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11/01/2007: "animals in literature"

In my novels and short stories I have tried to portray animals as equal to humans. I don't see animals as caricatures of humans as they are often portrayed in literature, pigs with man like faces and so forth, but rather as what they are. To me animals and humans share a capability of emotional response, that of love and hate. They also share the need to survive and as such they destroy each other for food. To me that is not hate, but survival. The Native Americans knew this in their religious traditions. Killing for killing's sake,on the other hand, is hate or insanity and that phenomenon is shared by all animals, human and otherwise. Love to the point of irrationality, complete altruism, is shared likewise, for example in the sagas of Lassie type dogs. What living things in nature can be eliminated from this portrayal and which included? That is another controversy. I know of people who converse with trees and others with snakes. In Puddles Weblog, I try to note the animals in books I review so as to remark on how the writer has shown them to be what they are, not what cartoon purpose they are written to illustrate for purposes of the theme of the book.-editor