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.