Inheritance and transcendence: Farley Mowat’s contributions to Canadian animal literature

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Qian Zhao
Universiti Technologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia / Anhui Business College, Wuhu, China
e-mail: zhaoqiannu@163.com

Amalia Qistina Castaneda Abdullah
Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Technologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia
e-mail: amali608@uitm.edu.my (corresponding author)

AGATHOS, Volume 15, Issue 2 (29): 231-241, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.13949255
© www.agathos-international-review.com CC BY NC 2024

Abstract: As an outstanding representative of contemporary writers in Canadian animal literature, Farley Mowat has created a new form of animal story called the documentary animal novel. While inheriting the realistic writing style of Sidon and Roberts, Mowat has developed the ecological thoughts of his predecessors in three aspects. Firstly, he pioneered the use of non-fiction in the creation of animal stories. Secondly, he developed the ecological ethics thought of his predecessors. Finally, his evaluation of human beings is more objective. As a conclusion, Mowat’s animal novels put the increasingly serious ecological problems on the agenda, reflecting the author’s concerns about some existing ecological problems and providing a classic model for the world’s ecological literature.

Keywords: Canadian animal literature, Farley Mowat, documentary novel, inheritance, transcendence

Introduction

Born in 1921, Farley Mowat is one of the most famous contemporary Canadian authors. He had traveled the plains and mountains of Canada in his early years and had a deep affection for nature. Later, his rich life experiences related to wild animals has provided him with creative materials and laid a good foundation for his realistic animal stories. Mowat was an intrepid explorer, a rigorous scientist, and a diligent writer. He has created more than 30 works, mainly describing the earth, the sea and the wild animals in the wilderness of Canada. He has expressed great concern for the relationship between man and nature. His animal stories were full of strong ecological consciousness and new humanitarian concern. As a result, his work has been published in hundreds of editions around the world in 52 languages. This made him one of the most widely read Canadian authors in the world.

 In Farley Mowat’s animal novels, People of the Deer, Never Cry Wolf, A Whale for the Killing, and Sea of Slaughterare known as the “Ecological Quartet”. People of the Deer is about a group of Eskimo people who have lived in the northern hinterland of Canada for generations. With the continuous development of colonial trade, many merchants came to this land with advanced weapons to seek profits. Eventually, the way of life of these “deer people” was completely disrupted. By the time Mowat visited them, their number had dropped to forty from about two thousand sixty years ago. Never Cry Wolf is a declaration of the innocence of wolves in contrast to traditional prejudice toward them. Through his personal experience of coexisting with wolves, the author used undisputed facts to clear the sinless of the wolves. By this effort, he hoped to completely changes people’s attitude towards wolves. Traditional prejudice can be called a masterpiece of animal literature. A Whale for the Killing records the author’s entire process of rescuing a female whale trapped in a small bay, reflecting the cruelty of human beings. In the story, whale hunters are selfish, cruel and take pleasure in trampling on the dignity of whales. The whale guards headed by the author have also made unremitting efforts to save the trapped whale. Their respect for life expresses their ecological ethics of respecting life. In Sea of Slaughter, the Dead Sea reports on the extinction and near-extinction status of marine and terrestrial animals along the North American Atlantic coastline from Cape Cod to Labrador. Disregarding the laws of nature, human beings slaughter various wild species according to their own wishes, resulting in the sudden decline of one population after another and eventually extinction.This article will take Mowat’s documentary animal stories as an example to analyze his important role in promoting Canadian animal literature.

An overview of the development of animal literature in Canada

Since ancient times, animals have lived together with human beings on the earth. Animals and humans have closely connected and played a harmonious ecological praise song together. Canada is a suitable place for all kinds of animals to live because of its vast territory and unique natural environment. That is why Canada has abundant animal resources. Because of this, animal literature has become an important part of Canadian literature. Animal literature refers to literary works with the theme of anthropomorphic animals and their behavioral characteristics, logical thinking, living environment and way of life. The origins of Canadian animal literature can be traced back to the animal stories told orally by indigenous Canadians. These animal stories, mainly in the form of oral literature, explained the origin of the world and life, and the interdependence of humans and animals, such as coyotes, sea turtles, beavers, reindeer, etc. However, most of these early animal stories used animals as a medium to reflect real social problems or to state some universal truth, so few of them involved discussions on ecology.

 By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, wildlife numbers declined sharply due to the endless killing by human beings. At the same time, with the continuous intensification of the colonization process, many new trends of thought appeared in society. Under such a circumstance, many experts have paid attention to animal rights and welfare. They have incorporated animals into the scope of human moral consideration and demonstrated the moral progress of human beings. In addition, some of them have realized that animals are indispensable part of the nature, so animals have the same right to live as us humans. For these reasons, a few warm-hearted writers began to write some stories to show the living conditions of animals. Thus, modern Canadian animal literature came into being. Influenced by European Romanticism and Darwin’s theory of evolution, several famous animal literature writers emerged, among which Charles George Douglas Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton are most worthy of mentioning. In his more than 40 years of creative career, Roberts has created more than 250 animal stories by using realism. During his literary creation, he has borrowed folk fables and legends about animals. Then, he has combined his meticulous observations of wild and domesticated animals. In general, Roberts’ animal stories either explore the behavior and characteristics of animals from birth to death in the form of biographies, or they are plot-oriented and include human participation. In addition, Roberts was also the first Canadian writer to propose the term “animal literature”. Therefore, he has been called “Father of Canadian Literature”. Another animal literature writer of the same period was Seton. He loved wild animals and was familiar with the living habits of various wild animals. His representative work Wild Animals I Know has taken the survival and suffering of animals as the theme and endowed the animals in the story with human characteristics. Because of this, the animal world in his stories had values and moral judgments like human society. At the same time, Darwinian logic of survival of the fittest was reflected everywhere. It can be said that the animal stories of Seton and Roberts has closely followed the mainstream of the times and carried out ecological reflection on the living conditions of animals.

 In the middle of the 20th century, Canadian animal literature has entered a new stage. Influenced by animal liberation theory and eco-criticism, Canadian animal literature has presented diversified trends, including diverse genres, plots and themes. Literary works of this period mostly focused on the tragic fate of animals to highlight their plight in the current social environment. Through animal stories, some writers tried their best to call on human sympathy and moral conscience. They wrote about “the relationship between man and nature, man and animals as well as the relationship among different people in the society” (Zhao 2019, 233). Farley Mowat was a representative writer of this period. Most of his works have focused on the relationship among people, animals and nature. During his lifetime, he has created more than 30 works. These works have been published in hundreds of editions around the world and had an ever-increasing impact on human behavior and thinking. Some of his works described the living conditions of animals in a documentary way, revealed the crime of human slaughtering wild animals with indisputable facts, and pointed out that human beings should be mainly responsible for the extinction of wild animals. Besides, Mowat has used his own personal experiences as the source of his creation, which also added authenticity to his animal stories.

 Besides, the statistical methods used in Mowat’s works have enriched the connotation of Canadian animal literature. Compared with the well-developed animal literature, the scale and intensity of relevant academic research are somewhat disproportionate. As an outstanding representative of contemporary Canadian animal literature writers, Mowat’s animal novels put the increasingly serious ecological problems on the agenda, reflecting the author’s concerns about some existing ecological problems and providing a classic model for the world’s ecological literature.

A brief review of the literary studies of Canadian animal literature

The previous research on contemporary Canadian animal literature is quite fragmented. The journal articles either comment on individual works of animal literature or discuss one aspect of animal issues, but there are few comprehensive discussions of Canadian animal literature in general. To date, there are two monographs on Canadian animal literature. Animal Victims in Modern Fiction (Scholtmeijer 1993) proposes perspectives on empathy and interspecies understanding through the study of animal figures in Canadian fiction, with animal victims as a metaphor for the complex human condition. In recent years, animal issues have acquired new meaning in the context of ecocriticism. In 2005, the Department of English at the University of Ottawa organized a seminar titled “Animals of the Country”, which explored the relevance of animal roles in Canadian literature. In “Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination” (Wadland 2008), Wadland had an overview of the position of animals in Canadian literature. Additionally, John Sandlos’ “From within the Fur and Feather: Animals in Canadian Literature” summarizes the reception of Canadian animal stories among readers as “understanding us and living together in this existing world and creative attempts at relationships between other species” (Sandlos 2000). Throughout these research monographs and papers, they lack the overall consideration of animal ethics and environmental protection awareness in Canadian literature. As a very important writer in contemporary Canadian animal literature, Mowat seems to have received little attention from the academic community.In the previous research results, Mowat was only mentioned in a few papers. What’s more, the content was only introductory. Books related to Mowat’s works are mostly translation and introductory of his novels. For example, Liu Jie has translated Mowat’s “ecological documentary tetralogy” into Chinese. These novels had published them by Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House in 1998. In my opinion, it is far from enough to translate and introduce Mowat’sanimal novels. Since Mowat has made great innovations based on inheriting his predecessors in creating animal stories. Therefore, he deserves more attention from the academic circle.

Mowat’s contributions to Canadian animal literature

As an outstanding animal storyteller, Mowat has inherited and developed the ecological thoughts of Seton and Roberts. The strong sense of urgency to protect the wild animals inspired his creation and gave him endless inspiration. Most of Mowat’s animal stories criticize the hegemonic attitude and colonial behavior of human beings, thus warning us to be kind to all creatures on earth.

Mowat pioneered the use of non-fiction in the creation of animal stories

While inheriting the realistic writing style of Sidon and Roberts, Mowat pioneered a new literary form, with the name of documentary literature. This creative method integrates the author into the story, enhancing the authenticity and interest of the story. Never Cry Wolf narrates the author’s true experience of spending a summer with the wolf family in the grassland area in a literary documentary style. The perspective of this work is unique, and the image of the wolf reflected is also very different from what we imagined. In the book, the author shows people his discovery based on his own experiences.Different from our traditional perception of wolves, they have their own society and can coexist friendly with human beings. Although there are territorial claims in wolf society, they maintain peace in their own world by respect, humility and tolerance. Wolves are not cold-blooded creatures who don’t care about their relatives. On the contrary, they are extremely emotional. In many social behaviors, wolves can also be called the role model of civilized human beings. In the story, the author has added a lot of scientific arguments to make the work more real. The publication of this book completely broke people’s perception of wolves. Using numerous facts from his own experience, Mowat refuted human prejudices and accusations against wolves. Wolves are not cold-blooded killers, nor are they responsible for the dramatic decline in reindeer populations. They feed on rodents and northern pike, and occasionally kill the old and the sick. The Wolf world is full of respect, love and tolerance, and they get along well with the author and the Eskimos. Wolf can take the initiative to regulate fertility. With their faithful mates and friendly neighbors, wolves are highly emotional animals and can be regarded as human models in many ways. The traditional charge that men has placed on wolves is completely uncalled for.

 Taking A Whale for the Killing for another example. It is also a documentary account of the tragic death of a female fin whale trapped in a cove off the western coast of Newfoundland after being tortured by a crowd of onlookers. Through the conflict between killers and protectors, completely different attitudes towards the trapped whale were reflected during the narration. On the one hand, those whalers represent the negative aspect of human natural morality. On the other hand, the protectors lead by Mowat do everything they can to save the trapped whale, are the embodiment of human kindness. Despite the failure of the rescue effort, cetacean lovers are comforted by the efforts of the good-natured men to free the trapped whales. At the end of the novel, the rescue is thwarted and the trapped whale dies miserably. Mowat felt a pang of grief as he recalled all the efforts he had made to save the whale, and all the human suffering he had experienced in the process. The trapped whale died and left the world of pain forever. The tragic ending has left readers of conscience with endless regret. Mowat writes: “Man has made himself the last loner on this planet, destined to be alone forever on his way to silent destruction” (Mowat 1998, 160). It is a heartfelt sentiment that reflects the author’s belief that the relationship between human beings, nature and animals is inextricably linked, that the destruction of animals is the isolation of human beings, and that the destruction of nature will bring about the destruction of human beings.

Mowat inherited and developed the ecological ethics thought of predecessors

Mowat inherited and developed the ecological ethics of “reverence for life” in the animal stories of Seton and Roberts. Albert Schweitzer is a contemporary thinker with extensive influence. The bioethics he founded with the core of “reverence for life” is an important ideological resource for the world peace movement and environmental protection movement. In his bioethics, Schweitzer has extended the scope of ethics to all animals and plants, and believed that not only human life, but also all living creatures and animal lives must be respected. Harmonious symbiosis with various creatures is a necessary condition for human existence. In the context of two world wars and the deteriorating global environment, Schweitzer believed that people could no longer be arrogant and arrogant from the interconnection of life. He has earned a great reputation. Schweitzer believes that extending the principle of love to animals is a revolution in ethics, which will provide a new ideological foundation for sustainable human development and world peace.

 The core ecological ethics philosophy reflected in Seton’s animal stories can be summarized as “equivalence of life”, which is essentially consistent with Schweitzer’s thought. Schweitzer once clearly put forward the ethical view of “all things in the world are sacred” (Martin 2016). Thus, reverence for life is the core connotation of Schweitzer’s philosophical thought. Seton has created many unforgettable tragic heroes in animal stories. It is hoped that through the shaping of these typical animal images, readers can feel the excellent characteristics of animals, and finally make humans treat animals with an equal attitude and live in harmony with animals on the same land. Seton uses his animal stories to show readers some brand-new animal images. Animals in his stories have love, friendship and kinship just like human beings. Therefore, their lives should be respected. In Roberts’ animal stories, animals are no longer subordinate to human beings. They are the protagonists of these stories with their rich emotions and quick thinking. The excellent qualities that the animals show us are in stark contrast to the actions of the people in the story, making every reader. It can be concluded that wild animals are indeed not inferior to humans, and they also have characteristics similar to us humans. Humans should treat wild animals equally, cherish their lives, and should not arbitrarily kill wild animals for their own interests.

 In Mowat’s animal stories, the ecological thought of “reverence for life” is clearly expressed and the thought of respecting animal lives permeates many of his works. Schweitzer believes: “Good is to preserve life, promote life, and enable the development of life to realize its highest value. Evil is to destroy life, harm life, and suppress the development of life. This is an inevitable, universal, and absolute ethical principle” (Schweitzer 1996, 9). This view of bioethics is vividly displayed in Mowat’s works. Taking People of the Deer as an example, the novel reveals the evil deeds of human beings in the civilized world who kill wild deer in pursuit of commercial profits. Driven by profits, humans massacred reindeer, which also changed the fate of Ihamut people and destroyed their living conditions. For this disregard of bioethics behavior, Mowat was deeply disgusted. He went around pleading to save lives. In the story, we can see Mowat’s advanced ethics of life. The core idea of Mowat is to treat all life on earth equally and fairly, including the life of Ihamut and wild animals. While Seton and Roberts only described the idea of “reverence for life” in their animal stories, Mowat has put it into practice. In Never Cry Wolf, Mowat has recorded the wanton killing of wolves by human beings. He was saddened by this. By living with the wolves, Mowat discovered many advantages of wolves through his dealings with wolves, such as being wise, never abandoning his companions, and so on. Through these efforts, Mowat hopes that humans will change their view of wolves, revere their lives and stop killing them. In this respect, Mowat surpassed his predecessors.

 From Seton, Roberts and Mowat’s iconic animal stories, we see Canadian animal literature The rich bioethical thoughts and ecological tendencies contained in it. These stories provide literary material for our understanding of Schweitzer’s ethics. Since the ethics of “Reverence for Life” does not include inanimate substances, so it has its own limitations. However, the principles of equality between animals and human beings advocated by Canadian animal writers have important practical significance. From the vivid animal stories brought to readers by Canadian animal literature, we feel the excellent quality of animals and their respect for life and love. Humans who have caused the tragedy of wild animals should reflect on their actions and end the killing of wild animals.

Mowat’s evaluation of human beings is more objective

Compared with Sidon and Roberts, Mowat’s evaluation of human beings is more objective. In Sidon’s animal stories, the evaluation of human beings is almost always negative. Human beings have racked their brains and used various means to hunt and kill wild animals, resulting in the tragedy of wild animals. Roberts is also largely negative about human behavior in his animal stories. Driven by interests, human beings make great efforts to occupy the territory of wild animals. Only in Moonlight Trail does the little boy show some remorse after killing the hare. In Mowat’s animal stories, he has made a more fair and objective discussion of human beings. In Never Cry Wolf, although most humans have prejudice against wolves, there are also animal lovers and protectors. They bring hope to the future of wild animals. For example, Mowat and the Eskimos who have frequent contact with wolves actively use facts to exonerate wolves. Everything in the world has two sides. There are groups of people who are hostile to animals, and there must be groups that love animals. The kind-hearted humans headed by Mowat went everywhere to save the trapped whale. In general, Mowat’s evaluation of human beings is more objective and truer. He is not only worried about the future of animals, but also deeply comforted by the contribution that animal-loving humans have made to animals. Under the influence of Mowat and others, more and more people began to pay attention to ecological issues, environmental issues and the living conditions of animals. People have begun to realize the importance of ecological issues, and many people have made substantial contributions to the protection of animals with practical actions.

Conclusion

In his creation of animal fiction, Mowat paid attention to the survival and development of wild animals. Its ultimate purpose for literary creation is to change the inherent view of human beings on wild animals, and finally achieve ecological harmony. Mowat’s efforts have been paid off. His ecological tetralogy has received widespread attention from readers around the world and has sparked many discussions on ecological issues. Nowadays, more and more people are beginning to pay attention to wild animals, and people of insight have come forward and severely denounced those evil acts that destroy nature and animals. Governments and many organizations and individuals are joining hands to protect nature and animals. among. Mowat used his own efforts to defend the rights of wild animals and lead the development trend of ecological animal literature. His works and his great contribution to ecological literature will always inspire future generations. To sum up, Human beings and all other living creatures are closely linked in a community of common destiny. Any short-term development achieved at the cost of destroying ecology will eventually pay a heavy price. Therefore, we should treat the earth as a living community and try our best to protect the ecosystem. Since ancient times, animals and human beings have lived together on the earth. Animals provide a rich nutrition and food materials to humans, accompanying humans to spend lonely years. For animals, humans should be grateful. We should cherish their lives, regard them as a fate community, and provide them a harmonious living space.

Acknowledgment: This work is supported by key academic funding project for top professional talents of Anhui Business College under grant Smbjrc202301.

References:

1. Martin, Mike. W. 2016. Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life: Ethical Idealism and Self-Realization. London: Routledge.

2. Mowat, Farley.1998. A Whale for the Killing. Translated by Liu Jie. Taiyuan: Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House.

3. Sandlos, John. 2000. From Within Fur and Feathers: Animals in Canadian Literature. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 4: 73-91.

4. Scholtmeijer, Marian. 1993. Animal Victims in Modern fiction: From Sanctity to Sacrifice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

5. Schweitzer, Albert. 1996. Reverence for Life. Translated by Chen Zehuan. Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press.

6. Wadland, John. 2008. Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination. The American Review of Canadian Studies, 38(2): 259.

7. Zhao Qian. 2019. Analysis of the ecological philosophy reflected in Canadian literature. Ecological Economy, 15(3): 233-238.