Animals and War Theme Analysis

All of the stories in Only the Animals are set in the midst of violent human conflicts, such as World War I, World War II, the Gulf War, or the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As such, the stories’ animal narrators provide a unique perspective on these human conflicts and their effects on animals. Indeed, Only the Animals proposes that it’s actually not accurate to refer to wars as human conflicts, given that animals are so often forced to participate in war efforts. And Only the Animals shows that even if animals don’t actively participate, they still end up being some of the most tragic victims of human violence.

The very premise of Only the Animals—giving animals the opportunity to narrate their own stories about war—makes it clear that war negatively affects everyone and everything, people, animals, and plants alike. Every creature in the book somehow suffers as a result of war or violence. Sprout the dolphin and Fufu the pony, for instance, are enlisted in the war effort, while Red Peter the chimp and Kiki the cat suffer much like human civilians. Other characters, like Sel the mussel and the elephant, are distant onlookers but still end up dying in the course of a war. These examples, the novel suggests, aren’t so different from the way that war affects people. The animal narrators describe human soldiers dying horrific deaths in the trenches or as a result of bombs, and human civilians struggling to survive famine or displacement as their countries fight wars. Additionally, other narrators describe how war affects the natural landscape. For example, the third-person narrator of “Telling Fairy Tales” describes the barren trees surrounding Sarajevo during the 1997 siege. Meanwhile, when Kiki the cat is in the trenches of World War I, she says that “Without the changing palette of the trees to signal the shift towards winter (the leaves have been exploded off), and the songbirds mostly gone quiet, it becomes difficult to know where I am, in what season, in which century.” These anecdotes speak to the terrible power of war to negatively impact all living creatures.

However, the stories suggest that war can be particularly devastating for animals because people tend to value animal lives less than human lives. Having completed his training with Herr Oberndorff some time before his story begins, the chimp Red Peter now believes he’s human—but as famine grips his German city during World War I, Red Peter finds that people begin to treat him with scorn and suspicion as he wanders the city, looking for food on the black market. Evelyn, Herr Oberndorff’s wife, encapsulates Peter’s struggle in one of her letters when she writes, “People get angry when they see animals being fed, even if it is with turnip peels.” With this, she gets at the idea that animal lives aren’t as valuable as human lives—people resent the fact that animals are being fed at all, while they themselves go hungry. In “Telling Fairy Tales,” a military official in Sarajevo echoes Evelyn when one of his colleagues suggest smuggling the last two bears in the Sarajevo zoo out of the city. The man says, “Smuggling two bears out of Sarajevo in a food-relief convoy—what does that say to people left behind? Why bears, not babies?” He continues that he “can’t allow” them to “worry[] about wild animals” as their enemies fire on Sarajevo, showing clearly where his priorities lie—with people, not with animals.

However, the book suggests that simply choosing not to value animals’ lives during wartime pales in comparison to countries knowingly sacrificing animals to advance their cause. “Hundstage,” for instance, touches briefly on the fates of the Allies’ anti-tank dogs during World War II: the dogs were trained to look for food under German tanks, but when they approached German tanks looking for food, they’d explode the tanks as well as themselves. The dogs, of course, have no stakes in the war and are being used as disposable pawns in a human conflict. This speaks to what the collection implies is people’s willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone they deem inferior, if it means winning a war.

Finally, the collection shows that war has the unique power to transform animals who were once revered members of a community into nothing more than a food source. In most of the stories featuring zoos, zoo animals exist to bring pleasure to passersby, and many zoo animals are a source of pride for the city. But during wartime, when people are going hungry, they begin to see animals as nothing more than a food source. As the situation grows dire in World War I Germany, for instance, the chimp Red Peter—who, at the start of the story, lives in a hotel like a human might—is gradually stripped of his living quarters, his clothes, and his ability to buy food like a person. By the end of the story, he finds himself back in his cage at the zoo where he once learned to be human—and the story heavily implies that he’s going to end up as Evelyn’s dinner. War, in this sense, has the power to deprive everyone of their humanity. Red Peter becomes just an ape and therefore a food source after spending years living as a human, and even being Evelyn’s lover for a time—and it’s implied that Evelyn also gives up some of her humanity when she traps and plans to eat him.

War, the book shows, is universally devastating: it wreaks havoc on people, animals, and the environment alike. And while the stories don’t shy away from the horrific consequences of war on people (both soldiers and civilians), it nevertheless asks readers to consider the toll war takes on animals as well. Animals, the book suggests, suffer greatly during war—especially because, as animals, they’re not thought to be as important or as sentient as human victims of conflict.