Similarly Yann Martel
author of Life of Pi chose a
tiger, an orangutan and a hyena to represent his human characters. A tiger is
fierce and powerful something necessary for Pi to survive alone for two hundred
and seven days. Hyenas are scary laughing creatures, which is why Pi
represented the cook by one.
Orangutans Are caring and
protective of there young, which is why Pi referred to his mother as an
Orangutan.
By using animals as their
characters images, the authors get all the attributes of the animals without
even having to say more then the animal’s species.
Humans are not above animals
because our ethics and equality is not balanced with our ever changing world.
Every single living organism on our planet has the capability of being kind, compassionate
and evil. When you’re reading the newspaper
and see that a child has been murdered, we feel sadness and compassion knowing
that we have created this death. Humans are upset by death of other humans
because we created them out of soul evilness. Animals such as tigers, lions and
hyenas kill for food and survival, which is quite a difference from killing out
of evilness. Humans are grotesque and to think that we the killers of evilness
are above the killers of survival is naive and untrue. Martel uses animals in
place of humans because animals are nicer and it helps Pi cope with the deaths
of his friends and family. Orwell uses pigs as the human figures in animal farm
to show us that we are animals and we have many similarities with pigs.
The authors used animals to add
perspective and depth to the stories. The authors showed readers that animals
are innocent and that humans are not as great as we think we are. It is
important that Orwell and Martel used animals as human characters because it
shows us how absurd it is to see pigs ruling a farm and to see a tiger on a
lifeboat, even though this is what is happening in society. Pig like humans are
running farms and organizations and fierce humans get stranded just like Pi. Animals
are more humanly than humans and to correct the darkness in our ancestor’s
history we need to act more like animals. Martel and Orwell show society this
by having animal characters in their books.
