<img src="https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&amp;c2=6035250&amp;cv=2.0&amp;cj=1&amp;cs_ucfr=0&amp;comscorekw=Fiction%2CBooks%2CCulture"> Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation

Why we're all animal lovers

This article is more than 15 years old
From Watership Down to Tarka the Otter, what is the appeal of anthropomorphic literature?


A still from the 1954 film of Animal Farm. Photograph: Kobal/Halas & Batchelor Collection

It's hard not to stand in a remote field surrounded by rabbits, some alive and some very dead from myxomatosis, and not think of Richard Adams' novel Watership Down.

Consistently in print since its 1972 publication Watership Down is of course a novel about the trials and tribulations of a family of rabbits. Imbued as they are with the characteristics of human society - language, culture, mythology - however, it is not really about rabbits at all, but a novel about the journey of life itself, with the same concerns and themes as those explored by Homer nearly three thousand years earlier. In other words, it is the perfect case of literary anthropomorphism - the transference of human traits into animals.

Anthropomorphic literature is a sub-genre within itself, but why has it proved so endearingly popular? Why do writers feel the need to imbue animals with human characteristics? The simple answer is: because it wouldn't work any other way.

George Orwell used a farmyard setting in Animal Farm to convey his political allegory. He could have written a novel about a breakaway society of humans left to govern itself, but you suspect it may not have been as been digestible and therefore perhaps not as successful.

Let's not forget that Animal Farm manages to tackle such weighty issues as communism, anarchism and the class system without once resorting to such terms. The humans that feature in the book bare similarities to real historical figures such as Hitler and Tsar Nicholas II, but are also deeply flawed characters in their own right, from the heavy-drinking farmer who neglects to feed his animals to the hard-nosed neighbouring landowner.

Animal Farm is still taught to school childen, and remains for many the entry point into the political thought processes that shape the planet. It took some talking pigs and horses to achieve that.

Perhaps that is anthropomorphic literature's main strength: rather than diluting ideas, it presents them in a new medium. In doing so, it broadens the readership so that books meant for adults soon find an audience with younger readers. So on one level Animal Farm is about a lack of pig-feed, and on another it is an overview of world politics in the first half of the 20th century.

There are many other examples of books that can be read on different levels, by readers of very different ages. Tarka The Otter, Charlotte's Web, or Russell Hoban's symbolically-loaded The Mouse And His Child can all be found in the children's literature sections of bookshops, yet work as allegorical grown up fictions too.

Other enduring examples include Jack London's White Fang and The Call Of The Wild, two high-adventure companion tales that concern the civilization and de-civilisation of wild and domestic dogs respectively during the era of the Klondike Gold Rush. As with all anthropomorphic literature, it is through animals that London raises questions about our interpretation of what it means to be civilized and how corruptible a concept that can be. Told from a dog's eye perspective, it turns out man is more violent, greedy and gratuitously cruel than any creature in the animal kingdom.

None of which may come as a huge surprise, yet the popularity of anthropomorphic literature as a genre is as strong as ever. As countless examples show, the appeal of these books stems not from the exploration of animals but the social and personal realities they convey. They may be filled with memorable animal characters, but the feeling of empathy such stories create is uniquely human.

Explore more on these topics

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed