Can animals be heroes?
Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
Squarebarb:
There were some of us including GOPpoet who were thinking of starting a writer's thread here on FR. There's a horse thread, a football thread, a Hobbit Hole thread, so why not a thread for us writers?
And mainly sticking to fiction otherwise the discussion tends toward politicsa iinstead of the craft of writing.
Okay Eleutheria5, YOU start the thread."
Eleutheria5:
On it. Could use some help from someone who knows how to do HTTP and other techy stuff, though. Tried to learn, but drat that right hemisphere dominance we creative folks have. I've actually been running a board on the aol writers' club since 1996 called Conservative Writers' Club. Mostly it simply fights flame wars with liberal writers, though, and all the conservative contributors, including me, burn out. It'd be great to get away from that and just swap ideas with people who DON'T wish every one of us a flaming death.
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Can animals be heroes?
On TV, you got Rin Tin Tin, Lassy, and Mr. Ziffel. Mr. Ed doesn’t count. He talks, so is just an anthropomorphised character.
I just finished Traveller by Peter Blake (I think. Same author of Watership Down). It was the story of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia told by Traveller to Tom the cat. Excellent story...original premise. Touching.
And where would this world be if Lassie was not around to warn us that Timmy was in the well?
Is that your dog? I have cats. Three of them, which I brought to Israel with me.
Jack London’s White Fang would count as an authentic animal hero. His thinking and behavior is explained, but it’s not articulated in human terms. Sewel’s Black Beauty is just a human born with four legs and a tail. Same goes for all Disney characters, Babe the Pig, Charlotte and her web.
How are you this morning?
Don’t forget Stuart Little.
By my definition, then, you can’t have a true animal first-person narrative in fiction; only a third-person with insights into the animal’s thinking, who explains him for the reader. A first-person turns into an anthropomorphised human whose concerns have been altered due to his form. We can’t know an animal that intimately without entering an alien world of urges and primal drives. Since that would be alien to us, we must make the animal articulate, which is to make him human.
Oh, yeah. Him, too.
OK so far.
The animals in Amazing Journey were both animals and heros.
Had a dog (Pit Bull). Due to turbulent life, when I reunited with wife, I brought him down to Florida and gave him to the Humane society, since they don’t euthenize after a time limit, like they do in NY. Hope he’s ok. It hurt like anything, parting with him.
For example: Being Lee's horse, he loved the General, so at Appomattox, he believed Lee was there to receive the Yankees' surrender. That kind of limited awareness made the book wonderful in my opinion.
I bet it did. Animals are able to squirrel their way right into your heart.
“You’ve nailed one of the primary differences between movies and TV.”
Comic books have that limitation, too. Or at least most of them do. Japanese Manga sometimes overcome it.
One of the themes of Arabian Nights and other such folktales. Stories told to poor children who need to believe there is a chance however slim of becoming a prince or princess. Often it is the third child who is written off but makes good by being morally superior.
Too much analysis delays writing. However, what is written might be an actual contribution to literature. Remember that art moves way ahead of criticism.
What I wanted to ask is how many drafts did it take for you to produce your final screenplay?
I plan to read more tomorrow. Hopefully, I will finish it.
Seven or eight to get to the version you're reading, but at least one more before it's ready for prime time. I've got some major changes to make in characterization, and the intro is going to be somewhat different.
I have been away but I am back!!
And spell-checking once in a while.
I think of the animals in folk-tales; they are generally there as the ‘companion animal’ that accompanies the hero.
When I was reading The Old Man and the Sea’ I found it to be a classic -— and beautiful-— hero tale. I was wondering where the companion animals was.
Clearly the marlin was a noble victim, and the sharks were enemies.
Then I remembered the old man dreaming of the lions on the beach in Africa. Those were the ‘companion animals’.
Puss In Boots
I have heard of that book but I haven’t read it, will keep it in mind.
It would be a hard thing to do.
We read of animals doing heroic things in the news, mainly waking up their owners in case of fire.
I had an experience that I have never used, maybe will someday. I was helping a rancher neighbor sort cattle, on a green horse that had never handled cattle before -— I was pretty green myself -— and we were charged by a big mean red cow. Luckily she had no horns.
She lifted myself and the horse right up off our feet.
There was no way out since she was in a long alleyway. I turned the horse to her and started beating on her with my hat. My best hat!
She charged us again and got her head under the horse’s
belly and once again raised him off his feet. Both of us, into the air.
I asked him to turn and face her again -— he was trembling all over but he turned and went at her. He was shaking like a leaf. But he did it.
By this time the rancher came at a run with a rope and rescued us.
It was heroic, I think. Maybe I will use it someday.
My best hat was a wreck.
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