Caught in the Middle? Being a Human + Being an Animal
The relationship between animals and people is something that isn’t unknown to our eyes and ears. Endearing uses of it are seen through pet names for children or lovers, although its primary utilization is pejorative, to abuse those who violate social rules and describe someone with unhuman attributes. It’s also a dehumanizing caging method used repetitively by racist individuals who view themselves as more powerful than the other; directly insulting and inflicting despotism, shame, and social exclusion upon the inflicted in order to maintain said power. These details of this device have been used throughout the American government which is depicted in the two novels, Native Son by Richard Wright and Animal’s People by Indra Sinha. Pushed by the start of colonialism, animal metaphors imposed intentional limitations and suppressed the indigenous demographic. This oppression is a multifaceted tactic that trickled its way into the world of the books and continues to have various forms that are still present today. This paper will discuss this topic’s origins, relevance, a breakdown and analysis of the books’ main characters, para/subhuman and inhumane references discovered, and the authors' purposes with them. The question that will be answered is ‘Did Bigger Thomas’s and Animal’s state and toxic environment turn them into an ‘animal’ or should they be deemed as human considering their journey?’
To get into the soul of this paper, what has to be assessed first is the definition of human. Some meanings include: to have sympathy, to be of the homo sapien species, and to relate to or possess characteristics of a person. These are the most positive comprehensions of the word. However, this subjective term has a long history of being used to exclude and alienate a group that doesn’t fit into the criteria of their idea of being ‘human’ and we get to see this in the two narratives. This ideology is one of many driven by colonialism, for its foundation is built on supremacist views and beliefs of and by white people. Those that were encountered by the European imperialists were immediately labeled as ‘wild’, ‘savage’, and ‘barbaric’ which gave them a reason for colonizing their land, becoming one in the same with spreading Christianity through missionaries along with the pursuit of products to profit from. Domestication of these peoples was seen as something that needed to happen to transform them into ‘civilized working individuals’. This kind of thinking was seen as a God-given right supported by pseudo-science and racial theories. An example is Edward Long, British colonial administrator, historian, and plantation owner who wrote the controversial book The History of Jamaica (1774) which incorporated vitriolic degradation of Africans as subservient and not even human. This work became a popular reliable reference for Europeans as well as Americans to view black people in this manner. The 1800s came with an emergence of human zoos where the colonized people were sent away from their homeland to satisfy the European fetishization and demand for exoticism. This certainly aided in and widened the use of animal metaphors when exhibits of humans, like Sara Baartman, were used to ogle and wonder at the displayed tableaux vivants for how different they were from themselves.
Animal metaphors are often based on a hierarchical structure in which ‘humans’ are located above and ‘animals’ below (Haslam, 312). It’s supported when people act in ways that are seen as unmannered or outrageous. In particular, you’ll see through Animal and Bigger how labelling those who are targeted as animals indirectly causes them to display more aggressive tendencies due to the anger of being an oppressed young man (Andrighetto 629) and as a mode of resistance of victimhood.
Toxic ideologies became embedded in the nations colonizers were trying to construct which is seen through colorism, a caging method. Colorism is vividly seen in India and was planted there by those who considered themselves as the intelligent race above all others (Mishra 731) into the already implemented caste system. However, in India’s antiquity, classes of people were divided based on occupation not skin color. There was a time where not all the dark-skinned Indians were Shudras doing manual labor, but they also were accepted among the scholarly and intellectuals. To further prove this point, in ancient texts dark skin didn’t attach a stigma and was used as a describing feature of a population or person and many times as an attribute of beauty (Mishra 729-30). However, in the structure of Britain’s newly constructed society, they favored the light skinned Indians as allies and gave them better jobs than what dark skinned Indians would get, which further entertained and pushed the envelope of prejudice. Entry to restaurants and educational institutions was prohibited for “Black Indians” with entry signs stating “Indians and dogs not allowed” as if both are one in the same. With that being said, the Bhopal disaster (1984) by Union Carbide, an American pesticide company, affected most of the community that lived in shanty towns surrounding the location of the factory. Since darkskin has a connection to poverty in India, given Animal’s devastating circumstance of being a street orphan there’s a strong assumption that he’s dark-skinned.
