Coetzee's The Lives of Animals is a very interesting work, and while it did not manage to turn me vegetarian it certainly pushed me to consider not only what I eat, but how I behave. A concept I found interesting in the lectures was how they approached the idea of reason, specifically "The Philosophers and the Animals." Elizabeth Costello, the character through which Coetzee writes these lectures, presents to us in the novel the idea that "Reason is the being of a certain spectrum of human thinking." (The Lives of Animals, pg. 23) The reason why I point to this statement is because I believe that Coetzee, through Costello, is arguing for us to see past reason so that we may become more open to a discussion of animal rights, as well as our treatment of other human beings. I say discussion because I do not think that Coetzee feeds to us an answer of what is right and wrong, but instead presents to us the tools for a new way of thinking. In this passage Costello states that reason is only one established "spectrum" of the way we think, pointing to the fact that we have many other ways at our disposal to analyze and see the issues. Although, the novel draws the striking comparison between the Holocaust and the slaughter of animals I do not that Coetzee is trying to push an animal rights agenda down our throats, rather I believe that Coetzee is trying to throw his readers into a situation where this very taboo and touchy topic takes us out of our usual spectrum of thinking. That is to say, we cannot solely rely on our ability to reason to comprehend the several ideas that are at stake in the discussion of animal rights.
On one level I believe that the novel is presenting us several points on the rights of animals, but on the other hand I believe that Coetzee's talk of animals also brings about some interesting points about our humanity towards humans. However, the significant point which I believe is relevant to both is the fact that we cannot run away from knowledge. Coetzee states in his non-fiction essay "Remembering Texas," that “Complicity is not the problem – complicity was far too advance a notion for the time being. The problem was with knowing what was being done. It was not obvious where one went to escape from knowledge.” (Doubling the Point, pg. 51) Coetzee says this about his time at school in Texas, in response to a student who asked him why he lived in US if he did not agree with the war. What Coetzee is trying to say in this phrase is that the student assumed that Coetzee dislike of the war lied in some sense of complicity with what was being done, but it was not complicity that perturbed Coetzee, but only the simple fact of knowing. We must consider that Coetzee had been living in South Africa during apartheid and there too did he suffer the faith of knowing the injustices being done without being able to hide from it. Coetzee's statement says more than it appears to say because through knowing the history of Coetzee's life it implies that the injustices are taking place everywhere and anywhere and we, especially in this age of technology, cannot escape the burden of knowing. I feel that this idea is prevalent in The Lives of Animals and that what Costello is pointing to is not our complicity with a monstrosity, whether in the form of the Holocaust or slaughterhouses, but how knowledge is a powerful thing and our biggest mistake is trying to ignore it. I think this theme has appeared again and again in the works I have read so far. I believe that what the novel is pushing for is a realization from its reader that when one has the knowledge of something one cannot simply try to cover it up and ignore it, and that while complicity may be part of our crime, trying to drown out the cries of others is equally as bad or worse. In Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate is both complicit and attempts to ignore what is being done, but near the end of the novel he denounces the crimes of the army and the citizens publicly, and I believe that really what Coetzee, through Costello, is looking for in these lectures is not necessarily to change the way people think, but to encourage us to not "just...sit silent" (The Lives of Animals, pg.59) against any kind of injustice.
