The BIG Paper!

Animals being portrayed with human characteristics happens quite frequently in children's stories. Reading an adult novel with animals having human characteristics isn't something you come across as often.
In the graphic novel The Pride of Baghdad, written by Brian K. Vaughan, we meet a lion pride that think and communicate very similar to the way that humans due. The novel was inspired by a true story about four lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo and were eventually killed by American Troops. Obviously, Vaughan doesn't know the lions exact thoughts and feelings but while reading the graphic novel I found it hard to keep that in mind. The animals in The Pride Of Baghdad even have good grammar!
The lions recall memories of the wild just as easily as most humans recall memories. Noor had memories of the thrill of the hunt. Zill had memories of the beautiful sunset against the horizon. Ali is a cub born in captivity and enjoys hearing their stories. The most vivid memories that aren't shared with Ali are the memories that Safa keeps hidden down deep. When Ali asked her what the wild was like she clearly remembered her worst memories, but wouldn't share them with the cub. Not her strongest memories at least, she simply told him there had been flies, blood sucking flies. However, her real memories were shared with us.
Safa is missing her right eye, and she recounts what happened the day she lost it. Safa was raped by a male lion named Bukk and his brothers. What I found most interesting about this memory is how well it relates to rapes happening today in places like college dorms or fraternity houses (I'm not saying these are the only places or the most likely places... just an example). I have heard stories (way too many more than I should have) of girls being raped and then being "thrown to the dogs", aka all the guys buddies.
Bukk pushed and pushed for Safa to have sex with him. She scratched his side in her own defense and he ended up clawing out her eye. He threatens to take an ear too and she gives in and tells him to just make it quick. When he's done he says, "Like I said, only takes me six seconds to finish... but "my stupid brothers... might need a little longer." This is just like stories I have heard. A girl is pressured and pressured by a guy to have sex with him, and finally out of fear of being hurt, or because he won't let her leave until she does (or gets her drunk enough etc.), she will finally give in. And then the jerk lets his friends have their way also. Her memories of the pain of the situation seem to still burn deep with in her.
I had never before thought of an animal being rape. Now that I think more about it though I guess that it is sort of true. I've seen many female cats or dogs being extremely annoyed when a male of that species tries to "mount them." It just seemed like a normal part of the animal kingdom. Now it seems almost as terrible as human rape. Though I don't think that cats and dogs are scarred by the experience in the same way that a human would be.
Another humanistic characterization that the lions from The Pride Of Baghdad were given was compassion. While they were wandering the streets of Baghdad, starving, searching for food they came across a young human, a "keeper's cub". The lions see no reason not to eat him, after all he does still seem fresh, and could feed all of them. Safa interjects and says that they can not eat him because if it weren't for the keepers they never would have had food back in the zoo. She added, "How...how can you just turn around and make them your lunch? They're the ones who kept us alive!" Zill rebutted, "and they'll continue to keep us alive as long as we stop looking at them, as anything but meat." After some arguing Safa tells him that if he doesn't have any loyalty to the keepers than he should take the first bite. At first he looks saddened while he contemplates the thought and just as he is preparing to take a bite, Noor calls him off...
The fact that Safa had compassion for the "keeper's cub" because the keepers had taken care of them shows another human trait being portrayed in the lions. A wild, starving, carnivore rooming the streets is not going to take pity on a human just because some humans have taken care of it. They are going to want to eat and not care where the meal comes from.
At the end Zill is shot by an American soldier. Safa shots for Noor to take Ali away from there and tells her that she will do the best she can to take care of their attackers. Safa charges the troop and is also shot and killed. When Noor sees this she screams, " You animals!" I found this to be a tad bit ironic. Just as I am sure it was intended to be.

Art Spiegleman did the opposite of Vaughan in his graphic novels, Maus I and II. In Maus I and II Spiegleman gives humans animal characteristics. The characteristics were not in the way that the characters behaved but in the way they looked. He stereo-typed each race to be a different animal. The Jews were mice, which are to be known as prey, and dirty (the dirty part is from the view of the Germans-that they are dirty like vermin). The German's are illustrated as cats, they are the predator. French are portrayed as frogs. Americans as dogs and Polish as pigs.
Spiegleman's portrayal of humans as animals didn't hold as much significance to me as the way Vaughan had done the opposite. What I liked about Spiegleman's use was that it made it easy to tell where someone belonged. Whether they were a Jew or German or French etc. Maus I and II are done in black and white and so his representation made it much easier to follow. That way you didn't have to guess, and then perhaps be wrong.

In The Pride of Baghdad and Maus I and II we are met with talking animals. It is interesting to me how they could be used so differently though. In The Pride of Baghdad, the animals, in a sense, become human. Where as in Maus I and II, the humans become animals. Its amazing how different these two very similar uses of graphics can be. I guess it is not necessarily in the graphics that we find these differences though. But in the text that goes a long with them.