미국의 뉴베리 성장소설과 동물의 권리와 해방

Abstract

This paper aims at advocating the necessity of animal rights and liberation by introducing three Newbery Award books along with some theoretical books on environmental justices and animal rights. The three Newbery books discussed in this paper are William Amstrong's Sounder and Fred Gipson's Old Yeller and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Shiloh. All these three books have something in common, namely, a sense of strong fellowship between boy and dog. We oftentimes say that "a dog is a faithful animal," and also justify the human’s dominance over dogs. However, these books ask whether or not our mastership over dogs is really unquestionably reasonable. In the patriarchal society, adult males often boast his intentional indifference to animals' pain as the strong sign of their bravery and dominancy, just as Judd in Old Yeller kicks his dogs without good cause and calls them by objectified numbers instead of proper names. On the contrary, the protagonist boys in the three novels treat their dogs with utmost love and care. Animal rightists think highly of this intimate physical bond between human and animal beyond the limitation of language. They emphasize that this fellowship is the important basis against speciesm which differentiates the animal from humans with human-centered prejudices. More than anybody else, boys in the novels sympathize with animals' pains and they accept all the sacrifices to save animals from their misery. In this paper, this altruism toward animals is regarded as the first step to recognize the innate Self under the harmonious symbiosis of human self with all the creatures in the greater nature. This paper also argues that animals' silence is not the sign of their inferiority but rather the significant resources to our recognition and also the key to the great mystery of our existence in the universe.