Predators in Literature

G E R A L D H A S L A M California State College, Sonoma Predators in Literature Twenty-five years ago, when Aldo Leopold wrote: “The swoop of a hawk is perceived by one as the drama of evolution. To another, it is only a threat,” he stated the dualism toward predators found in most literature. In one instance they may symbolize resourcefulness and courage, in another wantonness and cruelty. Yet in either instance, the evaluation exists in us, not them. Humans have been locked in a love-hate relationship with our fellow predators for a long, long time. From the dawn of our recorded humanity, in myths, in oral chants and tales, continuing through the present in the work of writers and other artists, our dualistic relationship with animals that, like us, kill in order to live, has been creatively docu­ mented. It is at the mythic (or mythic-symbolic) level, the level of sacred rather than profane apprehension, that deep impulses are most apt to be molded into art. As Bronislaw Malinowski has pointed out, mythic stories “live not by idle interest, not as fictitious or even as true narratives; but are . . . a statement of a primeval, greater, and more relevant reality. . . . ” Said another way, in order to examine our inner selves in literature, we must seek work that transcends mere cultural variation, work that is rooted in our shared biology, in what Max Westbrook has called the generative primordial. We all recognize that being human isn’t especially easy. Our urges (This article is the transcript of the keynote address delivered to a forum on predators sponsored by the Nevada Humanities Committee in Reno, October 14, 1975.) 124 Western American Literature and needs often battle with our conscious, rational sense of what we should or shouldn’t do. Artists have emerged in every human culture to help get what’s inside outside, and it’s no coincidence that in many cultures theirs is seen as a religious role. They try to state meaningfully our conflicts, inner and outer. We have countless examples of superficial explorers who are called artists, and many of them are very popular, but the mantle of greatness rests on those few who have probed the deep arational forces hidden in the core of each of us. So if we want to understand more of our continuing relationships with predators than lamb kills, or ecological balance, or cyanide traps, we must explore literature that has been less concerned with contemporary issues than with the continuity of cultures and of life itself. If all this sounds like mumbo-jumbo, I assure you it isn’t; what I’m implying is that human beings have deep inner needs, desires, pas­ sions— something any of us can recognize in our own lives. When we examine a vast range of cultures over all of recorded history we find patterns expressing those deep needs emerging, patterns so general that their existence can’t be denied. But those patterns don’t often manifest themselves directly, even in literature, for we humans are a symbol-manipulating species; in fact, we may be the symbol-manipulating species. We wear wedding bands to symbolize personal commitment; we fly flags to symbolize national loyalty; we use words to symbolize meaning that is not intrinsically related to the sounds of those words. As S. I. Hayakawa tells us: “Of all forms of symbolism, language is the most highly developed, most subtle, and most complicated.” Perhaps the best evidence we have of the longevity of the love-hate relationship humans share with predators can be found in literature, ancient and modern, by looking for those qualities of predators empha­ sized as symbols. Let’s recall an ancient folk tale from European oral literature, the one we all learned as “The Three Little Pigs.” Our codified version is Germanic, and it remains a living part of folklore today, even in places where wolves have long since been extinct. What qualities of wolves are emphasized? Rapaciousness, mainly. Given the vulnerability of the people who originated the tale, plus the fact that the wolf was the major predator they experienced, their emphasis is understandable. Gerald Haslam 125...