(Black Beauty Book, Google Images)Black Beauty is a great morale tale that was originally written for people who took care of horses. It was written because Anna Sewell, the author, was unable to walk since she was a child, so she started to learn more and more about horses and how cruelty towards them was often used in excess. The chapter I am mostly going to focus on is Chapter 13, which is one of the chapters that really stuck out in my mind when I read this book.
Chapter 13 is called "The Devil's Trademark" and it is called that for a reason. The premise of this chapter is to show another short about cruelty to animals and what will be the consequence of harming animals. This boy is riding a pony and is trying to get the pony to jump a fence and the pony will not do it. So the boy whips the pony over and over and kicks the pony to go faster and the pony just will not jump the fence. The pony finally gets fed up and bucks up and the boy flies off and falls into the bushes. Black Beauty and John both see the boy fly off and believe that this serves him right and they go on to talk to the boys father who says that this is deserving of the boy because he has told his son over and over not to treat the pony this way and that he needs to be punished. Black Beauty and John go to see James and tell him about what happened and James says that "cruelty was the devil's own trade mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty, we might know who he belonged to..." (Sewell, 52). This is such a strong statement in this article and it also leads back into the title of the chapter. So you had some kind of feel that doing bad things was going to lead to belonging to "the devil".
James goes on to talk about how that boy use to sit and pull the wings off flies and James came up behind him and hit him and the teacher came up and punished him some more for doing these cruel things to creatures of any sort. Black Beauty is a book of respect and honor that humans should have for animals. I believe that this quote really said it best, "there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham-all a sham, James, and it won't stand when things come come to be turned inside out and put down for what they are" (Sewell, 52). I wish this was so. The thought behind this quote is so strong willed and if this was true then how different would this world be? This book is used quite often as lessons for children on how to be kind, nuturing, and respectable to others and to society as a whole. John is trying to say that everyone's religions are sp respectable and show that you should honor thy father and mother and thy neighbor, but what about the animals?? We are suppose to treat animals that are pets humanely, but what about any other type of animal out there that we beat and batter because we there are no laws. Maybe it all really is a sham.... just a down right sham.
(A change, google images)We take so many things for granted in life. I have written in my last couple of blogs how teaching children is probably the most important way for this society to change. If we teach children lessons about animals and show them what is happening to animals and they have the power to change it then this world will be so much different in recent years. Children are the future of this society and if we have them learning these important lessons everything will be different. I very much look forward to what I can and will offer my children when I have them. Make sure that they know the importance of the world and teach them things that I had no ideas about. A new society will be the future.
