Anthropomorphism: Banned

This blog entry is a reaction to this post by Melissa H.

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Sometimes, due to political, cultural, or social reasons, things such as books, poems, and other forms of literature, get banned or ordered out of print, no matter what time period or era. However sometimes, there are other, more ludicrous reasons for the banning of literature, such as a persons own pride. In the instance of the banning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a harmless book originally written for a little girl, this pride belonged to the Chinese governor of the Hunan province all the way back in 1931, about 70 years after the book was published.

The governor of the Hunan province was quoted saying “animals should not use human language” and that putting “animals and humans on the same level” was a very wrong and immoral thing to do” and that it was “disastrous”.

The idea that “animals should not use human language” automatically kills one of the most used and most effective literary devices, anthropomorphism, or giving animals human like characteristics. A literary device closely related to anthropomorphism is personification, or giving inanimate objects human characteristics. It can be safely be assumed that the vast majority of works that fall under the genre of fantasy use personification or anthropomorphism. Why would one single out a specific book for being anthropomorphic when there are so many others like it that should also be banned at the same time but arent? In fact, China’s own history is very animal oriented. To give an example, the Chinese refer to different years as “the year of the rat” or “the year of the dragon”, or other animal oriented names.

The book was intended for a little girl, and what child doesn’t want to get a meaningless laugh out of thinking about the idea of a talking white rabbit with a waistcoat or a cat telling a little girl about the madness of a land that has no rules? Anthropomorphism and personification are absolutely crucial to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and are just as important to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as the idea of the wonderland itself. In fact, without personification, or anthropomorphism, it can be said that wonderland wouldn’t be all that interesting.

But what is so wrong about anthropomorphism? According to the Hunan province governor it “puts animals and humans on the same level”. For one, its questionable that it actually puts animals on the same level of intellect and stature, for two, what the governor is arguing against is one of the genre of fantasy’s key elements and not something specific to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and for three, is there anything actually wrong with an animal being equal to a human? Does humanities pride still extend as far as to look down upon what is deemed inhuman?

To answer Melissa’s question “Do you think it was right to ban the book for putting animals on the same level as humans?”, I would say that the answer is a clear and rather blunt no. What the governor was banning was not simply Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; what he was banning was one of the most commonly used literary devices in the genre of fantasy. It seems that if you were to ban Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland then there should be many other books, including some from China’s own culture, that should be banned as well.