Paper: Ethics in/as literature

The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee

About the author:

John Maxwell Coetzee (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist,
linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically
acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice),
the CNA Literary Award (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize,
and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates. Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002[7] and
became an Australian citizen in 2006.

Coetzee is known for his portrayal of his native country both during and after apartheid. His postcolonial
orientation draws upon myth and allegory as freely as it does realism. Coetzee is further distinguished
by his acute awareness of marginalization, his affinity for rural settings, and his unique take on
ethnolinguistic identity. He embarked on a rich literary career. Drawing both on both his experience
living in America during the Vietnam war and on his ancestor's exploration accounts, Coetzee wrote his
first novel, Dusklands (1974). He followed this with In the Heart of the Country (1977) and Waiting for
the Barbarians (1980), in which Coetzee explored the themes of colonialism. In 1983, Coetzee won his
first Booker Prize for The Life and Times of Michael K, a tale of a simple gardener imprisoned in a civil
war from which he seeks liberation. In Foe (1986), Coetzee turned to Robinson Crusoe for inspiration,
writing the narrative from the perspective of the mute Friday, Crusoe's slave whose tongue has been cut
out. In 1990, he wrote Age of Iron, the story of an old South African woman dying of cancer, and in
1994, he wrote Master of Petersburg, a fictionalized account of the Russian author Dostoevsky. Coetzee
became the first author to receive the esteemed Booker Prize twice with Disgrace in 1999. He continues
to publish novels, the most recent of which is The Death of Jesus (2019).

In recent years, Coetzee has become a vocal critic of cruelty to animals and an advocate of animal
rights. In a speech given on his behalf by Hugo Weaving in Sydney on 22 February 2007, Coetzee railed
against the modern animal husbandry industry. The speech was for ‘Voiceless’, the animal protection
institute, an Australian nonprofit animal protection organization of which Coetzee became a patron in
2004. Coetzee's fiction has similarly engaged with animal cruelty and animal welfare, especially The
Lives of Animals, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello, and The Old Woman and the Cats. He is a vegetarian.
Characters:

Elizabeth Costello

A highly-regarded Australian feminist fiction with very strong feelings about people who are cruel to
animals. Costello has been invited to fictional Appleton College to take part in a prestigious lecture
series on that subject. Costello’s presentations are actually lectures written by author Coetzee, “The
Philosophers and the Animals” and “The Poets and the Animals.”
John Bernard
Elizabeth’s son who is employed at Appleton College. He is a professor of physics and astronomy. Her
story is told in the third person, but primarily through the perspective of her son.
Norma Bernard
John's wife. Tension exists between her and Elizabeth and this tension is exemplified when, despite
having them eat in a separate room—she serves her children chicken for dinner.
Abraham Stern
Poet-in-Residence at Appleton College is notably absent from Costello’s lecture series because he has
taken exception to the extremities of her pro-animal rights stance. A comparison between the slaughter
of animals to make meat and the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust is particularly galling to Stern.
Thomas O'Hearne
Professor of Philosophy at Appleton who presents an ideological alternative to the animal rights issue
from a global sociological perspective. O’Hearne counters that the animal rights movement is mostly
located within industrialized nations and may actually be more a representation of Western superiority
over the Third World.

In this landmark book, Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights
in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello’s own sense of mortality, her compassion for
animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner
Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee
immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an
emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep
human conviction- Coetzee brings all these elements into the work.

The novella consists of two chapters, "The Philosophers and the Animals" and "The Poets and the
Animals," first delivered by Coetzee as guest lectures at Princeton on 15 and 16 October 1997, part of
the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The Princeton lectures consisted of two short stories featuring a
recurring character, the Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee's alter ego. Costello is invited to
give a guest lecture to the fictional Appleton College in Massachusetts, just as Coetzee is invited to
Princeton, and chooses to discuss not literature, but animal rights, just as Coetzee does.

Summary of the work:

Elizabeth Costello is invited to Appleton College's annual literary seminar as a guest lecturer. Despite
her stature as a celebrated novelist, she opts not to give lectures on literature or writing, but on animal
cruelty. Much like Coetzee, Costello is a vegetarian and abhors industries that experiment on and
slaughter animals.

