Animals as Allegory - Generally:
Animals have long served as an inspiration for human artists who, for reasons of symbolism, employ animals in metaphorical fashion within their work. During 2007, the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art of Athens, GA, USA, hosted an exhibition entitled Animal Instincts: Allegory and Anthropomorphism, which “explore[d] individual and societal tendencies to imbue other species with purely human physical and psychological characteristics.” The exhibition featured works reflecting a number of subject matters, including War & Animal Allegory; Dystopic vs. Utopian Visions; Human Identity Through Animal Character; Animal Equality, etc.
Animals also have been used within larger narratives, such as fairy tales and folk stories. Tales of frog princes, hapless pigs, and the Big Bad Wolf are just but a few such examples.
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“There is a lineage of artists throughout art history who have utilised animals and the natural world to indirectly relay allegorical stories, often with ethical undertones. Moral tales were particularly prevalent in the Dutch and Spanish still life tradition, where animals, fruits and flora were depicted to convey various notions including abundance, greed, wisdom and mortality. Further, animals appeared in Renaissance painting as metaphors for many subjects, including innocence, longevity and wealth.” [ii]
For example, “The famous animal tale of the six blind men and the elephant, in which each of the blind men described the elephant differently depending on the part of the creature he touched, has been interpreted in ways nearly as varied as the blind men’s descriptions. In each of these interpretations, the story demonstrates the use of animal metaphors to express important issues.” [iii]
Another example is writer C.S. Lewis’ personification of animals in The Narnia Chronicles - Narnia is a land of talking animals, wherein Lewis makes animals a central part of his narrative, a biblical allegory.[iv] Indeed, Lewis’ reliance on animals was grounded on an age-old practice dating as far back as the Old Testament itself.
“Even in the Old Testament certain animals, such as the bull, lamb, dove carried a special significance. As sacrificial animals these were more than the four footed beasts and birds that roamed the earth. Already they possessed a symbolic quality which pointed to some higher significance—a significance which would be drawn out and elaborated by centuries of biblical exegetes.” [v]
Egypt and the cultures of the Near East relied heavily upon the animal fable genre. Several fables were transmitted to Europe through Aesop, the Greek writer of the sixth century BCE. “Their influence reached as far as the seventeenth-century French fables of Jean de La Fontaine and the eighteenth-century Russian fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov; and, in a wider sense, even to Animal Farm (1946) by George Orwell. That animal fables are intrinsically allegorical is shown by their aim, not at the life of animals, but at the human predicament.” [vi]
“The Kalila wa Dimna, animal tales known in the West through Les Fables of La Fontaine, can be traced to 4th-century India…Written for the edification and amusement of princes and magistrates, they were second in popularity only to the Koran. The witty dialogue of the animal characters, led by two scheming jackals called Kalila and Dimna, reveal a Machiavellian code of behavior and mirror a real world of intrigue, diplomacy, and statecraft.” [vii]
George Orwell’s Animal Farm is perhaps “the most widely read allegory in the middle school and high school classrooms. Orwell’s 1945 novella is an allegorical indictment of tyranny which utilizes the historical events and players of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of Stalin as a cautionary tale.” [viii]
“Animal Farm is the story of an animal revolution. The animal residents of Manor Farm, spurred on by the dream of the pig, Old Major, decide they will change their “miserable, laborious, and short” lives. They overthrow Mr. Jones, their master, and take over the management of the farm. Rather than living under the heel of their human master, the animals of Manor Farm decide that they will take control of the products of their labor, working for the good of the farm and other animals, rather than for the good of humans.” [ix]
Animals as Allegory - on the Exemplar Website:
According to The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art, the Bear and the Hippopotamus depicted on the Exemplar Companies website possess special symbolic value.
