In 388 B.C, Aristophanes said “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers“(2). What does it mean to prosper? How can the state of being prosperous be defined to the extent to which it identifies someone’s home? Throughout the history of text, a home is a place where your loved ones are, a place of security. Home is being surrounded by the familiar and is a comfortable place to return to after an exhausting journey. As a college student, I watch as people come to Austin, leaving their home behind. Rather than being homesick, most University of Texas students quickly make Austin their new home. In this sense of the word “home”, the unfamiliar, the place of insecurity and a place away from your loved ones. This definition completely contradicts the initial definition of home. Many humans would agree with Herman Melville that “life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound” because wherever life takes you will become your home (2). Yes, everyone comes from somewhere, but due to everyone’s differing circumstances, it is thought to be essential to adapt and remake “home” wherever it comes easiest to you (2). One of the absolute most distinguishable differences between humans and animals is that they are simple and we are, well, complicated to say the least.
“A pair of wrens will build their nest year after year in a certain box. A she-wolf…will litter time after time in one particular cave….all kinds of cattle..have strong attachments to their accustomed home” (J.Frank Dobie, The Longhorn 292). For an animal, home is one, never-changing place. A home for an animal is their “querencia…it denotes not only the haunt, the lair, the stomping ground of animals, but their place-preference for certain functions” (317).
Treating animals as if they were humans would be one of the biggest mistakes a person could make. Barring the anatomical differences, humans and animals think completely differently and are therefore on completely different levels as species. This is not to say that one is better than the other, nor that one is entitled to make worse or end a life for another. Hemingway’s Death in The Afternoon focuses around the nature of acceptable standards versus morality and passion. “A bullfight is very moral to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but very fine” (703). Not only does the bull not consider factors of morality or right and wrong, he also does not get the opportunity to do so. The capacity of animal minds against human minds is like comparing the size of an ant to an elephant; they are made and function completely differently. But does this difference give humans automatic permission to do what they want with the animals of their choosing? No. According to Hemingway, “the bullfighter…has ability to do extraordinary things with the bull” and that he can do these things because he, as a human, has the upper hand in knowledge and motility (Hemingway 12). Hemingway’s moral standards feel okay with entertainment at the expense of another living thing, simply because he does not feel bad as a viewer. Would he commit to this same attitude if the game was at the expense of humans, rather than at the expense of the bull? Unlikely. In regards to the mustang, Dobie tells his readers that “no one who conceives him as only a potential servant to man can apprehend the mustang” (Dobie 314). The vast differences between humans and animals cannot lead to the presumption that humans can take or dispose of animals as they wish. A single person’s moral standards ought to be measured up to the simple, forgiving standards of an animal – perhaps this would lead to more just decisions regarding a life other than your own.
1) Dowden. "Phil. 153 Mind." Spring 2008. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2006.
2) "Home quotes." Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations.. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2010.
3) "Horse retirement home | Retirement livery | Polcoverack Farm Cornwall." Horse retirement home | Retirement livery | Polcoverack Farm Cornwall. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2010.
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