Literature: ‘Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!’

The talking animals of stories

"Alice in Wonderland," circa 1879, by George Dunlop Leslie. Oil on canvas. Brighton & Hove Museums, United Kingdom. (Public Domain)

“Talk to the Animals” from the 1967 film “Doctor Dolittle” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Here are the opening lyrics:

Oh, if I could talk to the animals, just imagine it Chatting with a chimp in chimpanzee Imagine talking to a tiger, chatting with a cheetah What a neat achievement it would be

Talking with animals may be an impossibility, but human beings down through history have certainly talked to animals. Hundreds of millions of pet owners around the globe do so every day, as when reprimanding their dog for snatching a hamburger from the kitchen table or talking to a kitten as if to a baby.

Not only do we talk to animals, but we attribute to them human emotions and thoughts—another custom in play from the dawn of recorded history. We find this anthropomorphism in Genesis, when the snake hoodwinks Eve; in the ancient fables of Aesop and similar legends told by people around the world; and in tales where rabbits, crows, mice, tigers, and other beasts are endowed with human powers. This same holds true in the fairy tales of the last 500 years and in many of our contemporary children’s stories.

Some writers of fiction for adults also bring anthropomorphic magic to their stories. In George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” his acerbic takedown of totalitarian governments, domesticated livestock are the key players. In Richard Adams’s “Watership Down,” a warren of rabbits takes center stage. Created in 1916 by newspaper columnist Don Marquis, a cockroach named Archy and the alley cat Mehitabel appeared as narrators in hundreds of poems and stories, and became enormously popular with readers.

Why the Attraction?

"Fable of the Hare and the Tortoise," 17th century, by Frans Snyders. Oil on canvas. The Prado Museum, Madrid. (Public Domain)

This integration of animals into our literature seems so natural that we rarely pause to ask that question. Why, for instance, did Aesop match a tortoise against a hare in a footrace rather than two of his contemporary Greeks? Jump forward more than 2,000 years in time, and we might well ask why Brian Jacques in his popular “Redwall” series substituted mice, moles, badgers, rats, and other species for human characters.

One obvious answer surely has to do with familiarity.

Until recently, our ancestors around the globe lived much more intimately with nature than we do today. The hunters who for eons brought food from field and forest to the fire were as familiar with the ways and habits of deer, rabbit, and bear as we are with the aisles of our grocery stores.

Evidence of this long intimacy is also visible in our naming of animals. To return briefly to Genesis, Adam “gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field,” thereby identifying each species. In that long-ago past, people also called favored domestic animals by name. Alexander the Great tamed and rode his war horse Bucephalus, and in the “Odyssey,” Homer specifically references Argos, Odysseus’s dog, who before dying recognizes his long-absent master. Today’s pet owners follow this same custom of nomenclature, taking Maverick on a walk in the evening or entertaining Miss Kitty with a bit of twine. Like storytellers old and new, we personify our pets.

"Adam Naming the Creatures," 1847, by N. Currier. Hand-colored lithograph. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

Given such close connections, it seems only natural that fabulists and bards would weave animals into their tales, using them as vehicles of amusement and as a means of passing on wisdom and morality to children. The folklore created by the griots of Southern Africa, for example, featured local wildlife like rhinos, lions, and giraffes, while Native Americans told stories of coyotes, buffalo, and foxes.

Emotional Distance

An illustrated plate of the wolf blowing down the pigs' straw house from the 1904 adaptation of "The Three Little Pigs" by L. Leslie Brooke. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

In “Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature,” Dr. Lara Gray, an expert on children’s literature, makes an interesting point regarding the widespread use of animal protagonists and characters in books for kids. She writes that animals “can bring silliness and incongruity, making a story more enjoyable. But they also add a degree of emotional distance for the reader, which is important when the story message is personal, painful, or powerful.”

As one example, Gray chooses “The Three Little Pigs.” As they lose house after house, “we roll along with the rhyme; the same situation involving homeless children is far less palatable.”

This holds true for many folk and fairy tales. Transform Peter Rabbit into a boy, and the story changes completely. The natural instinct of a rabbit is to slip into a garden for a bite to eat; the boy who does the same is either starving or a vandal. Make the Big Bad Wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” a man, and we have a vicious murderer on the prowl.

An Illustrated plate of "Little Red Riding Hood," 1911, by Jessie Willcox Smith from the book "A Child's Book of Stories." (Public Domain)

Symbolism

In his article “Aesop’s Fables,” Edward Clayton, professor at Central Michigan University, introduces another related reason for using animals as characters in fables and, by extension, in other fiction as well. By observation and daily experience, our ancestors associated certain human traits with other living creatures. Ants and bees, for instance, were industrious. Donkeys and camels were stubborn, and goats, as in “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” were wily and tough.

The lion—king of the beasts—is a symbol of authority and power. A painting of a lion sitting on the edge of a cliff, circa 1850, by an unknown French painter. Oil on panel. (Public Domain)

Remarking on these similarities between human beings and other species, Clayton then writes: “This allows the author to suggest or imply a lot of backstory in a format which is partially defined by its brevity. So, whereas establishing that a human character is clever might take considerable effort, if the author chooses a fox as one of the characters in the fable, then cleverness is already established as a trait for that character. Similarly, it takes less time to say ’this fable is about a mouse' than to establish the timidity of a particular human being.”

C.S. Lewis’s imaginative creation of the lion Aslan in his “Chronicles of Narnia” is a classic example of this tactic. The lion is the “king of the beasts,” symbol of authority and power. To have personified a sparrow or a squirrel, or even an earthly human king, as Aslan would have destroyed an idea central to Lewis’s story.

Stories for Everyone

Finally, featuring animals rather than human beings allows for a universality that might not otherwise exist. Expose a reader from Poland, Peru, or China to Aesop’s “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” and the story flows effortlessly across the cultural divide.

Book cover for a 2008 paperback edition of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

“Animal Farm” nicely illustrates all the above points. Pigs, who become dictators after leading the revolt against a farmer, are known for their intelligence and greed. They train the farm’s dogs to become their vicious, personal guards. The sheep follow wherever the wind blows.

Orwell intended “Animal Farm” as an explosive critique of Soviet communism and totalitarian government in general. Had he used historical Russian figures like Stalin and Trotsky, and fictional citizens, the novel might have won immediate acclaim, but it would have lacked staying power. The anthropomorphism of this fable for grownups instead makes it a timeless tale of revolution, government and ideals corrupted, and oppression.

The same holds true for much of children’s literature. The young person traveling off to the big city from a farm or a small town, or vice versa, has long served as a popular theme in literature and film—it’s a standby in many Hallmark movies—but the grandfather of this storyline is Aesop’s “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.” The story illustrates the contrast between the peaceful, humble life of the country mouse and the affluent but dangerous lifestyle of his city cousin, and has endured for more than two millennia.

A.A Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh,” Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” and countless other books are all descendants of such early fabulists and storytellers, still entertaining adults and children alike while their wolves and bears, rabbits, and spiders pass along their lessons of wisdom.

An illustration of Kipling's Mowgli and Baloo, titled "Mowgli," 1923, by Jessie Willcox Smith from "Boys & Girls of Bookland." (Public Domain)

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