Plants, Animals, and (Almost) Humans: Texts and Concepts
Plants
Animals
(Almost) Humans #
(Almost) Plants
(Almost) Animals #
Little Shop of Horrors: A man-eating alien plant arrives from outer space in a poor urban neighborhood. The plant soon learns how to manipulate a meek flower shop attendant, ultimately pushing him to commit murder in order to maintain the fame and fortune that the plant's uniqueness has brought him. In the original ending, the general population becomes crazed to own their version of the plant, thereby helping seal their fate by spreading the evil plant throughout America and resulting in the plants overpowering the human race. This ending clearly critiques capitalism and our consumerist culture; however, an alternate ending designed to please audiences shows the main characters achieving their 1950s American dream of living a simple and idyllic life in a development. However, the scenery and atmosphere in this ending are clearly fake, emphasizing the futility of chasing a "perfect" and privileged life.
"Teaching a Plant the Alphabet" by John Baldessari
A teacher engages in a detached, depersonalizing attempt to teach letters to a potted plant via repetition. This allows Baldessari to comment on the futility of this sort of pedagogy as well as the impassive, oblivious nature of students.
Nature
Nature Poem by Tommy Pico: Pico details the struggles he faces as a young American Indian gay man living in New York City. He experiences a version of DuBois' "double consciousness:" as a person of color (and Am. Indian descent) in urban America, he is painfully aware of others' perception of his "NDN" identity filtered through a lens clouded by cultural appropriation, stereotypes in popular culture, and prejudice. Pico feels unable to write a nature poem because he is reluctant to feed into the "noble savage" stereotype, resulting in sudden and angry tone changes, such as that on page 67: "The jellybean moon sugars at me. She flies and beams and I breathe. / Fuck that. I recant. I slap myself" # #
"In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound: Pound expresses the fleeting vision of faces seen in a grungy subway station crowd with the natural imagery of flower petals fallen by chance on a dark log.
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough."
"Sea Rose" by H.D.: H.D. compares the wild beauty and character of a wind-punished seaside flower to the empty aesthetic prettiness of a carefully cultivated rose. She claims that the sea rose is "more precious/ than a wet rose/ single on a stem," expressing that women's lives are full of adversity and hardship, but weathering this gives them depth and beauty of character. #
feminine beauty expressed with floral imagery and metaphor
"Sheltered Garden" by H.D.: H.D. opens this poem with the claim "I have had enough. / I gasp for breath," making clear that she finds the man-made, protected and bland beauty of a cultivated garden to be suffocating. She laments the lack of character of the garden: "There is no scent of resin / in this place (...) / only border on border of scented pinks" (1). She only takes joy in the scenes forged by nature when it is allowed to run wild, reinforcing her claim that the only true character and beauty is that which has been forged by adversity and freedom. #
"For this beauty, / beauty without strength, / chokes out life" -H.D., "Sheltered Garden"
"Reapers" by Jean Toomer: The blades of a mower are likened to the scythes of death-bearing reapers. They bring swift and violent death to all of the life within the field, both animal (" a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds") and plant ("I see the blade, / blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade") #
Humanity wreaks havoc on the environment in which we live
Imagery with connotation of death and hell in "Reapers:" "black reapers" (line 1); "sharpening scythes" (line 2); "silent swinging" (line 4); "black horses" (line 5); "blood-stained" (line 8)
"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee: Lee explores the idea of consuming things we love by discussing how peaches absorb so many dearly loved parts of summer as they ripen. Reminding the audience of the source of their food, and the life they are consuming: "to eat / not only the skin, but the shade / not only the sugar, but the days" (lines 12-15) #
Relationship of prey to the consumer
Lee posits that we consume things in order to internalize what we love about them: "O, to take what we love inside" ("From Blossoms" line 11)
