Symbolic Vs. Literal

Animals have held an important place in literature for thousands of years. And even before written languages, ancient people told stories through drawings of animals on the walls of their cave homes. One of the first literary compositions that drew on animals as examples for humans to follow or avoid was Aesop’s Fables from the sixth century B.C. It has served as the standard for symbolic didacticism. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, with the publication of Charles Darwin’s controversial On the Origin of Species, animals in literature began taking on a more literal meaning. Through the advanced theory that human beings had not been created separately from animals but had instead evolved from them, Western society was thrown for a loop as many began questioning their beliefs while science elevated animals to a new level in the human and natural worlds, causing diction on them to take quite the new focus. Nevertheless, upon the arrival of the twentieth century, many writers, such as James Joyce and Franz Kafka (Pavlovski), once again turned to old animal stories and genres to develop works that featured allegorical animal figures. So animals have stood as allegorical figures to represent human nature and as a rich body of metaphors for the inanimate as well as the animate. Moreover, beyond figurative uses, they have also been peoples’ servants, companions, objects of the hunt, and food on the table. They have served literature, as well as life itself, well.

Animals, acting both symbolically and literally, do well in the development of storylines. In adding to the effect of the mood of a text, we can see certain animals’ stereotypes used to portray feelings of not only characters, but settings, weather, and even time. Paying attention to the role of each animal and the purpose it serves can help someone understand what the author is trying to convey, as animals are often used as tools for such purposes.

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