English 12
07/31/2021
Leo Jee
Anthropocentrism
Observing the world in contemporary society, it is evident that humans possess most, if not, all of the Earth. Though this may seem insignificant, a pondering individual may wonder if this is how Earth is supposed to be, for humans have never been given the opportunity to raise suspicions to such. After all, humans grow up in a civilization where all they see are humans, grow up raised and educated for human social standards, and as civilization advances, more and more humans seem to occupy the world. Therefore, it becomes evident that humans naturally believe that Earth is their possession, and that the significance of the nature around them be miniscule. Yet this is quintessential of how all humans have unintentionally (or intentionally) have adopted the concept of anthropocentrism, the notion that humans are the center of the world. Likewise, the two literatures “The Tyger” by William Blake and “Do Seek their Meat from God” by Charles G. D. Roberts questions the readers whether if humans are really superior that they can claim Earth as their own, in which they both deny. Ultimately, the two literatures tell us that humans evoke destruction to their community and environment, both physically and ethically, because they are blind by egocentrism.
The unfair treatment that the animals of both parties in the literatures of “The Tyger” and “Do Seek their Meat from God” receive is fundamentally due to the anthropocentric nature of humans; their tendency to think that the world revolves around them. This is because the death of the panthers in “Do Seek their Meat from God” derives from a human’s action according to their ethics and moral reasoning, whilst the tiger in “The Tyger” is shown to have become angry due to humans for their irresponsible usage of their God-given talents. Firstly, humans acting accordingly to their ethics and moral reasoning is a representation of anthropocentrism, for human ethics and moral reasoning revolve around the standard of ‘being human’. Such can be proved when observing of how the readers respond when they see the panther couple “gliding toward the open cabin door”, at the verge of attacking a young child in “Do Seek their Meat from God”, for readers can catch themselves thinking that the panthers must be terminated as quickly as possible before the young child is eaten ( Robert 2). However, to the panthers, the child was not a child for it was simply prey that they needed to hunt to feed their own starving children. Therefore, the author states “it would be thoughtless superstition to say the beasts were cruel”, for the animals did not attack the child because it was evil or had wished to perform violence, but also because these animals see things more ‘equally’ than humans do ( Robert 2). However, even then, the fact that a human child is being attacked is inconceivable for the readers, because it is a fragile human being. Yet, what if the panthers were not animals – but also equally human? Or, what if the panthers were attacking a rabbit? Such would not have elicited the same emotional response, as readers would have deduced that human assailants would just have been that much desperate, and that it is okay for a rabbit to die. Such is why the tiger of “The Tyger” is infuriated, for humans do not use the gift that they have received from “he who made the Lamb”, otherwise known as God (for Lamb is a biblical reference to Jesus), to benefit the entirety of nature, but only to satiate their own needs (Blake line 20). As can be seen, the protagonist shoots the panthers with his hunting rifle, an object of the manifestation of the human intellect. Yet, the humans do not procure any ways to help the animals that they hurt when they created “great inroads”, a passageway for humans, in the “ancient forest”, but are willing to devise weapons to kill other animals – once again for food for humans (Robert 1). Such human selfishness is what “[burns] the fire of [the tiger’s] eyes” and “twist the sinews of [the tiger’s] heart”, for humans have always been selfish creatures that only thought of itself (Blake line 6,10). Therefore, it is evident that humans are using their intellect for their own good, even though they have the capability to make the world a better place for all animals, and that their ethical and moral reasonings are based off human-centered beliefs – and that all of these are what antagonizes the animals in both literatures.
Ultimately the anthropocentrism that humans have, creates destruction wherever humans go. The destruction that humans inflict is shown to be physical in both literatures, though the two also hints toward the destruction of peace. As explicitly shown in the literature, the humans creating “great inroads” in the “ancient forest” in “Do Seek their Meat from God” causes the panthers to starve as human expeditions drove “deer and smaller game” away (Robert 1). This is a physical destruction that humans have caused to travel faster, but as aforementioned, only benefits humans. “The Tyger” also shows similar destruction, for it talks of “hammers”, “chains”, “furnaces” and “anvils” to metaphorize a blacksmith, a human-made facility to create tools that they would use to later create more destruction (Blake line 13,14,15). The cutting of trees, swords and spears to kill other animals or humans, hoes for farms, shovels to destroy ground – everything that it creates has the capability to destroy nature and other animals. Furthermore, this metaphoric expression also represents commerce and the financial economy, for blacksmiths can also symbolize a craftmanship that were central in the medieval era. Seeing how most human-evoked destructions come from economic purposes, “The Tyger” successfully also shows that humans usurp nature to reap its resources to fuel a human-made cycle of cash flow. Such is why the Amazon rainforest is being cut today for its tree and why people burn fossil fuel that drives climate change, for the society that humans live in requires money to live. This artificial necessity for ‘money’, is therefore what is causing humans to invoke greater unnecessary destruction of the world and is something completely unnatural to how Earth was originally designed. Seeing that the concept of economy was derived for humans to have a more convenient method of trading goods for goods, once again, the human egocentrism has created a form of destruction that only benefits humans. Such is why the author of “Do Seek their Meat from God” does a great job in expressing the effects of anthropocentrism, for the readers are given a sense of relief when the child is saved, even when the panther’s cubs have seemingly died, a direct representation of how humans view the world today. Yet, such is ironic, for the destruction that humans cause around them, inevitably causes destruction for themselves, as can be seen by the state of the environment in contemporary society.
In the end, the “dead bodies” of “two small panther cubs” is a cruel reality that humans need to realize, for it symbolizes the result of anthropocentric behavior (Robert 2). The moral and ethical reasoning they conduct often blind them from the reality of how they are blinded to the bigger picture of how humans and nature must coexist, and that their superior intellectual capability was not given simply to satiate their own species. It was given as a gift for all of the world, for “he who made the Lamb” had also made “[them]” (Blake line 20). Yet, humans are too fixated on living their daily life to fit into a society created by humans, that they have difficulty in realizing the significance of the coexistence of both human and nature. Perhaps such is why climate change is growing worse and worse each year, for humans are still slow to realize a certain impending doom, that could probably have been prevented if people thought of the bigger picture.
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