"A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka: An ape named "Red Peter," who has been captured, held captive by humans and removed from his home, gives a speech accounting the process by which he learned to speak and live as a human. Red Peter is not seen as fully human, nor is he fully ape: of his female ape companion, he says: "her eyes have that deranged look which bewildered trained animals have; I'm the only one who recognizes it, and I can't stand it" (Kafka 88). She has not made the transition from animal to human; Red Peter considers her, therefore, different and apart from him. Yet the humans he encounter think the same of him. Kafka draws parallels between Red Peter's experience and Kafka's own experience as a Jewish man speaking to a non-Jewish Western European audience. #
Ex Machina: A computer scientist, the CEO of a tech company, and his state-of-the-art artificially-intelligent robot engage in intense psychological manipulation and testing. Ultimately, the CEO hopes to gauge the capabilities of his robot. However, the film raises issues ranging from the validity of the machine's emotions to the possibility of humans feeling genuine love for a machine. # #
Love between individuals of different species/origins
"Ava isn't pretending to like you. And her flirting isn't an algorithm to fake you out. You're the first man she's met that isn't me. And I'm like her dad, right? Can you blame her for getting a crush on you?" --Nathan, Ex Machina
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Speculative fiction in which humans are cloned to produce individuals whose organs will be harvested in order to save others. The clones are raised in the English countryside on fenced estates, always "told but not told" the truth about their identity and purpose (Ishiguro ch7p20). When they enter adulthood and begin to seek "deferrals" to postpone their murder, they discover that the non-clone members of society neither acknowledge their existence or believe that they possess souls. # #
ability of non-humans and "others" to possess souls and experience true emotion
Consider the Lobster by D. F. Wallace By questioning the New England tradition of consuming lobsters and cooking them alive, David Foster Wallace calls out Americans' obsession with vacationing and putting out of their minds the pain and suffering that their lifestyle may cause others. By going into deeply cutting detail about the possibility that lobsters suffer greatly when dying, Wallace takes away the freedom of the reader to engage in the oblivious lifestyle that they desire. In his deep exploration of the facts of lobster-eating, Wallace expresses both the importance of leading a well-informed and aware life as well as the difficulty of living this way.
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"To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit." (Wallace 2) Wallace feels alienated from the Maine society for which eating lobster is traditional and unquestionable; he identifies with the desire of tourists, who are also alien to this experience, to enjoy it without having to deal with or consider consequences; and he also points out that humans are alien from lobsters and therefore cannot understand the extent of their suffering.
being alienated from a population of "others"
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia by Edward Albee In an absurdist play, Albee manages to bring up the three biggest sexual taboos in contemporary society: bestiality, incest, and pedophilia. This allows Albee to test the limits of acceptable vs. unacceptable behavior within family and the greater community, while examining the relationships between fidelity, masculinity, sexuality, and parental love. # # #
Martin becomes alienated from his family and conventional society due to his engaging in bestiality
The Call of the Wild by Jack London: Buck, a privileged dog living in Northern California, is removed from his luxurious lifestyle and placed in the harsh world of Alaskan sled dogs. As he undergoes a retrogression and assimilates into wild culture, London raises a claim that there is a "true form" within all living beings--and in order to reach our full potential, we must shed the synthetic mannerisms and behaviors instilled within us by human civilization. # # #
primitive nature as a true version of oneself
in order to assimilate into wild culture, Buck must alienate himself from the culture of humans in which he was raised
"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler: A group of humans is captive on a planet of insect-like aliens which rely on the flesh of human males to incubate their larvae. The humans are powerless and enslaved to the aliens, yet simultaneously hold power intrinsically as they are necessary to the aliens' reproduction. # #
Martin repeatedly claims to "love" Sylvia, the goat; Stevie kills Sylvia because "she loved [Martin]"
"'Lomas?' [the alien] said harshly. I liked her for the question and the concern in her voice when she asked it. The last coherent thing he had said was her name." (Butler 11) The alien, which has impregnated a human man with her parasitic young in order to reproduce, exhibits concern for his wellbeing while he is giving birth. Similarly, the human man (Lomas) cries out for his alien while afraid and in pain.
