Becoming Animal, or Animals Become Us - Essay Example

As a child her main character creates a friendship with a horse and throughout the friendship she is kind to the horse. One day, she sees that the horses eyes look lonely. Later, the horse is happy because it has a companion and she finds out that Blue (the horse) is actually only there as a stud. At this point, she notices that once his companion is gone, Blue also stays away from her as a human. This is significant because as Walker says, "Blue was like a crazed person…" (866) and she admits he was like that to her and then his attitude changes towards her when he "realizes" that his friend will not be back.

"…I took apples to him, he looked at me. It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, …to think there are people who do not know that animals suffer" (867). She wants humans to know that animals do indeed suffer and this horse suffered in the way that someone who was enslaved would suffer as their family was taken from them and sold. This was a very poignant parallel for her to draw because the reader was able to see the connection between animal and human. "Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours.

We are one lesson" (866) is the point of the entire story which points to a partnership or "oneness" between human animals and other animals. Merchants writing is interesting because in some respects she sees a constant struggle between male domination and female natural instinct. She says that women are the nature aspects of life and actually sees the struggle between Adam and Eve continues throughout all of what we are doing to this day. As an example, she gives many ideas from other writers about how they felt it was possible for man to conquer nature.

She quotes Thomas Huxley as saying that there should be a situation where a new Eden would be born and in it "every plant and every lower animal should