Children and Creature Symbols

“[Animals] are the means to a self-identity and self-consciousness as our most human possession, for they enable us to objectify qualities and traits. By presenting us with related-otherness – that diversity of non-self with which we have various things in common – they further, throughout our lives, a refining and maturing knowledge of personal and human being.” (Shepard, 249)

Through the reading of Paul Shepard and by looking back on my own childhood and those childhoods which are becoming around me, it has become clear that who we are, the words we say, the way we feel, and the way we identify ourselves is defined by what we have learned of animals. Without animals we would not have learned the basics of being human: speech and vocabulary, conflict resolution, the importance of family, and how to interact with others. These traits would have been learned, but in an entirely different way. I cannot imagine a child’s world without the use of animals as learning tools. The numerous books, movies, and pieces of art that portray animals as having human relationships taught us, as children, about respect, love, difference, and the significance of friendships and family. Animals are used in songs and games to teach us shapes, numbers, and the alphabet. As we grow older, animals are used in literature to teach us about spirituality and the natural world.

We place animals in a space that is comfortable to us, mentally, physically, and emotionally. We feel that we are doing them a favor, even showing compassion and respect by including them in our human world and by defining their emotions as we know our own. “The distinction between animals as figurative people and as surrogate people may seem unnecessarily fine because we are not used to making it. But the difference is fundamental and it influences the way we see the animal world all our lives and therefore the way we see ourselves.” (Shepard, 250) We relate to animals by subconsciously applying human emotions to the actions that they show us. We perceive them as being sad, happy, lonely, or silly. We feel that we understand them. We forget where they came from and where they are now. We forget that at one time, they did not assimilate to the sounds of airplanes above their sky, to the sounds of automobile engines in their grasslands, and to being on display for us to observe and interrogate. Whether we feel we are treating them with respect and kindness or not, the fact will always exist that we have used them for our benefit, we have treated them as “others” in a positive, but more often, negative way. We take for granted their existence, influence, and benefit. All the while, they have continued to accept our forced relationships with them, allowing us to be the creators of their future.

Children learn about life, love, and relationships through fictional stories about animals. Paul Shepard believes that we place these stories about human interaction in animal form because it is a way for us to use animals as examples which we can learn from. We can relate to their being like us, in somewhat human form, yet they “manifest that invisible otherness.” (Shepard, 31) This otherness keeps our relationship with them safe. We do not have to tell our children about the harsh world of nature or our harsh treatment of that world. Instead, we can use these images of creatures in cartoon form to benefit us and our children. We use these images as tools for teaching our children about behavior and relationships. Perhaps we feel that it is not appropriate to portray animals in this way to our children, but, hey, they are teaching them important lessons. Children don’t need to know that brown bears are actually quite solitary animals when the Berenstain Bears are teaching them about family life and conflict resolution, right?

I recently saw a children’s cartoon that involved an elephant, a monkey, and a koala. The elephant was doing what elephants do best, building a rocket-ship, and the silly monkey and koala, while elephant wasn’t looking, broke his most prized project. Being the smart elephant that he is, he knew that monkey and koala were the culprits. When he learned of this, he cried and cried and cried. Monkey and koala felt so bad that they gave in, apologized and helped elephant fix his rocket-ship. In the end, everyone agreed that apologizing to elephant was the best outcome and they were even better friends now. By using animals in place of humans in this story, children were immediately more interested in the story. It is entertaining to see an elephant riding a rocket-ship and a monkey and koala trying to decide the best apology to deliver. Aside from their entertainment value alone, studies have shown that young children find it easier to relate to animals than to other humans. The children know that this is not typical animal behavior, but they also do not know what true animal behavior is. By showing children that elephants, bears and monkeys live in houses in the city, it will be difficult to teach them where animals really live, where they came from, and how our actions impact their future.

Most books, games, television programs, movies, and learning tools we use to teach our children involve the humanizing of animals. There begins to be a fine line of what is respectful and what is disrespectful when including animals in our everyday lives. Children are able to name every animal, tell of some generic behavior that they possess, and feel a closeness with animals as their images and fictional stories surround their everyday lives. But keeping animals at the proximity of cartoon images in storybooks and behind cages in zoos is not teaching them about animal differences. They are only learning how to see animals as dual physicality human-animals. Children learn that in these fictional human emotions and expressions, animals have only one trait. “Unlike people, who seem to be bear-like one minute and cow-like the next, each kind of creature has some one notable characteristic from among these fugitive components and experiences of which we were previously unconscious.” (Shepard, 117) By portraying animals in this way, it will be difficult for children to set aside these solo characteristics and to someday truly understand that animals lead intricate, emotional lives of their own. And they don’t live in tree-houses near the city.

Animals are such a profound part of our lives, more often than not, only in a fictional sense. The benefits our children have received from learning tools that use animals as the teachers is tremendous. But does the negative impact outweigh the benefits? Children are not learning enough about animal behavior by playing games and reading books about cartoon animals. As Shepard has explained in Thinking Animals, there seems to always be another agenda in our teaching children. We include animals in their learning to teach them about human relationships, which we perhaps find more important that creating human-animal relationships, based on true knowledge and not single characteristics. It is easier to continue to use animals as we have been, because children are already intrigued by them.

The other day while at my nanny job, I went to pick up a child from her friend’s house. As I entered the house, the mother, excitedly asked, “Do you want to see our chicks?” And in the same breath, “I’m sorry about the horrible smell, I’ve got a chicken in the oven and I must have set the temperature too high. I’m going to open some windows and air this place out.” The family had just purchased chicks to raise for egg-laying. And they were cooking a chicken for dinner. And complaining about its horrible smell. It’s quite possible that I am too affected by this irony, but I wonder what this is teaching children. We will take care of these cute chicks and help them to grow so they can give us eggs. While they are growing we will eat their likeness for dinner, in another form, the flesh concealed in saran-wrap form. And tonight we’ll read our favorite silly story, Chicken Little. This animal is near and somewhat dear to the child, but what is missing from the child’s understanding of this animal? Do these combined actions create respect and understanding of other species with whom we share this planet?