"Realism has never been comfortable with ideas. It could not be otherwise: realism is premised on the idea that ideas have no autonomous existence, can exist only in things. So when it needs to debate ideas, as here, realism is driven to invent situations - walks in the countryside, conversations - in which characters give voice to contending ideas and thereby in a certain sense embody them" (Coetzee, 9).
(Talking Dog Realism. Google Images)Ah Realism. How we all strive to use realism in our riding to give voice to objects that do not really have a voice. Or maybe we use it to straightforward or matter-of-fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is. You know most people use realism, in my mind, as a means to tell people things about other things that do not have a voice. Much like animals. We say that animals don't want to be locked up and they all want to be set free live lives and express things. Well how do we know that at all? Well I guess we just assume most of anything and project our feelings onto the animals to make it sound like that that is what they want. I'm not saying that we shouldn't let animals go free but I was just saying that we do not know what they want. Maybe we saved them from being killed and now we are trying to send them back to either be killed or who knows what. I guess I do not really know per say.
(Queen of the Animals. Google Images)
So in the story Disgrace by Coetzee where they are discussing these animals locked up in cages because they can not find them homes. And there is a bulldog that is older and barely moves in the cage and there is just a classic line that I just love. "They are part of the furniture, part of the alarm system. They do us the honour of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things" (Coetzee, 335). Man that is just classic because is it not true? I mean to some extent it is true. We keep them locked up when we leave the house, they eat when we feed them, walk when we want to walk them, they follow everything we do because we are their masters and we own them. Our pets indeed treat us like Gods. They follow us around and sit next to us and they act, because to some extent we do, hold every power above them even when we all feel like we do it for them. It is just very interesting that we to some extent take advantage of our pets because they indeed look at us like we are gods. "For the first time in my life I was without a way out- at least there was no direct way out" (Kafka, 321). Now I am taking this out of context because right here this is talking about a gorilla and how he is trapped in, but I guess all animals that are used for huan purposes end up trapped in. Between zoos, circus, pets these all have there animals locked up and there really is no escape out unless the animals is let go by the owner. We hold so much power over these creatures that I am not sure what we would do if all the animals in the world decided that they were going to revolt or go on strike. It would remind me of a movie of some sort if that happened.
