From Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to Franz Kafka’s ‘Ungeziefer’, linguistically gifted beasts have made for some of the most luminous characters in fiction
Animal characters in works of fiction have generally been used in a rather anthropomorphic way. This can be seen as a problem, though, and many say that reading animals as symbols of us reduces them, makes them smaller, steals their right to be seen as subjects who have their unique, distinctive way of existing. Others say that it’s not a problem at all because it’s not as if animals – even though they’re each different in shape and thought – will ever get to know what we write about them, how we place, use and interpret them and give them meaning through human filters.
Placing myself in the discussion as a writer of animal characters (as I am in my novel My Cat Yugoslavia) is extremely difficult. Does a writer of fiction that includes animal characters commit an act of theft? Can nature really be appropriated? Who does it belong to, and who gets to say what counts as “animal culture”? Is it scientists, biologists, scholars in humanities, people who have lived with animals, or no one? The question is exceptionally complex. However, it is interesting and most welcome, too, that we continue to discuss the rights of beings that are unarmed, incapable of defending themselves through language that’s not clearly understandable to us.
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