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Portrayals of Animals in Margaret Atwood's Writings M ARIA M OSS “Their deaths are not elegant” – Portrayals of Animals in Margaret Atwood’s Writings _____________________ Zusammenfassung Viele Werke von Margaret Atwood, literaturgeschichtliche sowie Lyrik und Prosa, krei- sen um das Schicksal von Tieren – in der Wildnis, als domestizierte Haus- und Nutztiere und als Objekte in Versuchslabors. Obwohl in ihren Werken Tiere nie das Animalische verlieren, fungieren sie bei Atwood doch häufig als Symbol für die schwierige Identitäts- suche Kanadas. Erst zu Ende des 20. und zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts scheinen Tiere in Atwoods Texten das Symbolhafte zu verlieren und eine eigenständigere Rolle zu spie- len. Von nun an sind ihre Schriften nicht nur von der Verflechtung zwischen Menschen und Tieren geprägt, sondern auch von den jeweiligen gegenseitigen Abhängigkeiten. Um diese Entwicklung zu untersuchen, werde ich im vorliegenden Artikel drei fiktionale Texte von Margaret Atwood näher beleuchten: ihren frühen Roman Surfacing (1972), den dystopischen Roman Oryx and Crake (2003) sowie die Titelgeschichte ihrer Kurzge- schichtensammlung Moral Disorder (2006). Abstract Margaret Atwood, as both an influential literary critic and a highly accomplished writer of poetry, short stories and novels, concentrates in much of her writings on the lives of animals – in the wilderness, as domesticated pets or as laboratory objects. Whereas especially in Atwood’s earlier texts, animals frequently function as symbols of Canadian identity (or the lack thereof), Atwood starts focusing on the plight of animals apart from any notion of a Canadian identity crisis in her later writings at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. Instead, she employs the fates of both hu- mans and animals to demonstrate our mutual dependencies. By focusing on the forma- tive roles played by animals in Atwood’s writings, I will analyse this development in three of her fictional texts which employ animals: her early novel, Surfacing (1972); the dysto- pian novel, Oryx and Crake (2003) and the title story of her collection of short stories, Moral Disorder (2006). Résumé De nombreuses œuvres de Margaret Atwood, qu’elles relèvent de l’histoire de la littéra- ture, de la prose ou de la poésie, traitent du destin des animaux : d’animaux sauvages, domestiques ou de ferme ou encore animaux de laboratoire. Bien qu’ils ne perdent rien Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 35 (2015) 120-135 Portrayals of Animals in Margaret Atwood’s Writings 121 de leur animalité dans ses œuvres, ils sont chez Atwood souvent le symbole de la com- plexe recherche d’identité canadienne. Ce n’est qu’à la fin du 20e et au début du 21e siècle que les animaux semblent perdre ce côté symbolique dans les textes d’Atwood et commencent à jouer un rôle qui leur est propre. A partir de ce moment, ses textes ne sont plus seulement marqués par l’enchevêtrement des liens existant entre êtres humains et animaux, mais aussi par leurs dépendances réciproques. Afin d’étudier ce développe- ment, nous analyserons dans cet article trois textes de fiction de Margaret Atwood : le roman de ses débuts Surfacing (1972), le roman dystopique Oryx and Crake (2003) ainsi que la nouvelle éponyme de son recueil Moral Disorder (2006). _____________________ In that country the animals have the faces of people … In this country the animals have the faces of animals. Their eyes flash once in car headlights and are gone. Their deaths are not elegant. They have the faces of no-one. (Margaret Atwood, “Animals”, in: Selected Poems 48-49) Introduction In her poem “Animals,” Margaret Atwood points to the differences between the United States and Canada concerning the depiction of animals in mainstream litera- ture. Whereas in US-American literature, Atwood writes, animals “have the faces of people,” reflecting people’s attitudes, morals, and emotions, in Canadian writings “animals/have the faces of/animals.”1 Although certainly a generalization, examples from US-American literature that suggest the truth of Atwood’s poetic lines include, for instance, John Updike’s “The Cats” and Richard Ford’s “Puppy.” In both short sto- 1 By assigning an entire line in her poem to the word “animals,” Atwood further emphasizes the significance of animals in “this country,” that is Canada. 