Animal World

It would be hard to imagine what life would be like without other animals. Even the most passionate meat-eater would have to convert to vegetarianism. We would have no loving dogs by our side. Other animals have become so integrated into our lives that they have even become an essential part of some books. This is just one of the "huge range of human experiences that can be portrayed...in either words or pictures", as Scott McCloud puts it in Understanding Comics. Sometimes, using animals as characters can create different and possibly even more effective feelings. One of these books is Maus, which portrays people of different countries and religions as different types of animals.

In my opinion, this is incredibly clever, though only if done right. In some cases, it really slaps us in the face with reality. We as humans tend to believe that we are the most important species in the world. However, portraying humans as animals, in a way, brings us down to their level and shows how perhaps our problems aren't as big as we may think as we are only one of millions of species of animals living on Earth. Another ingenious use of animal characters is the incorporating of hidden meanings in works. One excellent example is Animal Farm, which criticized many people and ideas, all hidden in the animals. Yet another advantage to using animal characters is the ability to describe characters without actually stating it. If someone is drawn as a fox, it is implied that he is sly and cunning. If someone else is drawn as a hippo, it could mean that they are lazy and slow. There are also animals that are more up for interpretation. For example, if I portrayed someone as my bird, some may think he is cute and cuddly, while someone else may believe he is loud and nippy. This gives a book a unique element to it, with every reader thinking of the animals in different ways. The new effects and ideas that using animal characters instead of human characters create are endless.

Rethinking thinking

If you guys were asked if you knew how to think, I'm assuming most of you would say yes. After all, how do we even function if we don't know how to think? However, in David Foster Wallace's speech "This is Water", one's own natural thinking is challenged. He argues that thinking isn't "really about the capacity to think, but rather the choice of what to think about". While I do agree with most of his points about changing the way you think to make a positive impact on the world, some of the stuff he calls for is hard to immediately switch to. 

I decided to take some of his advice and do some thinking of my own. I tried thinking about everything around me from my conure's point of view. This may not be exactly what Wallace was trying to get at, but it did teach me some pretty new things. For example, an everyday sound like the fridge door closing could seem like a thunderclap to a small bird, or a small foam ball kicked around the house could be the ball from Indiana Jones rolling down. It really made me realize how different something may seem to someone else, not necessarily just a bird.

While it may seem a bit silly to some of you, I really suggest everyone try it, even if only for a minute. At the very least, it will freshen up your perspective of the world and make you reevaluate and appreciate smaller things more.

Perspective

This past week during English class, we discussed something rather interesting to me: lying. Billy Collins had written about a history teacher "trying to protect his students' innocence" by lying to them about real life events. We were then asked, "when is lying considered lying"? To me, this is all a matter of perspective. One man's truth may be another man's lie.

Of course I had to tie this to my conure somehow. As I thought about how this could apply for a little creature like him, I heard a sudden racket and turned to see my conure Yoshi fighting with my two smaller parakeets. It hit me right then. Although I obviously know that the three birds are two different species, do they know that? Most of the time, they seem to get along fine, like members of the same species would. Yoshi also loves to be around my family and me, a whole other species. Perhaps Yoshi thinks that everyone in the house is the same species, just maybe with slightly different colors and patterns. However, if we were somehow teleported to an alternate dimension where Yoshi could understand English, would I tell him that we weren't the same? Would he even believe me? He may be so used to thinking we were all the same species, he would think he was the one who knew the truth, not the other way around. That brings me back to my main point. Is it right to say that someone is lying even if they thought they were 100% speaking the truth? I guess this is just another one of those subjects that have many answers, with none being the only correct one.

The Symbol of Freedom

For many people, one of the first things that comes to mind when the word "America" is mentioned is probably the idea of freedom. Freedom is essentially the motive for the creation of the United States in the first place. The mere thought of this word inspires national pride in us. However, during Fredrick Douglass's passionate speech against slavery in 1852, he boldly asks "are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us"? After reading this speech, my idea of America's freedom and freedom in general became conflicted. Exactly what is freedom?

While I pondered this thought for a little, my little pet parrot Yoshi decided to utter a ear-piercing screech and fly over to me. After I recovered from my initial shock from his sudden appearance, I wondered if even he was free. I have decided freedom does indeed apply to him. In our home, he is free to wander wherever he likes. However, at night, we have to say goodnight and put him in his cage to sleep. Sometimes, Yoshi still wants to be out playing and flying around and screeches at us. But I wonder, if he could talk, would my parrot say he was free? Sure, to some extent we have taken some freedom away from him by keeping him in his cage. But even in his spacious little home, he has the freedom to climb around and do what he likes. So I guess you could say Yoshi is still indeed free, but maybe a little less free.

Another view of this is the fact that it would not be hard for my parrot to escape and live on his own in the wilderness. There have been many instances when one of my family members forgets he is on their shoulder and goes outside. However, instead of taking off and being truly free, he actually starts chirping and lets us know so he can go back inside. This proves that freedom in some way is also related to necessity, as Yoshi probably knows that he won't get the same attention and food in the wilderness as in our home. You can apply this to almost every human too. If you truly wanted to be free, void of any and all rules and in charge of only yourself, you could simply run off and disconnect from society. But the same principle applies: it is easier and better to live in an air-conditioned home with running water and a stove.