Animals

plight. Those who posit a clear dividing line between human and non-human have often suggested that one uniquely human quality is the power to exercise a moral imagination: the power to imagine ourselves in the place of another being, and to modify or change our own actions in the light of that imaginative experience. Whether or not such a quality is indeed the unique preserve of humans I do not know. But if we fail to put such imaginative power to use—and if we fail to take action to right wrongs when we realize the effects our actions are having on others—then we are helping to sustain a system founded on almost limitless human cruelty.

What can be done? Pressing governments for change should not be given up as a lost cause. Writing letters to the editor can have an impact, as can e-mailing or phoning in one’s opinions to radio and television programs. Talking up such things among one’s friends and relatives can be helpful too. But probably the biggest single thing we can do to help bring change is simply change our own habits.

Why, then, do we allow it to continue? If such things were being done to cats and dogs (or to wolves or giraffes or grizzly bears), they would be considered serious criminal offenses and the human perpetrators would be given substantial prison sentences. But somewhere we draw a line, separating one sort of animal from another. On our side of that line are pets and wild animals; on the other side of that line are beings against which we allow virtually any cruelty to be inflicted. We give our children picture books that show such animals living out their lives in happy pastures—and that often personify them, give them human names, show them talking to one another. But in practice we do not treat the actual animals as living beings, as beings who may not be capable of speech but who can feel pain, and feel a good many other things too. We treat them purely as food, as things it doesn’t matter how we mistreat, as things to be eaten, as things to be tortured if that will make the milk and flesh and eggs cheaper or tastier.

How could he have told her? No one could have told such a thing to a young—no, she was not a young woman, she was still a child. It would have been too late anyway, surely it would have been too late, wouldn’t it? From that far away, how could they have done anything to stop it? And if he had tried, if he had stood up and started to shout, if he had somehow gotten their attention, the ones over there on the killing line, would it have done any good? Of course not, of course nothing would have changed, nothing would have stopped, but the damage, the damage to the child, to his daughter, there had been so much done already, how could he do more now? No, it was better to have said nothing. But what of the other child? Suddenly he thought of Sam, and tears covered his face. He was shaking. It’s okay Daddy, Daddy it’s all right, I know I wanted it to be him, I wanted it so much to be able to save him and it isn’t him and you’re so sorry, and Daddy I’m so sorry, let me be the sorry one, those ones are going to be killed they have been killed now, and he isn’t one of them, it wasn’t Sam, Daddy, we can go home now Daddy, now Daddy we can go, now, Daddy.

No, nothing could be calling, there was nothing out there, nothing could be out there this time of the evening, he pressed the tip to the next skull, the eyes looked at him as if in another place already, with most of them you could see if you looked that they had seen what was coming and you could see how much it scared them, it was better not to look but if you did you could see what they saw, and in the next moment there was pleading in their eyes, he hated that, but this one was so calm in its eyes, so gentle almost, the way someone looks if they love you, love you not for you only, but just for being like anybody else. You could imagine so many things if you looked in a creature’s eyes, you could never know, it was like looking into clouds, or into water, you could never know really, it was better to look away.

But what are the facts? The suffering that Sam is subjected to in the last part of this novel is so extreme that it may well seem implausible to some readers. Surely no innocent creature capable of feeling could legally be made to endure such suffering, or not at least in any society even remotely like our own. Yet every day both in North America (where this story is set) and around the world millions and millions of cows, pigs, and chickens endure far worse than this. When they are branded, when their ears or their beaks are mutilated, when they are castrated, no anesthetic is used. When they are slaughtered they are often still conscious as they begin to be bled, skinned, and sliced open. The conditions in which they are forced to live—those of pigs and chickens and dairy cattle even more than those of beef cattle—are considerably worse than those that Sam and Josh and the others endure. Kept in pens in which they are often unable to turn around, such animals lead lives of unutterable misery. They are bred and raised using methods designed purely to facilitate the production of cheaper and cheaper flesh, eggs, and milk for humans to consume, and those methods typically make them unnaturally proportioned and make their bodies function in unnatural ways—almost always to their considerable pain and discomfort.

Ellison wore protection on his arms too, not everyone did when they were working as a knocker but Ellison thought it was prudent, he was just doing this for the summer, that’s what he was thinking anyway, by the end of the summer he could stop, he would’ve saved a bit, saved enough so that Shelley and him could rent a bigger place, a two-bedroom maybe.

And then he thought of other words, of words tumbling over one another, of stretching words, of words shuffling forward. He thought back to the beginning, to when she had taught him the thing words, so he could ask for cracker and talk about turtle and toenail and water and earth and sky. And then hungry and thirsty and the doing words, pushing and grunting and thinking, all those were there for him now. And the words were not from the world only, the words that were in him now. They were the mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little house and Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do and here is Edward Bear, coming down stairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. And from the words, from her lips as the words came from the books, he had learned afraid and sadness and despair. And lonely, Sam knew Max the king of all wild things was lonely, and he knew lonely from within himself. And he knew Josh must know those things too, and all the others must know them, not from the words or the books but from the feelings, water and earth and sky, hungry and thirsty and lonely, pushing and grunting and even in their own way thinking, but he had been so lucky, Sam had, somehow so lucky really. And the luck that he had found for that short time when he had learned from the words and from everything—he had learned love too—was a strong warm thing inside him.

“Thel kill u, u no. Thay will, thel kill me too. Thel kill al of us.” That was the sort of thing Sam said now to many of the others. He was not panicky, he was hardly scared even, these were just facts they should know, was it wrong to try to warn them? It was something terrible that they could do nothing about, something that would happen to them anyway no matter what he said, maybe it was not right to scare them like this, was he scaring any of them? He did not know, but something inside him said that he should try to warn them, warn them even if they could do nothing to stop it. Mostly they did not seem to know what he was saying, and then he would point with his index finger at the side of his head, and again as if with a blade to the throat. They did not understand him, the chattels, most of them anyway; maybe the one he called Josh, though, he was pretty sure Josh understood a little bit at first, maybe more than a little bit. Josh had flinched when he had heard Sam say those things and make those motions to two or three of the others, and then when Sam had tried to tell him too he had wrapped his arms round his neck and Sammy knew it was better not to say anything, not just now, so even Josh maybe never really understood what Sam had been saying, not fully. But the ones that ran things, the Canfield workers, they heard the noises, they saw the hand motions, it was the hand motions above all that made them say to each other We can’t leave him out there; the special pens, that’s where he should be.

They were breaking the law, she knew that, but they were in the right, really. The law didn’t always follow what was right, Naomi knew that from learning in history class of the old laws about slavery and about women, but it was another thing to know it like this.