Coetzee

I really liked what I read of Elizabeth Costello so far. I can tell because I enjoyed it just as much after I had to get up off the grass in the center of the Quad and go back to my room. That seems to be the interest barometer nowadays. Coetzee’s innovative writing style intrigued me, and I initially read the book as a story. What he is most successful with, however, was presenting Elizabeth’s lectures—which were originally his own (Anthology, 338)—as just hers. Let me explain a little further. Coetzee presents the lectures in a two-sided way. Elizabeth is giving them, but others are commenting and making judgments. We are not immediately asked to support her arguments, as if Coetzee had presented them to us in an anthology or a set of “collected works on animal rights.” When a lecture is being presented in this way, almost forcibly, and you choose not to agree with it, you will tend to disagree with everything being said, almost on principle. You tend to “like” or “dislike” the speaker or author and make blanket judgments. When an opinion is expressed as it was in Elizabeth Costello, with the ability to accept or not accept readily, you can choose what it is you really want to agree with, without feeling any real allegiance to the one speaking. This is Coetzee’s major triumph. I may not agree with everything Elizabeth says, but I can choose what I do agree with. And I feel stronger doing so. I am not succumbing to a mindset which is being thrust upon me. The resulting opinions which I choose to agree with are made mine by that express volition. I can choose to react as Norma did, too, and “snort” at Elizabeth’s comments (Coetzee, 77). For the most part, however, I chose not to.

During lectures we might feel like we cannot question what is being presented to us. Elizabeth Costello was not like that.

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I will try not to be redundant in the following paragraphs. I feel like a lot of my writing has made me a broken record of “animal’s worth,” “respect,” “equality,” and “humanness.” I will try to come about my thoughts in a different way.

One way I do not think I can do that yet is through the Holocaust, which “many people say,” “is the event beyond analogy.” (Anthology, 342). I have not learned enough or thought enough to debate how fair that argument is. I think the comparisons are valid and effective—and sickeningly resonate—BUT… And I can’t quite qualify what the BUT is. My mom had a great uncle who was liberated from Dachau. A priest. To her, this argument would probably be too personal as it is for many—probably even for me although I’m not positive. The simplest reason for the uneasiness cultivated by this argument is biological: we protect our own. This goes along with what I’ve been saying earlier. We are most important to us—that is perfectly natural. That is why we have difficulty with this analogy. Shouldn’t it be that people’s deaths are more traumatic than other beings? To many this analogy seems like profanity. The question in my mind then, isn’t about superiority, but relativity. Any superiority we feel can realistically only be relative. We do not have the authority—ignoring the question of religion—to make our superiority an absolute truth. I’ll have to leave the question of the Holocaust analogy at that for now. I think if I thought more about it I could come to a more complete conclusion.

Many people aren't sure that comparisons can't be made to the Holocaust. I think it's fair to say that an Animal holocaust is occurring, however.

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There was one thing I more definitively disagreed with. (Although I’m still not one hundred percent—nothing’s definite anymore, in college!) Elizabeth’s treatment of “bat being” and “human being.” Coetzee is arguing that it is possible to place ourselves completely in another’s beings—just as John testifies that Elizabeth could place herself in her character’s. I don’t think it is ever possible, however to place ourselves into the bat’s being. Elizabeth uses the analogy of death. (Coetzee, 77) We can place ourselves into the corpse’s “being”—if we can even call it that—so we must be able to place ourselves in the bat’s existence. I will ignore the problem of whether we can truly understand death to focus on another. Death is one state that we will experience one day, inescapably, but we cannot ever understand what it is to be a bat because we will never be bats. The states, of human condition and the other’s, are not parallel. I think that, ironically, Elizabeth’s reasoning is anthropocentric: “I can feel what a bat feels, so therefore they are worthy.” We should not need to completely understand other animals to respect them. We should simply accept them as other life forms. We have made our measure of worth reason. That is not to say that other forms of worth are not equally important to other species. In an alternate universe, couldn’t Max the dog look down on Naomi in Peter Singer’s short story because he has a “better sense of smell than [her]?” (Anthology, 346) Once again, we are not absolute judges. This seems to be the polemical issue when concerning animal’s worth, which all arguments stem from. Are we the best? I answer: what does that mean? How can Naomi’s father asserts that “there is more to human existence than there is to bat existence” (Anthology, 347)? I wonder where he got this evidence. What is this “more?” I believe it can only be defined in human terms and therefore is not a transitive “betterness.” We may think we are the best, but we are the only ones with that viewpoint. What a pathetic sort of superiority that is, a bully asserting his power on the playground when no one else is even listening.

How could we ever say we know what a bat is like? Why do we care in the first place?

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So, ultimately, I agree with Elizabeth’s big idea, as weak a statement that is to make. I don’t think I need to go through her points one by one and check them off. You will get the idea. I want to end by going back to Norma’s snorting and sighing, something which strangely struck me as profound. I believe Norma, in a pun perhaps Coetzee intended, represents the “norm” of society. The opinions most people hold in regard to animals, a sort of passivity and a “why should I care?” During one of Elizabeth’s lectures Norma sighs, a negative response to Elizabeth’s arguments, so that only John can hear. She is subtly trying to impress her opinions upon his. We are given the sense that that generally works and that it is not very difficult. How easy is that? How easy it is for the norm to be maintained. People who wish to combat animal cruelty or promote vegetarianism have to constantly face the Norma’s of the world—the Norm. They cannot sigh in the audience and incite change. They must get in people’s faces, yell, or make shocking and loaded statements as Elizabeth does. Change is difficult and people are hesitant to accept it, especially if they just don’t want to. When, as John tells his mother, many people “don’t want a vegetarian diet” and trying to help is a “waste of time” “when they won’t help themselves.” (Coetzee, 104) John continues to show the appeal of normalcy by humoring his wife and saying, “a few hours and [Elizabeth will] be gone, then we can return to normal.” (Coetzee, 114) As much as Elizabeth tries to make an impact, she even has difficulty persuading her own son. Normalcy is just that. It is normal. It is entirely pervasive, and it will be very difficult to overcome. But not impossible. Slavery in America was once the norm. The horrors of the Holocaust, if they weren’t the norm, at least became standard and happened daily. But as these norms changed and were eradicated so can the horrors of animal cruelty.

Activism is one way to combat the norm.

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