Animal Ethics in J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Spade Over the Bones of the Dead

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

Abstract

J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello is about animal rights and animal Ethics. In this novel, an aging novelist gives a series of lectures about animals and their moral status. Elizabeth Costello takes issue with the tradition of Western philosophical thought which is based on the binary opposition between reason and emotion. In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk’s Janina Duszejko is also an elderly woman haunted by the horror of what human beings do to animals. The present interdisciplinary study -a library-based qualitative research- reviews the similarities between these two characters and aims to show that Duszejko could be seen as Costello’s alter ego. It surveys the writers’ choice of sentience over reason, the way the texts have undermined the arguments of their major characters, and the similarities between animals and prisoners of concentration camps. Findings show that Coetzee and Tokarczuk do not uphold the Western tradition that divides experience into reason/emotion, masculine/ feminine, justice/ love, and public/ private. In both novels, the writers avoid binary oppositions and through Costello and Duszejko ask the readers/audiences to open their hearts and become one with their victims.

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References

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History

  • Receive Date: 15 December 2023
  • Revise Date: 13 February 2024
  • Accept Date: 13 February 2024

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