The story is framed by a narrative involving Costello and her son, John Bernard, who happens to be a
junior professor at Appleton. Costello's relationship with Bernard is strained, and her relationship with
John’s wife, Norma, even more so. Bernard was not instrumental in bringing his mother to campus. In
fact, the university's leaders were unaware of Bernard's relationship with Costello when they issued the
invitation. Bernard’s fears that his mother’s presence and opinions will be polarizing and controversial
are entirely prophetic. In his private thoughts, he more than once wishes she had not accepted
Appleton’s invitation. Costello gives two lectures, then contributes to a debate with Appleton
philosophy professor Thomas O’Hearne.

"The Philosophers and the Animals"

Costello's first lecture begins with an analogy between the Holocaust and the exploitation of animals.
Costello makes the point that, just as residents in the neighborhoods of the death camps knew what was
happening at the camps, but chose to turn a blind eye, so it is common practice today for otherwise
respectable members of society to turn a blind eye to industries that bring pain and death to animals.
This turns out to be the most controversial thing that Costello says during her visit, and it causes a
Jewish professor of the college to boycott the dinner held in her honor. In her first lecture, Costello also
moves to reject reason as the preeminent quality that separates humans from animals and allows humans
to treat animals as less than the equals of humans. She proposes that reason might simply be a species
specific trait, “the specialism of a rather narrow self-regenerating intellectual tradition ... which for its
own motives it tries to install at the center of the universe.”

At the same time that Costello rejects reason as the premier human distinction, she also challenges the
assumption that animals do not possess reason. Her argument rests on the fact that, while science cannot
prove that animals do abstract thinking, it also cannot prove that they do not. In support of this
argument, Costello summarizes an ape experiment that was conducted in the 1920s by Wolfgang
Kohler. The principal player in the experiment was an ape named Sultan who was variously deprived of
his bananas until he reasoned his way into obtaining them. Faced with the challenge of stacking several
crates into a makeshift ladder, in order to reach the bananas that have been suspended above his reach,
Sultan succeeds in demonstrating this elementary form of reasoning.

What Costello objects to, however, is the basic inanity of the exercise which in no way explores any
higher intellectual functions that Sultan might be capable of. The experiment, Costello objects, ignores
any emotional hurt or confusion that the ape might be experiencing in favor of concentrating on what is,
after all, a very elemental task. The ape might be thinking about the human who has constructed these
tests: "What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is
easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?" Animal
experiments, Costello concludes, fail to measure anything of real interest, because they ask the wrong
questions and ignore the more interesting ones: "a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him
[Sultan] away from ethics and metaphysics toward the humbler reaches of practical reason."

"The Poets and the Animals"

In her second lecture, Costello suggests that humans can come to understand or "think their way into"
the nature of animals through poetic imagination. As examples, she invokes Rilke's "The Panther" and
Ted Hughes's "The Jaguar" and "Second Glance at a Jaguar." "By bodying forth the jaguar," Costello
says, "Hughes shows us that we too can embody animals – by the process called poetic invention that
mingles breath and sense in a way that no one has explained and no one ever will." Costello also takes
issue with what she calls the "ecological vision" harbored by most environmental scientists, which
values biological diversity and the overall health of an ecosystem above the individual animal. This is
not a point of view shared by individual animals, all of whom will fight for their individual survival, she
argues. "Every living creature fights for its own, individual life, refuses, by fighting, to accede to the
idea that the salmon or the gnat is of a lower order of importance than the idea of the salmon or the idea
of the gnat," Costello explains.

The third organized event of Costello's visit is a debate of sorts with Appleton philosophy professor
Thomas O'Hearne. O'Hearne begins the debate by proposing that the animal rights movement is a
specifically "Western crusade" which arose in nineteenth-century Britain. Non-western cultures can,
with justice, argue that their cultural and moral values are different and do not require them to observe
the same respect for animals mandated by Western animals rights activists. To this assertion, Costello
responds that "kindness to animals ... has been more widespread than you imply." As an example of
kindness to animals, she offers the keeping of pets, which is universal. And she notes that children enjoy
a particular closeness to animals: “they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.” Costello also
proposes that industries that have been enacting animal cruelty for profit should have the greater role in
atoning for that cruelty.

O'Hearne next puts forward the argument that animals do not perform abstract reasoning, as
demonstrated by the failure of apes to acquire more than a basic level of language, and are therefore not
entitled to the same rights as humans. In response, Costello more or less restates her skepticism about
the value of animal experiments. She refers to such experiments as "profoundly anthropocentric" and
"imbecile." O'Hearne then proposes that animals do not understand death with the full consciousness of
self with which humans regard death; therefore, to kill an animal quickly and painlessly is ethical.
O'Hearne's final point is that people cannot be friends with animals because we do not understand them.
As an example, he uses the bat. "You can be friends neither with a Martian nor with a bat, for the simple
reason that you have too little in common with them." In her response, Costello equates the belief that
animals are not entitled to equal rights because they do not reason abstractly, with racism. She then,
once again, rejects reason as a valid basis for the animal rights argument, concluding that, if reason is all
she shares with her philosophical opponents, then she has no use for it.