Furthermore, Stigmas attached to disability also uses rhetoric that is supported by animal metaphors. "To have a disability is to be an animal, to be part of the Other”(Walters 473). This devaluation is backed by beliefs that include comparing disable people as stand-in “figures for the origin and evolution”. These factors already dehumanize him and cause Animal to reject sympathy, spout profanity, embrace his name, and make claims of him having no wish to become human. So when his skin color and the shape of his body are included, it makes him completely unrecognizable to the ‘human’ eye. “He is a beastly boy” (Sinha 9). Animal, a young man who’s back was twisted and lifted to the extent of having to walk on all fours, is the ‘Kampani’ living as a chemical prosthetic and is an example of devolution that are traveling within himself (Johnston 119). He’s a literal embodiment of the effects of white greed fueled by the lust of manpower and globalization from America.
In the Animal’s People, Animal is used to being treated as exactly what his name entails. So much, that he doesn’t know his ‘human’ name and refused to ever learn it when he was given the chance. From the start of the book, Animal bluntly lets us know that he isn’t human and communicates how he feels about them.“I’d be filled with rage against things that go or even stand on two legs”(Sinha 2). It’s because he’s had no choice but to accept his disability due to mockery and cruelty which displaced himself from the terrible experiences he had with human beings (Rickel). By what he’s dealt with for around 14 years, the justifications he can give for not calling himself a human is related to his physical traits and deprivation of love, affection and social relationships with others. He addresses his humanity as something he no longer possesses, a past condition that has been forcefully removed by the trauma, both mental and physical, of what he refers to as ‘that night’(Spencer 135). Animal is resistant when ‘Jarnalis’, who came to Khaufpur to collect victims’ stories, encourages him to share his story with his “western readership.” This refusal stems from a recognition of the pattern of dehumanization in westerners’ attitudes towards victims of traumatic events like the explosion, as well as a sense of their troubling desire to collect or sensationalize the stories of their sufferings. Animal suggests, Khaufpuris’ tales are an opportunity to ‘marvel [that] there’s so much pain in the world’( 5) (Holoch 130). This explains why he’s insistent on his story being told only in the way he tells it, and vulgarly expresses that he doesn’t want any pity from them in return. To ensure that this happens, he exposes his ‘animalistic’ habits by eating parts of his foot, calling the readers “dirty fuckers”, and being a voyeur to name a few, which are all unquestionably done to put off some of his audience that he frequently refers to as “Eyes” in the book. He does this in almost a daring way, like if he wants to be called an animal, and if you do, it won’t affect him because that word has been worn out. However, calling him human would cause him to be resentful because he fears the insufferable pain and damage in trying to act ‘human’ than to succumb and be what his form allows people to think. No one had ever acknowledged him in that fashion since Ma Franci in his orphanage days. No one except for Zafar that is, which is seen on page 23 of the book that he describes as the start of a long argument about what was an animal and what meant to be human.
The first to treat him as an equal was Nisha, which incited him into accessing emotions that makes one question his name. This “creature in love” additionally experiences remorse, friendship, regret and affection by freshly made social relationships for the first time which allows him to start developing and improving himself as a human being simply because some people showed him kindness and sympathy. There’s a psychological and sociological divide between his desire for love, sex, and the ability to walk upright, which he believes would reclaim his humanity for these inclinations are basic human wants. His constant claims are that he is nothing but a mere animal incapable of such pursuits. This prompts Animal to go through an identity crisis which makes him question his animality and newly discovered humanity.
What makes Animal’s journey devastating, is that he became the way he is due to a global capitalist entity’s pursuit of profits with no regard for the lives directly and indirectly affected by their greed (Holoch 129). According to Sinha’s assertion, ‘the book could have been set anywhere where the chemical industry has destroyed people’s lives. “It could just as easily have been set in Central or South America, West Africa or the Philippines” (446). This suggests that the gas leak is indeed ultimately emblematic of an exploitative neocolonial culture. In the end, Animal finds out that he belongs to neither animals nor humans and is left with no choice but to create a world for himself in the forest, for the world he knew was meant to be viewed from eye level. And there’s only one class that can do that which is ‘humans’; the untouched from that night.
You were making poisons to kill insects, but you killed us instead… was there ever much difference, to you?"(306).