122 Maria Moss ries, animals are mere “by-products,” reflecting mainly the protagonists’ emotional instabilities. With the notable exception of Jack London’s nineteenth-century stories and novels, portrayals of animals in US-American literature occur – if at all – primari- ly in Native texts, children’s stories or fables. It should come as no surprise that Ca- nadian literature, abounding with descriptions of vast wilderness areas, would most certainly feature animals; yet, more importantly, these very animals are also consid- ered subjects worthy of scholarly research. Margaret Atwood, as both an influential literary critic and a highly accomplished writer of poetry, short stories and novels, concentrates in much of her writings on the lives of animals – in the wilderness, as domesticated pets or as laboratory ob- jects. In all of her writings featuring animals they are foremost exactly this – animals; however, especially in Atwood’s earlier texts, animals frequently function as symbols of Canadian identity (or the lack thereof). It seems that only towards the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century does Atwood manage to focus on the plight of animals apart from any notion of a Canadian identity crisis. In more recent works, she employs the fates of both humans and animals to demonstrate our mu- tual dependencies. Human animals and non-human animals, it seems, have more in common than we normally realize. By focusing on the formative roles played by animals in Atwood’s writings, I will analyse three of her fictional texts which employ animals: her early novel, Surfacing (1972); the dystopian novel, Oryx and Crake (2003) and the title story of her collec- tion of short stories, Moral Disorder (2006). I will examine to what extent she abides by the tenet she set for herself in her poetry as well as in her critical studies: That animals are living, breathing creatures and that the focus of stories featuring ani- mals is on animals and not primarily – as so often is the case – on their ability to either affirm our human uniqueness or to shape and change human lives. Animals in “this country” When the two sisters and immigrant newcomers to Canada, Catherine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie, began writing about their experiences in the New World in the mid-nineteenth century, it was still with the Victorian mentality of the Old World. However, while Parr Traill, who spent most of her life in Canada in rural com- munities, tried to overcome any apprehension towards her new environment by writing animal sketches and creating recipes for indigenous plants and vegetables, Susanna Moodie’s autobiographical wilderness text, Roughing it in the Bush (1852), employs animals – frequently wolves – to externalize her fear of being devoured by the new and frightening world. It was Charles G. D. Roberts who became the undisputed laureate of the animal kingdom towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In his 1902 publication, The Kindred of the Wild, Roberts writes: “The animal story is a potent emancipator. It frees us for a little from the world of shop-worn utilities, and from the mean tenement of self of which we do well to grow weary. It Portrayals of Animals in Margaret Atwood’s Writings 123 helps us to return to nature, without requiring that we at the same time return to barbarism. It leads us back to the old kinship of earth …” (28).2 Both, Roberts and his contemporary, the nature writer Ernest Thompson Seton, were part of the romantic “back-to-nature” movement that swept through North America as a response to the growing industrialization and increasing rural exodus to the cities. John Sandlos observes that these authors’ descriptions of animals as mindful and sentient, some- times even rational, creatures, combined with their insistence on the natural kinship between humans and animals, eventually prompted “the creation of outdoor clubs, conservation groups, [and] the Boy Scouts” (77). In his introduction to Lives of the Hunted (1901), Seton states: [M]y chief motive, my most earnest underlying wish, has been to stop the extermination of harmless wild animals. … I have tried to stop the stupid and brutal work of destruction by an appeal – not to reason: that has failed hitherto – but to sympathy, and especially to the sympathies of the coming generation. (qtd. in Sandlos 81)3 Eventually, Seton’s involvement with the animal world led him to become one of the most ardent advocates for animal rights: “Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow- creature, simply because that creature does not speak his language?” (qtd. in At- wood, Survival 71). While Parr Traill’s and Moodie’s writings almost a century earlier had featured an- imals as part of Canadian “local colour” for a Victorian audience in England, the early twentieth century narratives by Archibald Belaney, an English trapper who “went Native” and became Grey Owl, tell about his endeavour to rescue the beaver from certain extinction. Most notably Men of the Last Frontier (1931), a book which helped to change Canadian national policy, marks the beginning of animal-centred writings in twentieth century Canada. Just a little over thirty years later, Farley Mowat pub- lished his ground-breaking autobiographical text, Never Cry Wolf (1963), one of the great conservationists’ writings of all times. Originally intended as a scientific gov- ernment mission to locate and preferably exterminate Arctic wolves, Mowat de- scribes his transformation from a hunter to a person who – through observation of a pack of arctic wolves – becomes increasingly attached to his intended “victims.” Fascinated by their elaborate family structures and social networks, Mowat devoted his life to educating his fellow Canadians on the kinship that exists among wolves and other animals of the wild.
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