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grotesque horror of the scene. Rather than a doctor performing an emergency
suture, we witness something akin to a terrible alien conducting a cruel and
arbitrary mutilation. There is a particularly striking juxtaposition between the
ghastly severing of the Eciton’s heads and the casual manner in which it
performed. We are given a close-
up, ant’s-eye-view of the violence.
Throughout the novel, Grove demonstrates the contrast between the
significance such casual acts of cruelty holds for the humans and nonhumans
involved. Elsewhere, for instance, Wawa-
quee observes that the “humans did
not even seem to be aware of our presence” (175). At this moment she is
noticed, however, and instantly becomes a target:
For suddenly I
was
observed. A human hurrying along, with this head
bent low, saw me and stopped. He stopped and, deliberately lifting his
rear hind-foot, he brought it down on top of me in order to crush me out
of existence! […] Fortunately he was too stupid to understand that his fell
purpose was not achieved; and so he went on at once. (175-6)
Again, such a casual act of violence is widely accepted amongst humans,
legitimized through speciesism and forgotten as quickly as it is committed. A
man deliberately tries to kill a living being for no reason. As if the value of a life
corresponded to the size of the subject of that life, he carries on walking: out of
sight, out of mind. Grove presents the reader with the type of act that they may
have committed and defamiliarizes it through zoocentric speculation. Nearly all
humans are complicit, directly or indirectly, in the deaths of countless animals
but rarely is this acknowledged openly. In
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