Alice in Wonderland

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David Daniel makes some good points about the significance of animals in Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland. In his essay, he claims that "the significance of this consistant usage of our furry animal friends is often overlooked by those more interested in what the characters say than  who the characters are."  (443) One of the strong points in his essay revolves in how Alice percieves herself in relation to the animals sometimes colors how she treats them. For example, when she is huge and has nothing to fear, she is carelessly cruel, kicking a lizard up a chimney and swatting at a mother pigeon. Also, when playing croquet with the Queen, she is in a position of power in comparison to the flamingoes and hedgehogs used for sport. When in this elevated position of power, Alice represents human tendency to treat those below them thoughtlessly. However, Daniel's essay does not contain foolproof logic.



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Not all of his claims are well backed. In his second paragraph, he argues that "the suggestion is not that the rabbit is aberrant but that Alice herself has never looked at rabbits correctly before. Also, it is only because it is an animal that Alice pays attention. It is entirely probable that had a strange little man rushed by, whining about being late, Alice would have simply sat bored by the brook and perhaps made a few daisy chains." (443-3) This seems an oversimplification of Alice and the animal world in Carroll's book. The rabbit is not aberrant because it is in a dream - nothing in a dream is out of the ordinary, because in dreams, anythign is possible. Also, it is because Alice knows what rabbits are like in her world that this particular one with human traits captures her attention. Besides, who's to say that a strange little man is not out of the ordinary? A hobbit would be likely to catch Alice's attention as well.

Professor Bump's essay, unlike Daniel's, contains a degree of shock value. THough this works in evoking an emotional response, it also allows for logical fallacies - focusing on extreme cases doesn't give a realistic view of a situation because the vast range of reality is lost. The gruesome stories from the The Vegetarian Messenger oversimplifies the effect of butchering on children. There is also an appreciation of life and death that can be learned by being in such close proximity to death - this is not an argument for or against eating animals, but a simple fact of what is experienced when taking an animal's life for sustenance. In addition, the horrible conditions described in "The Best Food for Man," are from a terrible situation, but there are family farms and places that are very different. The main argument that I believe cannot be backed is the defense of the statement "Ryder compared speciesism to racism and since then the comparison has been extended to sexism..." (447). Racism and sexism occur within one species. THe human species. Although Bump argues that animals are part of the human family, they are not actually within our species. Therefore, the term Speciesism is not exactly comparable to racism and sexism. The same is true of his comparison of the human practice of eating meat to cannibalism. Animals themselves eat other animals - but this is not considered unethical or wrong.