Short Summary: Children And Animals

Children and Animals
In the world that dominated by human beings, animals’ living spaces are arbitrarily decreasing and their quality of life is being negatively influenced. This disappointing situation is not only caused by the rapid urban expansion, increase in population, and enormous natural resources exploration, but also is derived from human’s alleged sense of superiority over animal. Those people believe humans’ lives are much more valuable and meaningful than those of animals, and animals’ innate social role and function is to make human live better. For them, animals are the pets helping people to survive loneliness, the live sceneries in the recreational places, the food physically fostering people, and the tools for achieving wealth. …show more content…
Whenever she was free, she would go to the farm to watch animals playing around and to listen to their talking, and animals “treated her as an equal.” However, in the later chapters, the savior Fern seems to disappear from Wilbur’s life. When the family arrived at the Fair, the vanishment of Fern was remarkably conspicuous. At the Fair, leaving her friend, Wilbur, alone, Fern was obsessed with Henry Fussy and especially riding a ferry wheel with him. When Mrs. Arable asked her at the end of the day whether she had a good time at the Fair, Fern nodded and answered: “I had the best time I have ever had anywhere or anytime in all of my life.” This response is, in fact, contradictory to her previous thought: “My best friends are in the barn cellar. It is a very sociable place. Not at all lonely.” At the end of the book, “Fern did not come regularly to the barn anymore.” The dramatic shift in the identity of animals, from “best friends” to “childish things,” demonstrates children’s perspectives regarding animal would evolve to “maturity” from “childishness.” The growth in mentality enables children to realize their identity as a human being and to perceive the difference between human and non-human, such that the change occurs naturally as time goes. For Fern, Wilbur is no longer a creature sharing non-distinct life with her but an animal. The …show more content…
Most of the people acknowledge the cruelty that animal suffer and thus advocate for animal rights, but it is somehow difficult for them to take a further, concrete step. The reason for this is although people condemn animal abuse, they cannot or are not willing to give up their habit or tradition of eating meat. Can their next generations change the severe situation that animal have? The answer is not definite but positive. A fair understanding of animal’s life of children could be established through ethically appropriate education and instruction, but there are still a lot of other factors that could distract children from the right path. However, it is no doubt that the future generation is the hope to change animal’s life condition dramatically. What the contemporary generation should do is to not only contribute further efforts in improving animal right but also give the right direction to the children regarding animal