Sean Dwyer

WC: 246

5/2

“At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled toward lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus toward acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island prison camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics toward the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through this labyrinth of constraint, manipulation, and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his shoulders rests the responsibility of representing apedom. The fact of his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs.” (29)

“People complain that we treat animals like objects, but in fact we treat them like prisoners of war. Do you know that when zoos were first opened to the public, the keepers had to protect the animals against attacks by spectators? The spectators felt the animals were there to be insulted and abused, like prisoners in a triumph.” (58)

“Shame makes human beings of us, shame of uncleanness.” (47)

“I am not a philosopher of mind but an animal exhibiting, yet not exhibiting, to a gathering of scholars, a wound, which I cover up under my clothes but touch on in every word I speak.” (26)

The texts provided a theme of being scared of reason, for reason can be a powerful tool to appeal to a logical understanding of a provided environment when the provided environment lacks complete explanation. The first passage is well scripted to depict the opportunity for an allegorical understanding of the ape’s displaced environment. The carefully plotted psychological regimen transforms Sultan’s existence to acceptance as an organism seeking life through the encouragement of utilizing one for another and guides Sultan’s mode of thinking to persist through an environment that does not provide satisfaction for him and in order to continue existing must appeal to his responsibility to represent apedom. In this, there is a fear of reason, or a lack of reason, for if an understanding is not found, what next? A section of the second quote, “the spectators felt the animals were there to be insulted and abused, like prisoners in a triumph” reminded me of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the growth of abuse that occurs from dominance hierarchies and placed importance within roles. The third quote describes the malleability of shame as a tool to reason why one should be in a cell, a method of containing the uncleanness, a hole to bury one’s self in by digging through another’s chest. The last excerpt from the passage summarizes the animal exhibiting pain through the appeal to why the keepers keep the way they do and to wear the clothes that conceals the spade’s clefted mark left by another’s desire to bury their wounds into another’s heart. Such power, the power to persist through an environment similar to Sultan’s, all for the fact of our brothers and sisters.