TALKING BEASTS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Anthropomorphism is the assignment of human characteristics to non-human entities. It has long been used in children’s literature, and has been universally accepted, but one must wonder where the concept came from and for what purpose it was designed to serve.

Though printed books intended expressly for children were not really in existence until well into the 18th century during that period of reassessment of ‘child as a concept’ that I have discussed before, there were some early works that used animals as a means of early phonics – children were instructed to mimic animals sounds to learn the alphabet. As new species were discovered in the colonies, more interest was piqued in exploring the personalities of these creatures and this crept into children’s literature. The animals engaged the children, while educational psychology was present.

With animals as lead characters there was room for silliness and mistakes with a degree of emotional distance that prevents the message from being too personal, close, or painful. Burke and Copenhaver (2004) say this face-saving distance is needed for children to be a part of the conversation without embarrassment or discomfort, the Ugly Duckling inspires an empathy that may not be present for an ugly child.

THE RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE

C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series is well known for its copious use of talking animals, but he also included non-talking animals in his scenes.

Lewis held views about animals that couldn’t comprehend cruelty towards them because he believed they were removed enough from human free will to not ‘earn’ cruelty or punishment for poor ethical decisions. This explains his wanting to humanize his animal characters; he gives them free will as well as the consequences that accompany that. C.S. Lewis had a strong connection to the Bible and Christian theology and his perspective on original sin was of course that human kind had fallen and allowed through it’s abuse of free will, a permanent influence of evil to exist in the world. In this case then the animals that he affords anthropomorphic quality are at once ‘elevated’ to and ‘maligned’ with human status. This view was shared by colleague and friend J.R.R. Tolkein and both men shared worlds that have this theme in common, that is the use of the fairy tale and its analogical powers to provide a vehicle for human mysteries such as evil and pain.

"Sometimes fairy stories may say best what’s to be said” - C.S. Lewis, (1982 cited in Greggerson, 2004).

So, this is where the distinction between talking and non-talking beasts becomes obvious – and with it the distinction between Lewis and Tolkein. In Tolkien's legendarium, only humans have the privilege of being able to leave the world for an afterlife in paradise after death. However, Lewis had a different notion of the afterlife in his stories. At the end of?The Last Battle, all the righteous characters find their way to heaven, Aslan's (God’s) country. This includes humans, centaurs, and talking animals as they all have immortal souls.

Again, with ‘human power’ comes retribution for abuse of it - the speaking animals of Narnia could lose their human-like intelligence, if they abused it. This is mentioned in?The Magician's Nephew, when Aslan grants speech to some of the animals.

In?The Last Battle, one of the villains. Ginger the cat loses his power of speech because of his crimes, his soul is then damned with the other non-talking animals in this ‘end-of-days’ apocalyptic episode of the series. Whether this is consistent with Lewis's view on pain and punishment of ‘stupid/innocent’ animals, it is hard to fathom, perhaps this is his creative license at play? Ginger the cat was an atheist so he chose neither Aslan (God) nor Tash (the Devil) and so he was relegated to the faction of the population that was not chosen for salvation. Interestingly though Lewis did believe in the Christian doctrine of Hell, he chose to have us believe that as the door to Heaven freezes shut, the remaining creatures simply cease to be.

THE BORING BIT:

One article I read which is cited below warns that children growing up with anthropomorphic characters in their stories will learn less and develop a misunderstanding of animals.

To be fair I have given this ‘study’ space in my article, and far be it for me to argue with the qualified psychologists, but I refute the negative impact that this literary device would have on our youngsters, but then to each his own. “Fantasy elements are often employed even in books designed to convey serious information about the real world, including books with a focus on scientific knowledge. “One question is whether the use of anthropomorphic elements in books might be counterproductive for learning” (Ganea et al., 2011). I should think allowing distance in the event of discussion of serious topics would provide the safety needed to navigate the information from a less personally invested position, until they are older at least, but again – that’s just me! I believe we are children in the briefest, magical blink of an eye, while we are serious, boring old adults for such a very long time. We may truly believe animals are people for a brief time, but this belief is soon eradicated by the brutal maturity that we all must go through – so there is not much danger of having a corrupted view of reality.

I believe that giving latitude to flights of fancy and fantastical concepts supports the innovative brain – a belief that is also shared by many managers and CEO’s of larger corporations who have begun to encourage reading groups to fire those synapses and create those neural pathways that we had as kids.

RESOURCES:

Burke, C.L., & Copenhaver, J.G. (2004). Animals as people in children’s literature. Language Arts, 81 (3), January. https://cdn.ncte.org/nctefiles/store/samplefiles/journals/la/la0813animals.pdf

Ganea, P.A., Canfield, C.F., Simons-Ghafari, K., & Chou, T. (2014). Do cavies talk? The effect of anthropomorphic picture books on children's knowledge about animals. Developmental Psychology, Frontier Psychology. 5. April 10. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00283

Ganea, P.A., Ma, L., & DeLoache, J. (2011). Young children's learning and transfer of biological information from picture books to real animals.?Child Development. 82, June 16, 1421–1433. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01612.x

Greggersen, G. (2004). C.S. Lewis on the Pain of Animals, Inklings Forever: A collection of essays presented at the fourth Frances White Ewbank colloquium on C.S. Lewis & friends, Vol 4. Taylor University, Upland Indiana. https://pillars.taylor.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=inklings_forever#:~:text=In%20this%20sense%20Lewis%20would,The%20Four%20Loves%2C%2079).

Jacobs, A.M., & Willems, R.M. (2018). The psychology of fiction: The fictive brain: Neurocognitive correlates of engagement in literature. Review of General Psychology, 22(2) 147–160. doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000106