I’ve stopped updating this site as I am making a transition from teaching at Moscrop to teaching at North. In the meantime, find me on Facebook and Twitter.

-Mr. Turner

This class: We began reading Speak.

Homework: Read up to page 30 on your own.

This class: We studied Pastoral Poetry as a genre, and read Theocritus’s second Idyll, and Virgil’s second Eclogue.

Homework: Prepare for your group presentation.

This class: We discussed video and documentary images in relation to Don Delillo’s story “Videotape”.

Homework: Pick and take notes on a video for this creative writing assignment. You may get started at home, but it will be due at the end of next class.

This class: We read “Yes Ma’am” by Langston Hughes, and discussed how it might or might not be used to promote a more general approach to crime.

Homework: If you have not yet handed in your “Penny in The Dust” Essay, it is overdue.

Things are winding down here at school. There will be no more updates for the last couple classes.

Have a great break!

These days, human activities are causing some serious impacts on our surroundings. Some of the examples are pollution, lack of natural resources and also our cruelty against animals. The issue about animal cruelty has become very significant, since an abnormally large number of animals are being killed by humans every day. Furthermore, our views on killing animals are continuously being influenced by our surroundings and desires, in such way that we think that killing animals is okay, since we are superior to them. Our world cannot find a solution to this issue yet, but the opinions of a certain few about the ethics of killing animals have been illustrated in literature. Today, we are going to discuss some of the ideas about killing animals mentioned in literature, how they are written in order to affect our opinions and how killing animals is okay under certain circumstances. 

First of all, numerous ideas against animal cruelty are present in diverse literatures. Some people claimed that animals should be treated the same way as humans since they are equal in certain limits to humans. In some of the stories like “The Sea Devil” and “The Fish”, the authors explain to us how the animals are similar to humans in different ways. For example, in “The Sea Devil”, a fisherman gets dragged by a manta ray in the water while he was trying to catch a fish. In the story, the author reminds us that animals have feelings just as humans do. By this passage, “Now at last he knew how the fish must feel when the line tightens and drags him toward the alien element that is his doom. Now he knew.” we can notice that after the cruel event, the person finally understood how the fish felt when he was dragging them out of the water. Also, in “The Fish”, it talks about a fisher man that also caught a fish, but sends it free after, amazed by its beauty. The author described the fish as “oil spreading a rainbow”, because he thought that even the animals that seem worthless have their own beauty.

In addition, some people claimed that killing animals can be judged right depending on their purpose. In a story called “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller”, a boy kills many animals for pleasure. Consequently, he gets cursed and murders his parents unintentionally. This story is telling us that killing animals for pleasure is a bad entity and can bring bad consequences. As a result, killing animals can be justified by its purpose such as finding food for their family.

On the other hand, in the bible, it is mentioned that humans should take the control over the animals. In the book of Genesis 1 verse 26, it is written: “God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” This passage explains that humans are the king of the earth, who is also taking control of all living lives, including the animals. Therefore, according to the bible, it is okay to kill animals. Here, we can see that there is a contradiction between our opinions about the issue.

Second of all, considering these contradictory ideas, some of us have drawn a conclusion that killing animals is okay only under certain circumstances. As I mentioned before, the message that “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller” has given us is that our act of killing animals can be justified depending on our purpose. For example, when one kills animals in order to survive and provide their families with food, it is okay to do so, since most humans need to eat meat for survival. For instance, big animals such as a lion hunt other animals in order to feed themselves.

However, this idea is not being considered by most of us, since our views on ethics of killing animals are distracted by our surroundings and our desires. People who make business by selling meat are influenced by the desire of gaining much profit as possible in such way that they started putting animals in very small cages in order to make them as fat as possible. Also, people can get influenced by their surroundings. One of the examples is that people who are told by their parents that eating meat is normal, they will keep eating meat as much as they want. However, when people are told by their parents that eating meat is bad in terms of animalism and they were encouraged to be a vegetarian, they are more likely to not eat meat at all. As a result, we should kill animals in good purposes and not get influenced by our surroundings.

Third of all, people’s opinions about the issue are presented in different ways. One of the differences is that the way that the author describes the deaths or portrays affects our opinion and reaction about the ethics of killing animals. In order to affect our opinions as much as possible, there are stories that have very vivid images. For example, in stories such as “The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller”, “The Sea Devil”, “January”, and “Mercy”, the author gives us very violent and vivid images of the issue. In “The Sea Devil”, when the man struggles to escape from the manta ray, all the injuries that he suffered are described very clearly and violently in order to attract the readers’ attention or to make the situation look more serious. In this passage, “He felt the razor-sharp barnacles bite into his hand, collapse under the pressure, drive their tiny slime-covered shell splinters deep into his flesh.”, which was described when the guy was trying to hold onto a stake in order to set himself free from the manta ray, is vivid enough for us to take it seriously. As a result, it makes us understand more clearly the pain that the fish have when humans try to catch them.

However, in “A Runnable Stag”, the author didn’t really describe the death of the animal, therefore, it is more likely that the readers don’t really care about the death of the animal and that the deepest meaning of the story does not really deliver to the readers than the one in “The Sea Devil”.

In conclusion, our opinions concerning the issue about the animals are presented in literatures in various ways. The authors try to make the images as vivid as possible in order to deliver their message clearly to the readers. However, despite the fact that these kinds of messages are delivered to us, we continue to kill animals as much as we want. This is because our views on the ethics of animals are continuously being distorted by our surroundings and desires. Therefore, from now on, our cruelty against animals should stop, and the animals depend on you to make changes for them.

Homework: Be ready to present next class if you didn’t present today.

This class: We studied Epic Poetry. See the slides above and the handout here.

Homework: Read either Tablets 1, 2 and 3 of Gilgamesh or lines 1-600 of Beowulf, if you haven’t already done so.

Homework: Come to class ready to finish your “Penny in the Dust” essay. Also, if you haven’t sent me your short story yet, you MUST send it, or I will be forced to ask you to produce a story from scratch in class next day.