Communities are not truly plants, but they look that way to humans, who call them "weeds". #

The cookies are unanimously treated as not human, seemingly without moral hangups, despite seeming very human to the viewer. #

Humans tend to want everything to fit into human boxes, but trying to teach a plant as if it were human is absurd # #

Just because a plant is bad at learning the alphabet, that doesn't mean it's bad at everything, in fact it is very good at being a plant.

Audrey II is not only a plant but an alien because it came "from outer space" during an unexpected eclipse

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.

The film can be read as a broad allegory of nature being "out for itself" and unconcerned with the well-being of humans #

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 feelings and thoughts (as expressed through "horses") are complicated and sometimes contradictory.

Resilience of nature: Humans have hooked this fish many times, but it has survived anyway.

Most of the poem focuses on human nature, a rare subject for nature poetry, implying that humans are part of the "nature" Pico is supposed to be writing about in the poem.

The speaker admires the peach and mentions that it would be "finished like a billiard ball... if man had made it"

Communication with nature: people are "startled" and took the flower as a superstitious sign, as it contradicts what bleak November tells them.

Nature as unclean: any apple that touches the ground "no matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble" is unfit for direct human consumption.

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.

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.

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.

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).