- Gargi
Another example of a caging method is the establishment of slums, seen in South Side, Chicago, provided by redlining. Maps used for this scheme increased the degree of racial segregation as measured by the fraction of African American residents on each side of a neighborhood boundary (Aaronson 3). There was a grading system that ranged from A to D. As you can guess, areas graded “D” (most risky) became heavily populated with black people. There were virtually no black residents in either C or B neighborhoods which means that D areas black people were subjected to were inescapable. The reason being that they’re considered second rate citizens to the very country that brought them from across oceans to help build the ‘land of the free.” This separation sustained itself steadily from 1930 until about 1970. The 1930s is precisely the era for Native Son, in which events like the Great Depression and the Great Migration were taking place, sandwiched in between the World Wars. Needless to say, this was a struggling time for America but racism continued to successfully perpetuate being as Jim Crow laws were in full effect. Thousands of African-Americans moved from the South to northern industrial cities in the 1910s and 1920s. Chicago’s Black population, which was approximately 50,000, increased that number fivefold so that by 1930 there were 233,903 African-Americans living in Chicago (Roosevelt University). This large population would be pushed into what’s known as the Black Belt, stacking people on top of each other like tetris blocks. Such overcrowding, while difficult in itself, also contributed to generally poor housing conditions for black families. Rodents that infested the apartments were a constant reminder of their low status and that they are trapped there with them.
A rodent, particularly a black rat, is used to symbolize the protagonist of the novel, Bigger Thomas. It’s first appearance takes place when it invades the Thomas family’s tenement and is killed by Bigger because it doesn't belong there. The rodent put up quite a fight to escape Bigger’s wrath, like Bigger running and hiding from white police officers when he killed Mary Dalton. Even the way how the rat was killed was really explicit and graphic, hence Bigger’s lynching at the end of the book. This shows that Wright uses this foreshadowing technique to show that Bigger, who doesn't belong in the home of the wealthy, white Dalton family, is destined to be destroyed by a ‘natural’ predator- an oppressive and racist society where bigotry and injustice prevail. Not only does the rat represent poverty. It is a metaphor for depravity (Haslam 316), a person regarded as despicable, and someone who abandons or betrays his or her party or associates, especially in a time of trouble. These are all applicable to Bigger’s actions for he is an unpleasant character that had to leave his family in an even worse state than they were in before. On the run, Bigger, in effect, becomes the feared, hated, and empathetic rat as a result of both of them being environmental fugitives (Lambert 82).
Out of the mouths of only white people in end of the book comes the word ‘ape’, a degrading replacement for ‘stupid’ according to the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. This word used to describe black people is possibly one of the longest lasting tropes. As mentioned before, it ties back to a time of colonialism corroborated by false beliefs from white people who reacted negatively towards a group that do not look or act like them. With this in mind, it comes into Mary’s alleged rape. Simianization’s origins date back to an old tale of a woman exiled in an uninhabited island and who is raped by and is forced to become the wife of a big ape. “They kill us for women like her” (Wright 405). This narrative of sexualizing racial differences is an exhausted one, a porno-tropic for the European imagination, kept alive by accounts from countries from the Old World including Early Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal, that thought the story was so fascinating that multiple versions were created (Dodds 94).
Bigger is hardly a sympathetic character, much less a conventional hero due to instances of his actions (capacity for violence) and characteristics being quite disturbing. It is instinctive to feel this way, which is exactly Wright’s intent. He wants the readers to focus on why he is the way he is because Bigger is not just a fictional character. He epitomizes the most radical effect of racism on black people. He recalled having met at least five specific Biggers in his youth but when writing the novel he realized that Bigger is ubiquitous. In this context, the definition of ‘human’ that’s most befitting is the one of being connected to emotions. Bigger actively rejects this by forcing himself to feel nothing else but anger- until the climax of the story- which is fueled by: Mary Dalton ignoring racial stereotypes, racist real estate practices, his family because he’s powerless with the knowledge of their suffering, subjection to endless bombardment from a popular culture that portrays whites as sophisticated and blacks as savages, and to top it all off, he envies (and fears) white people. Bigger is the perfect catastrophe of conflicting emotions colliding within him. These feelings explode out of Bigger in the form of violence, seen in how he treated Gus, how he treats his family, raping then killing his girlfriend, and killing Mary. The murders served a purpose for him to have the power to control his own fate, live out the consequences of his actions, and give his life meaning- for the details of physical destruction reveal his attempt to break out of the cage in which the American imagination has imprisoned him in for so long" (Nobody Knows My Name 188). The murders also confirm whites' fears of him or any black man becoming a brutal killer, allowing him to become a large aggressive stereotype that his name represents (Big N*****r). As said by James Baldwin, his rage is what made him the animal, a monster, a being deprived of all the attributes of human consciousness, because being a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. For it to not destroy you, you have to tame it (Charney 65) but that is something that wasn’t taught to Bigger.
