{"id":776662,"date":"2024-10-01T08:17:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T12:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=776662"},"modified":"2024-10-01T09:20:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T13:20:52","slug":"776662","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=776662","title":{"rendered":"‘Death of a Pig’: When one animal changes a human\u2019s mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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In his essay 'Death of a Pig', E. B. White tells the story of a pig who stole his heart. White writes that he had become accustomed, over the years, to buying a pig, feeding him, then slaughtering him for meat. He never questioned the practice. That all changed with a particular pig, who, one day, didn\u2019t turn up for his regular feeding. Alarmed, and believing his pig to be sick, White tended to him like a parent would a child. His 'sympathies were now wholly with the pig'. White\u2019s sudden affection for a pig he\u2019d been planning, up until that point, to eat, might seem incongruous. But it reflects the ambivalence many human beings feel toward animals, and sheds light on why we hate to see them in pain. As White writes, the pig 'had suffered in a suffering world', and his experience became 'the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness'. He realized that 'what could be true of my pig could be true also of the rest of my tidy world'. After his 'Death of a Pig' essay, White wrote 'Charlotte\u2019s Web', the cherished children\u2019s book about Wilbur, a lovable young pig, and Charlotte, the spider who saves him from slaughter.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

MAYA CHUNG:<\/strong> Over the past week or so, Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippopotamus whose glistening skin, jaunty trot, and rippling neck rolls has won the internet\u2019s devotion. A Washington Post article last week tried to explain the young calf\u2019s popularity, citing scientific evidence for how the cuteness of animals \u201chijacks our brains,\u201d similar to the way a baby\u2019s adorable features \u201cstrike at people\u2019s ingrained nurturing instinct\u201d \u2014 an evolutionary advantage that has helped humans survive. But human attitudes toward other creatures are far more complicated than the latest internet frenzy would suggest. On the one hand, human affection for animals, which often manifests in their anthropomorphization, is well documented… On the other hand, many people still believe that other species are lesser beings \u2014 to be kept in zoos or in homes as pets, to be eaten, to test drugs on…<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly 30 years earlier, The Atlantic published \u201cDeath of a Pig,\u201d an essay by E. B. White in which he tells the story of a pig who stole his heart. White writes that he had become accustomed, over the years, to buying a pig in the spring, feeding it over the summer and fall, then slaughtering it for meat in the winter. He never questioned the practice, believing the killing to be \u201cquick and skillful,\u201d while the \u201csmoked bacon and ham provide a ceremonial ending whose fitness is seldom questioned.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That all changed with a particular pig, who, one day, didn\u2019t turn up for his regular feeding. Alarmed, and believing his pig to be sick… White tended to him like a parent would a child \u2014 checking his ears for temperature, attempting to entice him with milk. Nothing seemed to work, and White\u2019s mood declined precipitously; his \u201csympathies were now wholly with the pig.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

White\u2019s sudden affection for a pig he\u2019d been planning, up until that point, to eat, might seem incongruous. But it reflects the ambivalence many human beings feel toward animals, and sheds light on why we hate to see them in pain. As White writes, the pig \u201chad suffered in a suffering world,\u201d and his experience became \u201cthe embodiment of all earthly wretchedness.\u201d He realized that \u201cwhat could be true of my pig could be true also of the rest of my tidy world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ultimately, these questions get to the heart of how humans perceive themselves. Are we, as the Bible suggests, the pinnacle of all God\u2019s creation? What, really, distinguishes us from all of Earth\u2019s other creatures? In a review of two books on the discovery of dinosaurs that we published this summer, Brenda Wineapple reflects on how the finding of the first fossil challenged the privileged place that humans believed they occupied in the grand scheme of life. Though evolution is now largely accepted as fact, it\u2019s undeniable that humans still see themselves as the top of the pyramid: We still eat animals, and we still test our drugs on them.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1989, Steven Zak wrote about animal-rights activists who were trying to make people contend with the question of \u201cwhether animals, who are known to have feelings and psychological lives, ought to be treated as mere instruments of science.\u201d In his essay, Zak asked the reader to consider a world where humans were prohibited from the use of \u201cany animals to their detriment.\u201d He mentions a 1988 study that found that scientists could, through the use of \u201ccurrent and prospective alternative techniques,\u201d effectively use fewer animals in labs. Though progress has been made in the intervening years, a world free of animal testing has not come to pass. That would require an immense shift in worldview, wherein, as Zak writes, \u201cinstead of imagining that we have a divine mandate to dominate and make use of everything else in the universe, we could have a sense of belonging to the world and of kinship with the other creatures in it”…<\/em><\/p>\n

Four years after his \u201cDeath of a Pig\u201d essay, he wrote Charlotte\u2019s Web, the cherished children\u2019s book about Wilbur, a lovable young pig, and Charlotte, the spider who saves him from slaughter. Near the end of the book, as autumn approaches, Charlotte tells Wilbur, \u201cthe leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall. Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world\u201d \u2014 one that White\u2019s pig never got the chance to see. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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