Analysis:

 One of the central themes of the essay is the idea that animals possess their own form of
consciousness and subjective experience. Coetzee challenges the traditional human-centered
view that animals are mere objects or resources for human use. He argues that animals have their
own desires, emotions, and capacity for suffering, and therefore should be treated with respect
and compassion. By giving a voice to animals through the character of Elizabeth Costello,
Coetzee forces readers to confront their own assumptions and biases towards non-human beings.

 Coetzee also delves into the moral implications of our treatment of animals. He criticizes the
prevalent practices of factory farming, animal experimentation, and hunting, which he sees as
forms of exploitation and cruelty. Through Costello's lecture, Coetzee urges readers to reconsider
these practices and to question the ethical justifications often used to justify them. He
emphasizes the need for empathy and a sense of responsibility towards other living beings.

 Another significant aspect of "The Lives of Animals" is the exploration of the role of literature in
shaping our understanding of animals. Coetzee suggests that literature has the power to bridge
 the gap between humans and animals, allowing us to imagine their inner lives and empathize
with their experiences. He references various literary works that depict animals, such as Kafka's
"A Report to an Academy" and Tolstoy's "Kholstomer," to illustrate how literature can challenge
our anthropocentric worldview and expand our moral horizons.

 Overall, "The Lives of Animals" is a profound and thought-provoking essay that raises important
questions about our relationship with animals and the ethical implications of our actions.
Coetzee's exploration of animal consciousness, moral responsibility, and the role of literature
serves as a powerful call to reevaluate our treatment of non-human beings and to recognize their
inherent worth and dignity.

Prisoners of war (allegory)

Between Elizabeth and her son there appears an interesting conversation concerning zoos. She states that
when the first zoos were opened the keepers had to protect the animals from the spectators, who in their
turn considered the animals put into the cages with only one reason – to be insulted. In this way the
animals in the zoos were, and continue, being treated like prisoners in a triumph, like prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war were always treated as the winner wanted – they could be killed, their throats could be
cut, their hearts could be torn out – and there never was a law against the prisoners of war.

Ape (symbol)
In the first lecture, The Philosophers and the Animals, Elizabeth Costello draws a parallel between
herself and an ape. The image of an ape she uses from the Kafka’s short story “Report to an Academy”,
in which Kafka represents a humanized ape who gives an outline of his life from an animal to a human.
Elizabeth uses the metaphor in the contrary meaning – from human to animal. Thus the image of ape
acquires symbolic meaning – it means that to become more human a person needs to get into the skin of
an animal, metaphorically, and only then a person can change his own worldview. The ape symbolizes
transformations within one’s heart.
Factories of death (symbol)
Elizabeth gives a vivid image of concentration camps created by the Nazi. She calls these camps
“factories of death”. These “factories” becomes a symbol for inhumanity, cruelty and lack of any
sympathy.
Themes:

Rights of the animals-

Elizabeth Costello is a great admirer and supporter of animals, and of right of the animals. She states
that animals must have the right to life, the right not to be subjected to pain or harm, the right to equal
protection before the law. She gives different arguments of her ideas, which she mostly takes from
history, philosophy, literature, and religion. Considering animals having a soul is one of her arguments.
Vegetarianism-
Being such a devoted animals protector Elizabeth is surely a vegetarian, thus the theme of vegetarianism
is opened in the novel as well. In the discussion at dinner many arguments sre given supposing the
reasons for people becoming vegetarians – some find the roots of the ideas in education, other in
religion. Elizabeth herself says that she is vegetarian with only one purpose – to save her soul, as she
cannot eat beings also possessing souls.
Difference between men and animals-
The main argument of difference between people and animals is the feeling of shame. The opponents of
Elizabeth suggest that since animals do not possess that feeling, they cannot reckon on the same rights of
people. Another differentiation is brought up in reasoning the meaning of death. In the final debate with
the professor of philosophy, the theme of death and its understanding is brought up. What is crucial in
his position is that animals do not have fear for death as people have, and life for an animal is not so
important as for people.

Previous Year Questions:

Part A : 1) Attempt a character sketch of Norma Bernard.
2) Attempt a character sketch of Elizabeth Castello