Now, Bigger’s catalyst, like Animal’s Nisha, is Max, a communist lawyer. He serves as Wright’s voice for the novel’s sociological analysis of Bigger’s condition and the consequences of continued racial oppression by articulating many hindered and unexpressed perceptions that Bigger felt. He speaks to Bigger as a human being, than as a black man or a murderer out of recognition of his humanity that was buried for so long deep within him. This gives Bigger the opportunity to confess the possibility of his being subhuman when he ponders his life (Notes of a Native Son 22). He’s given the first chance in his life to open up, tell his own story, and allow him to understand that an interracial sympathetic is possible.
“Bigger, you the cause of all the trouble we ever have. It’s your hot temper”(26)
-Gus
As you can see, for both characters, the toxic environments that they live in is responsible for the “animal” tag. Being in the positions that they are put in, a lot of similarities arise which shows that this label will carry out the same effects when used.
Their societies force them to deny a part of themselves because it is easier to maneuver in the way they accept themselves to be, which makes them self-hate and feel shameful. Animal would avoid mirrors while Bigger despises how he’s living. This puts them in battle with the force of circumstance.
Slow violence is a product of their settings. Bigger’s example is the tenements in the Black Belt and Animal’s is the abandoned factory that still contains remnants of the chemicals from the explosion.
They undergo Fear, Flight, and Fate in their journeys.
Laughing is a way for both to displace abjection and is a protest against being cast as a victim. Bigger and Gus take part in “white dialogue” and Animal makes joke of Jarnalis’s attempts at figuring him out.
They both discover a part of them that was always there towards the closing of both books.
Their sexuality is tainted from toxicity. For Bigger, it is contaminated with anger and Animal’s been poisoned with the toll chemicals took on his body which makes him unattractive. They both explore a “dirty little thrill” before the presence of white American young women giving them masculine dominance, the only sense of dominance they’ve ever felt. Ironically, the women in both stories are also disliked at the start
The justice that they wish they could have is nowhere near achieved because of the corrupt American government. On the day of his execution, Bigger wishes he had a chance to experience life with knowing about his humanity. And Animal joins Zafar and Nisha who protest against America for not taking full accountability over the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives were drastically affected by the leak.
“We are the people of the Apokalis. Tomorrow there will be more of us” (Sinha 366).
Because of literature and written accounts, we have proof that enters into different sciences and humanities: anthropology, archaeology, biology, ethnology, geology, medicine, philosophy, and, not least, theology that have all kept track of racist ideologies and beliefs that date back to the 17th century. Ironically enough, it’s vital because it offers an occasion to make someone or something liable and an explanation to why we see examples of prejudice and bigotry when we see it. In between the pages of these written works is the sprinkling of animal metaphors, used freely and shamelessly, which makes it evident that the dominant white apparatus has always assumed the role of supremacy that victimizes other ethnicities and minorities and looked down to them as inferiors and unworthy of the privileges white people enjoy. (Al-Shraah 60) America was established upon these details and justified the violence of their sovereignty by conceptually aligning colonized natives with animals. We can see that there was never a moment of cease fire because these ideologies continued to perpetuate itself. It's found in these two works of fiction which successfully integrates into our world because everything within this doctrine has sustained itself to this point. The reason being that humans remain “biologically prepared” to fear animals sub/parahumans) that threaten survival. Just as infants pay detailed amount of attention to animals like spiders or snakes and through that learn to fear them after ‘listening to a frightened human voice paired with images of the animals’, is the same way how oppression is taught and never-ending” (Amiot, 8) It’s also the same way how awareness of the oppressed gains more ground but a endless battle always happen between the two. This paper pitches into that fight as a source of an exposing piece of research. Through Indra Sinha’s and Richard Wright’s use of profanity and the grotesque to provide a dramatically uncensored version of the victims’ experiences (Holoch 128), victims of today can find an understanding and solace in literature like this. And when one makes the connections of cases where these things that this paper addresses are noticeable, there’s an epiphany that manifests itself because metaphorical language represents a powerful vehicle to describe the world (Andrighetto 630), this world that’s evidently stuck in the past.
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