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Plants, Animals, and Almost Humans (Animals (Animal Poems ("Man and…

- - - - In NLMG, people temporarily take an interest in the well-being of clones, similar to the way knowing the upbringing of Colin the Chicken is represented as a fad. In both cases, people have complete control over their "product," which is at their mercy.
  - - - Jellyfish are often described in human terms, but in the end they don't neatly fit in any of the analogies we make for them
      - The only way we know to describe new things is by comparing them to things we are already familiar with.
    - - The speaker's inner self, or possibly humanity in general, expressed through "horses,"animals represent human thoughts.
      - The speaker's feelings and thoughts (as expressed through "horses") are complicated and sometimes contradictory.
    - - The speaker likes the attention the snake gives him despite all the warnings he has heard
      - The speaker is afraid of the venomous snake, the snake has power over him.
        
        POWER AND WHO HAS IT: A big issue raised in a lot of these texts is who has power over whom. In general, humans really want to have the power and the control (as DFW admits we have over lobsters), and we are either uncomfortable (as in "Peach") or straight up hostile (as in "Crossover") when the power lies elsewhere.
    - - Resilience of nature: Humans have hooked this fish many times, but it has survived anyway.
      - If this fish has been hooked five times; it seems that nothing in nature is beyond the scope of humans to ruin or torment.
      - Speaker eventually releases the fish
        
        HUMAN KINSHIP WITH OTHERS: As much as humans can hate things that are different from us, it turns out we are really good at connecting with the nonhuman when we feel like it. We often feel connected to the natural world because we are a part of it, as Nature Poem points out. Our other biggest connection, especially with things that look or act humanlike in some way, is empathy. Sometimes this is us taking pity on things we have power over ("The Fish"), but sometimes our empathy comes back to bite us (as in Ex Machina).
    - - The speaker sees bats as disgusting, impure, and beastly.
      - Despite the speaker's hatred of the bat, he cannot bring himself to kill it because it is "God's creation"
      - Despite thinking the bat is beneath him, the speaker personifies the bat and gives it human thoughts: "I am greater than he... I escaped him" #
- - - - Nature affects people deeply and elicits emotions and memories, such as "sorrow," "joy," and "grief".
    - - Human greed and use of resources: A bountiful harvest of apples has been created, but the speaker becomes tired of picking apples.
      - Nature as unclean: any apple that touches the ground "no matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble" is unfit for direct human consumption.
    - - Rejects the "spice-rose" that is carefully cultivated by humans as weak.
      - Places value in the sea rose because it is untouched by humans and strong enough to fend for itself.
    - - The poem describes the barren month of November, when everything seems to be dying, and nature is starting to seem more like an enemy, especially to farmers.
      - Communication with nature: people are "startled" and took the flower as a superstitious sign, as it contradicts what bleak November tells them.
    - - The speaker admires the peach and mentions that it would be "finished like a billiard ball... if man had made it"
      - Reflects on people's discomfort with nature and our need to make everything uniform and identical. #
  - - - Audrey II is represented in many ways as Black, and in this way the film shows white fear of Blacks and is an example of racism.
      - HUMAN FEAR OF OTHERS: A recurrent theme in a lot of these texts is the fear that we have towards those we perceive as different from us. A lot of times these others are immediately labeled as a threat, whether they really are or not. Often in literature things that are different from us are portrayed as the enemy of the story, such as in Little Shop of Horrors, Bloodchild, and many "Man vs Nature" stories. However, lots of the stories we examined are good at pointing out that a lot of times, humans are our own worst enemy: In Frankenstein, Never Let Me Go, and "Crossover", humans are revealed as the real monsters.
- - - - Ava seems to get empathy she doesn't deserve, while Frankenstein's monster can't get the empathy he does deserve. Due to the difference in appearance of the two characters, I think this says something about how we choose who we relate to.
  - - - In both societies, people are socialized since birth to fulfill unfair, slave-like roles that have been imposed on them. The difference is that in NLMG, it is humans doing the oppressing, but in Bloodchild it is aliens. To me, this means we can't blame the Tlic too much for what they do to humans, considering we would likely do the exact same thing.
  - - - Review of the Humanlike Others: What is like humans, what isn't? Cookies are the minds of humans but don't have bodies.
        Frankenstein's monster has a corrupted human body but a human mind and soul. Ava has a mind that is close to human and a body that is humanoid, but not actually human.
        The clones are the only "others" here that actually are human, only differentiated by their societal role and the way they were created.
  - - - Human cruelty towards other humans: the government agents who question Noah know exactly how cruel they are being, and likewise, the clones' caregivers at Hailsham such as Miss Emily and Madame, know that the clones are human, yet never truly try very hard to change their fate.