The Bear:
“‘All in all the bear symbolizes elemental forces, susceptible of evolutionary progress, but also liable to awesome regressions’ [Chevalier and Gheerbrant]. The bear is one of several symbols of the GREAT GODDESS, specifically in connection with her aspect as birth-giver…Another aspect of the goddess embodied in bears is her healing powers. Bears appear to have been a focus of human awe from the earliest times, and indeed may have been the first animals to be worshipped – in the form of Neanderthal CAVE altars with carefully placed skulls of giant cave bears (Hill in Cavendish II:210).” [x]
“…The bear’s life cycle, with its pattern of energetic activity, hibernation, and springtime re-emergence, further explains the hold that bears have on the human imagination. The bears’ reappearance connoted a symbolic rebirth paralleling the cycle of nature (Hill in Cavendish II:208).” [xi](p.34)
“…In Siberia and Alaska, the bear is, according to Chevalier and Gheerbrant, in the same category as the moon, because it vanishes with winter and returns in spring – these people linked the bear with cycles of nature, especially with vegetation. Arctic and Subarctic hunters may regard the bear as a supernatural being which is a MASTER OF ANIMALS…Among the Eskimo the bear was a favored helping spirit of the SHAMAN and often appears in the form of ivory amulets.” [xii]
“…The Apache regard the bear as being so powerful that it is never killed, and is literally ‘untouchable’ in life and death. The bear’s power to heal plays a major role in the myths of the Pueblo and the Plains peoples – the shaman/medicine man of these groups often enjoined the bear as a helping spirit (Hill in Cavendish II:209).” [xiii]
“…The Norse god Odin can appear in bear form (Biedermann 33). Among the ancient Celts, the bear was the symbol of warriors and temporal power…” [xiv]
“…In China, the bear is a male symbol of strength and bravery, heralding the birth of boys, in harmony with home, and mountain – the bear forms a COMPLEMENTARY DUALITY with the serpent and water, bearish yang, in opposition to watery yin. The image of the panda, embroidered in robes, was a symbol of ranking court officials…In Buddhism the bear is the VEHICLE of protective deities, particularly in Tibet where it also functions as a protective weather god.”[xv]
The Hippopotamus:
“The hippopotamus symbolizes both fertility and destruction. This Greek word means ‘river horse’…Pregnant Egyptian women depended on the HYBRID, but largely hippopotamus goddess Taweret for protection and Amenti, the ‘bringer-forth of the waters’ was one of several Egyptian aspects of the GREAT GODDESS. The male hippo, by contrast, because it frequently did damage to crops, was regarded as a manifestation of inimical forces in the world and was linked to the evil [god] Seth (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 507). Egyptian pharaohs and nobles are frequently shown hunting hippopotami, as they must have done in reality…In the Old Testament book of Job (40:15-24) the hippopotamus is sometimes equated with the Behemoth, the embodiment of brute strength – prophesied to return in the last days – that can be mastered by God, but which man cannot tame (Biedermann 174; Chevalier and Gheerbrant 507; Cooper 83). [xvi]
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See Animal Instincts: Allegory and Anthropomorphism, ATHICA, Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (Sept. 22 – Nov. 11, 2007), Absolute Arts.com at: http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2007/10/11/34708.html .
[ii] See Animals as Allegory – Teacher’s Resource, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane Australia (Feb. 2-April 9, 2006), at: http://www.artmuseum.qut.edu.au/downloads/AnimalsEducationKit.pdf .
[iii] See Hope B. Werness, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in Art, The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. (© 2003), at: http://books.google.com/books?id=fr2rANLrPmoC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=hippopotamus+symbolism+in+mexico&source=bl&ots=ekJ8_yyxIL&sig=p8JvOHEo5t1r1RBW409olRnyqzA&hl=en&ei=kRAnS7vjFZDclAexoZWVDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=hippopotamus&f=false .
[iv] See Matt Brennan, The Lion, the Witch and the Allegory: An Analysis of Selected Narnia Chronicles, at: http://cslewis.drzeus.net/papers/lionwitchallegory.html .
[v] See Animals, English at Wheaton College, at: http://www.wheaton.edu/english/resources/medieval/animals.htm .
[vi] See Gwyn J. Griffiths, Allegory, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (Jan. 1, 2008) at: http://www.mywire.com/a/Oxford-Encyclopedia-Ancient-Egypt/Allegory/9472009 .
[vii] See Jill Sanchia Cowen, Kalila wa Dimna: An Animal Allegory of the Mongol Court, The Istanbul University Album, Oxford University Press (© 1989), Editorial Reviews at: http://www.amazon.com/Kalila-Dimna-Allegory-Istanbul-University/dp/0195056817/ref=cm_cmu_pg_t .
[viii] See Animal Farm: Allegory and the Art of Persuasion, EDsitement, The National Endowment for the Humanities, at: http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=613 .
[ix] Id.
[x] See Animal Instincts: Allegory and Anthropomorphism, supra at p. 33.
[xi] Id., at p. 34.
[xii] Id., at p. 35.
[xiii] Id.
[xiv] Id.
[xv] Id., at p. 36.
[xvi] Id., at pp. 215-216.
