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many other animal-human encounters in the novel,
it begins with the apparent
potential for positive interaction:
this man never mistreated the cows and horses […] he spoke kindly to
them and patted their rumps […] What, however, at this stage, delighted
me most was his relation to the pigs […] at the sight of their
beloved
master
they would squeal […] The man would stop and laugh at their
antics; and sometimes he would pat one of them […] This man, I thought,
realizes that he is
dealing with a life like his own
; he knows that
even in a
pig there lives happiness and joy, sorrow and pain, trust and anguish and
dependency.
(83, emphasis added)
Grove creates an idealized image of farm life, where the animals are “not kept
in one of those unspeakable enclosures to which they are confined on other
farms,” here they “run and roam at pleasure,” a “cleanly, jolly bunch” (83). As
Wawa-
quee summarizes, the pigs did not fear the farmer: “Was he not their
benign and gracious master who fed them and who had taught them to rely on
him in all their needs?” (83). She notes, however, that there was “one old sow”
who “never took part” in the antics of the other pigs: “She had a wistful look in
her yellow, slit-like eyes
and stood back, grunting angrily whenever this
pleasant scene was enacted” (84). Ominously, Wawa-quee remarks: “She
knew; and a little
later I, too, was to know” (84). The truth known by the old sow
and Wawa-quee, eventually, is the uncomfortable knowledge that the vast
majority of human-animal interaction is always mediated (in the human mind) by
anthropocentrism.
Human-dominated encounters with nonhumans occur largely for the
human’s benefit, usually at the expense of the nonhuman. Just as she was
forced to witness the decapitation of the Ecitons, Wawa-quee witnesses the
slaughter of a previously “high-spirited” pig:
he fetched the axed [sic] which was
clearly unknown to the pig, for, as he
returned with it, the poor brute betrayed nothing but expectant curiosity.
He raised the weapon aloft […] Then he brought it down with a
tremendous, relentless swing, straight onto the centre of the
pig’s head.
The pig did not fall but stood stunned; blood rushed into its eyes; it was
Allmark-Kent 208
completely taken by surprise. An immense, bottomless abhorrence was
mingled with the agony of pain; it tried to take a step; but it reeled; and
then it seem to awake to
its purpose and tried to escape […] at last,
when the pig, in a frenzy of fear, finding the door closed, rushed past him
once more, [the man] brought the powerful
weapon down on that head a
second time. The pig collapsed; its legs went rigid, though still atremble
[…] the man plunged a sharp instrument resembling the sickle of an
Eciton but much larger into its neck, so that blood rushed out like a
fountain. Life ebbed; the joints relaxed; the brute lay limp. (84-5)
After
witnessing the terrible scene, Wawa-
quee and her companions “fle[e] in
horror and it is “weeks” before they desire “to see any more of man’s doings”
(85). Throughout the novel Wawa-quee makes assertions regarding the nature
of human behaviour or mentality, often mimicking the speciesist language of
human observations of animals:
Surely, man, as an animal endowed with reason, if reason it can be
called, is a mere upstart. I would rather call him endowed with a low sort
of cunning. His
self-styled civilization is
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