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Definition of Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings). Some famous examples of anthropomorphism include Winnie the Pooh, the Little Engine... read full definition
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings). Some famous examples of anthropomorphism include Winnie... read full definition
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings). Some famous... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Kitten's Neck:
Early in Chapter 1, a noisy cat prowls around the Wright family home. Richard's father, prone to anger, shouts, "Kill the damn thing!" Richard, then only four years old, takes this hyperbolic instruction very literally:
I found a piece of rope, made a noose, slipped it about the kitten's neck, pulled it over a nail, then jerked the animal clear of the ground. It gasped, slobbered, spun, doubled, clawed the air frantically; finally its mouth gaped and its pink-white tongue shot out stiffly. I tied the rope to a nail and went to find my brother.
Richard, as a very young boy, already makes a calculated and violent choice: "my deep hate of [my father] urged me to a literal acceptance of his word." So Richard takes his father's hyperbolic instruction literally. The memoir does not clarify how Richard knows, at only four, how to tie a noose, much less how he knows what nooses are. It can only be assumed that Richard was aware of lynchings in his community, though none of these are directly discussed.
Richard hangs the kitten in an utterly gruesome scene, using a very human method of execution for the animal. This does, in a way, anthropomorphize the cat. As it struggles and dies, it reacts in a way that is at once animal and human; its gasps and gaping mouth make it seem like it is trying to shout in pain. The fact that it is being hanged makes this cat—innocent except for being annoying—seem human. Much of the memoir is concerned with how Richard doesn't understand the people around him and how he is not treated as a person by White people. This is an odd inversion: Richard immediately, without thinking, treats the kitten as a human when he kills it.
Related Themes:
