What do Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alice Walker, Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, Scott Westerfeld, J. M. Coetzee, George Bernard Shaw, Ted Hughs, and Franz Kafka all have in common? Two things: they are all writers, and all of them are or were involved in animal advocacy in one form or another.
Shaw was more than a renowned playwright—and the only person ever awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. He was also a staunch vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist who wove material about animal rights into his work, and who wrote this little poem, “Living Graves.”
We are the living graves of murdered beasts,
Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.
We never pause to wonder at our feasts,
If animals, like men, can possibly have rights.
We pray on Sundays that we may have light,
To guide our footsteps on the path we tread.
We’re sick of War, we do not want to fight –
The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread,
And yet – we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat,
Regardless of the suffering and pain
We cause by doing so, if thus we treat
Defenseless animals for sport or gain,
How can we hope in this world to attain
The PEACE we say we are so anxious for.
We pray for it, o’er hecatombs of slain,
To God, while outraging the moral law.
Thus cruelty begets its offspring – WAR
Alice Walker isn’t a vegetarian (she’s been quoted as calling herself a vegetarian who still has chicken soup when she’s sick, but, honestly, if you consume soup made of birds, you’re a meat-eater). Still, she’s written a number of works about compassion for animals, including one of the most moving essays you can find on the topic, “Am I Blue?” (from Living by the Word, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
Unlike walker, Isaac Bashevis Singer was a true vegetarian. He was also a deeply devoted advocate of animals, who repeatedly brought his concerns into his writing. In one of his most beautiful short stories, “The Letter Writer,” he wrote: “In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. ‘What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.’” (From The Séance and Other Stories).
I would like to think that writers (and other artists) are more likely to be animal advocates than the general population. Although I have no facts to back that up, it makes sense. Writers are questioners, challengers, explorers. They tend not to go along with things just because it’s the way they’ve always been done. They’re empathetic. They’re compassionate. And they’re courageous. Put that all together, and you’re describing an animal advocate.
Agree? Disagree? Have your own favorite quote, book, or essay about animals? Think I’m just another animal rights nut and I should get back to writing about writing? Post here and let me know!