By Bethan Croft
Animal imagery is a tool used by writers mostly to convey hidden meanings and animals are used to symbolise emotions, spirituality, themes, or human traits. This symbolism is used throughout writing across the world, helping us discover the variation and similarity in socialisation within different cultures.
This form of description has always been used in literature, but, since the twentieth century there has been a change in the way animals are illustrated. The modern take challenges traditional symbolism and allows for a deeper exploration into animal perspectives. No longer are metaphors used just to add flair and colour to writing but now they represent political significance.
In Animal Farm by George Orwell, the farm animals are used to not-so-discreetly exemplify the corruption of human governments. This particular example of the personification of animals is called anthropomorphism, where animals are given the same capabilities as humans, such as walking and talking. Throughout the story, a ‘non-existent’ hierarchy is formed to ensure a democracy among all animals to treat everyone equally, but this becomes a perversion of revolution as dictatorship is born.
Whereas, in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the concept is completely flipped and instead follows the more traditional route of humans being described as having animalistic tendencies. Throughout the novella, one of the main characters, Lennie, is compared to many different animals (usually bears) due to his size, actions and mental capacity. The imagery shows his actions to be more primal and instinctual than carefully thought-out or reasoned.
These two separate forms of animal imagery are combined by the author, Franz Kafka, in The Metamorphosis because the transformation of Gregor Samsa is a metaphor of feeling trapped and helpless, which could only be fittingly defined through Samsa being related to a beetle that is stuck flailing about on his back. Similarly, this invokes thoughts of how humans view animals and how we glamorise certain species that are more desirable to us – some are seen as loving pets and others as pests. Again, this is demonstrated through the distaste that Samsa is subjected to after his metamorphosis.
Animals were traditionally seen as inferior to mankind in writing, but as of recent, people are beginning to realise we aren’t the superior animal and that in fact we are the cause of destruction to most species. In more modern works, apologising to animals has become popular. The poem by Robert Burns, ‘To A Mouse’, which coincidentally inspired the story Of Mice and Men, was written by Burns because he felt guilty after destroying the nest of a mouse in a field that he had ploughed during his time as a farmer. Since this revolutionary piece, more published pieces similar to this have become popular, including the spider poem that made everyone on TikTok emotional – ’10 legs, 8 broken.’ Showing that the way in which animals are talked about in writing also has the power to spark ethical debates about them.
So why is animal and natural imagery so important in literature? The simple answer is that, alongside allowing authors to widen their descriptions in a creative way, animals can also be used to present hidden meanings, provoke debates of superiority and bring the writing to life by cementing the idea in the reader’s mind and illustrating abstract concepts.
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