2. Discuss the emphasis upon animals in Rominten. What do you think the aurochs symbolize? Or why the emphasis on the hunt? Try to extract as many meanings as possible from this.
I sort of lost sight of the larger picture of the story when Tiffauges went to Rominten. He no longer seemed like a prisoner, because his German captors had integrated him so much into their society. He was asked to come to Rominten with the forest ranger, and was in very close contact with Goering.
I thought the aurochs were kind of scary. I really don't like any sort of animal outside of cats, and I especially don't like horses and cows and that sort of big animal. If I were in Tiffauges' situation, I wouldn't have even spent the time to count the animals but just gotten straight out of there. However, after looking at the questions and looking back at the reading, I think the aurochs symbolize the Nazis. "Professor Dr. Lutz Heck, father of Bos primigenus redivivus, explained that paradoxically his beasts would remain dangerous so long as they retained any traces of domestication. Born in captivity, they would take years to learn to fear man and to flee as soon as they suspected his presence " (203). The aurochs were a dangerous force in such a number, and they were also frightening to look at. The Nazis had huge numbers of followers, many of them young children, and some of their chants that Tournier includes in the book are frightening. I also think the aurochs symbolize the Hitler Youth. The children are taken from their parents at a young age, and basically 'born in captivity'. They are brainwashed into accepting the Nazi doctrine, and when they emerge from their education (their 'captivity'), they are dangerous. They so believe in what they have been taught that they perform crazy tasks, like jumping 30 ft into water or juggling the heavy wooden beams.
I thought the emphasis on hunting was a very apparent symbol. I thought that it symbolized the hunt to round up all of the Jews, and I thought the rabbit hunt especially illustrated this. "The last picture Tiffauges carried away with him that day was of an immense carpet of fawn and fur formed by the bodies of twelve hundred hares lying side by side - the bag. Alone in the middle of this cemetery of softness, Goering, crowned king of the hunt by virtue of his bag of two hundred, posed for his official photographer, belly outthrust, field marshal's baton held aloft in his right hand" (228-229). The innocent hares that were hunted and slaughtered were like the Jews that were mercilessly hunted and slaughtered.
3. Bluebeard is a very important character in the text - how does the horse serve as a mirror image for Abel? What dos the horse symbolize for him? Why is this important?
Bluebeard is a mirror image for Tiffauges because all the horse is concerned with is eating and defecating. There is also a lot of emphasis and description of the horse's bottom. "'But all a horse's strength is in his crupper...In fact, a horse is crupper with organs attached to the front'" (224). This is one of the first things Pressmar tells Tiffauges, and of course this is Tiffauges' favorite subject. "...Tiffauges saw brand-new balls of dung emerge, wonderfully smooth and shiny, to fall one by one unbroken on to the straw. Such perfection in the defecatory act struck Tiffauges as the supreme justification of Pressmar's theories. The whole of a horse is certainly in its crupper, so the crupper makes the horse the Spirit of Defecation, the Anal Angel, and makes Omega the key of its essence" (226).
Bluebeard, and probably a hose in general, is the best animal for Tiffauges. It mirrors him in size and strength. Tiffauges was able to work tirelessly while in the prison camp, and is only ever able to fit into the leftover uniforms that are much too large for anyone else. Bluebeard is also an extremely large horse, and capable of carrying Tiffauges on his journeys to collect boys. Both Tiffauges and Bluebeard are obsessed with the act of defecation. For the horse, it is not so much a religious act as it is for Tiffauges. However, it is one of the only things each of them is good for.
No comments:
Post a Comment