Timmy Fell Down the Well!

Oh, I'll FIX you now! Stupid computer problems...

*ahem* Now that THAT is taken care of…

When I talk about anthropomorphic animals in this blog, I tend to be speaking about animal characters that act as humans do, to the point of even standing up and dressing like them in their daily lives. Even if they don’t dress up in human clothes, these characters still have very human speech and sensibilities between themselves.

However, as many know, that is not the only way to show anthropomorphism.

One of the least-talked about types of characters here is ironically probably one of the earliest types of anthro animals: everyday non-talking animals in our lives. These characters are typified not by walking upright or being able to hold a conversation with us, but by lacking the talents of speech and yet still being given human reasoning for their actions. In media, we have characters such as Lassie, Rascal the raccoon, and even Odie from the Garfield comics. In our own lives, we have our pets and the occasional squirrel. Just think of how many mostly one-sided conversations you or your friends might have had with cats or dogs, or how often we say things like “He’s acting guilty” about our pets. Really, this is probably the way most people have experience with anthropomorphism.

When it comes to literature, unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of these kinds of characters. Black Beauty, Old Yeller, The Book of Three, and any book that has a variant of the “boy and his dog” story.

However, what I find most interesting about some of these books is how the ‘language’ of these animals is communicated to us. The protagonists in these stories are frequently human, so it’s fairly common for us to be given ideas of what the animals are trying to hint at and how they’re doing so through what we see of their body language. Another common way of showing how these animals are communicating is to, quite frankly, cheat and just write it out plainly. This usually involves the animals being given snippets of dialogue between themselves and sometimes the humans around them, talking to and about them as we tend to talk about our own animals, but it’s quickly made clear that nobody but these animals can actually ‘hear’ their speech. Sometimes this goes both ways and the animals can’t understand us either, usually leading to humorous instances where they comment on how slow we speak or how we say so much when so little is needed. For a perfect example of this ‘cheating’ method in action, just pull up the 90’s Disney movie, ‘Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey’. In books, Silverwing is a fine and familiar example by this point.

Believe it or not, this dog is one of the main characters in the JRPG Persona 3.
This is one of his snappier quotes.

What I’m getting at with this train of thought is how important conveying language and forms of communication is when telling stories. Having characters like these brings these sorts of language issues into the spotlight and can make for fascinating reading as the author tries to make something innate into something foreign. Some do it better than others, but I’ll always find it neat to see how an author conveys “Timmy fell down the well” compared to “Timmy’s trapped by a bear and needs the family gun”. What sort of tail-wags, ear flicks, and different timbre of yelps will Lassie use to get her point across to us slow-witted, but well-meaning, two-leggers?

Also, for a fun train of thought, where does Wile E. Coyote fit in here? Sure he’s upright and can operate a cell-phone, but I wonder if his being unable to speak is explained with “Of course he doesn’t speak. Coyotes don’t talk!”

Either way, he’s totally cheating with those signs…

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The Unlikely Ones by Mary Brown