Pico feels alienated from both mainstream American society and American Indian society; he struggles to balance his dual identity
"Digging" by Donald Hall: A peaceful picture of death, in which the body is returned to the earth and plants emerge from the decomposing flesh, completing the cycle of life. Plants, in this poem, are capable of holding a soul within them in the same way a human body is a vessel for a soul:
"You will wake suffering / a widening pain in your side, a breach / gapped in your tight ribs / where a green shoot struggles to lift itself upwards / through the tomb of your dead flesh / to the sun, to the air of your garden / where you will blossom / in the shape of your own self / thoughtless / with flowers, speaking / to bees, in the language of green and yellow, white and red." # #
Avatar: A science fiction movie in which humans have colonized the far-off planet Pandora to exploit its resources. While fighting the native population, a marine goes undercover among them to learn their ways and ends up fighting for the Na'vi people and falling in love with the daughter of a Na'vi chief. This allows the movie to raise issues ranging from:
--allegiance to one's "own kind" verus allegiance to morally right "others"
--Love interests between individuals of different identities (the main characters are human and Na'vi)
--Distinction between the soul and the body: the marine's body remains on the humans' base, while his consciousness inhabits a genetically-designed Na'Vi-human hybrid "avatar" in order to live on Pandora among the natives. When he ultimately leaves his human body altogether, the film makes the claim that one's consciousness is not innately connected to the body but, rather, the soul is a separate entity. # # # # #
The Na'vi are repeatedly referred to as savages and unworthy of respect/consideration by the invading humans
The Lives of Animals by Coetzee Through the story of Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee's slightly senile female alter-ego, Coetzee makes a disjointed and complex argument against consuming animals based solely on the intrinsic wrongness of hurting living beings. Although Costello's logic is flawed, the moral ground on which she stands cannot be effectively challenged, leading the fictional audience--as well as Coetzee's readers--questioning their own motives for eating or not eating animal products. # # #
Costello compares animal agriculture to the Holocaust, enraging some of her listeners but conveying clearly her abhorrence of factory farming's lack of respect for the consumed animals
"Bat" by D.H. Lawrence: Lawrence describes the evening appearance of bats and the uneasy feeling they inspire in a viewer. The speaker is excited to see what he believes to be swallows, but upon realizing them to be bats, he experiences "an uneasy creeping in one's scalp" at the creatures, described as "little lumps that fly in air." Lawrence brings up the ingrained prejudice humans have against certain creatures by abruptly changing his tone from appreciative to disgusted upon realizing that the airborne creatures are bats rather than birds. #
prejudice against perceived "otherness"
"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop Upon catching a tremendous fish and admiring deeply and descriptively its beauty, the fisher realizes that the fish has been caught five times before and carries with it five prior fish hooks. "victory filled up / the little rented boat" upon this realization, yet respect also fills the heart of the fisher, and the fish is released. Though there is no connection between the fish and its captor, there is compassion. # # #
the fish and human are unable to communicate, though both is likely experiencing strong emotions surrounding the other
Bishop (or the fisher) feels respect and compassion for the life of her prey; understanding passes between them rather than an oppressive power imbalance.
"Taking her time, / she looks the bus over, / grand, otherworldly. / Why, why do we feel / (we all feel) this sweet / sensation of joy?" Description of the moose as "otherworldly" reflects how distant the animal seems from the synthetic universe of the bus-bound humans. The moose's sudden appearance and the humans' feeling drawn to it shows how, though they have departed from their true natures, they still can appreciate the nature around them.
"Dog" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti The dog, free to roam the streets of San Francisco, represents a being free from the expectations of democracy such as civil awareness and being a responsible citizen. Ferlinghetti notes that the dog "doesn't hate cops / he merely has no use for them;" and, as he trots--carefree--through a downtown rife with politically significant imagery (such as whole animals hanging, dead, at the meat market and the city hall, where problematic politicians dwell), the dog is unaffected. This suggests that he is living freely, as nature intended, unaffected by human strife. He is "a real live / barking / democratic dog / (...) with something to say." # # #
"The Jaguar" by Ted Hughes: A jaguar pent-up in a cage at the zoo shows the power of the wild nature which humans fail to steal from him; though they may deny him his freedom, they cannot take away his true wild identity. His eyes are "drills," through which he sees "over the cage floor the horizons come." The wild being within cannot be domesticated or beaten out of him by humanity or captivity. # #