The explicit dehumanization of black characters into animals is seen in both A Lesson Before Dying, and The Bluest Eye; Jefferson is compared to a hog in an attempt to prove his innocence, and Pecola is regarded as a fly by Geraldine. Making monsters of people is not simply giving them monstrous features, but to regard them as animals is to morph them into creatures that arguably do not have the complexities that make people human. For further reading:
- Shakespeare, William, and Kenneth Muir. Othello. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1968. Print.
- This Shakespeare play shows a constant theme of animal imagery curiosity of the villain Iago, especially used to regard Othello, a Black general in the Venetian army.
- Perlberg, Alison. “The Continued Dehumanization of Blacks.” Stanford University. Stanford University, 31 July 2011. Web. <http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/continued-dehumanization-blacks>.
- This article analyzes Jennifer Eberhardt’s experiments of why animal imagery is more readily used against Blacks, including a tendency to use animal language against Black defendants in court cases rather than White defendants.
- Flick, Hank, and Larry Powell. “Animal Imagery in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X.” Journal of Black Studies 18.4 (June 1988): 435-451. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter and Timothy J. White. Vol. 117. Detroit: Gale, 1999. Contemporary Literary Criticism Online. Web. <http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do id=IQXAEY139846840&v=2.1&u=cuny_baruch&it=r&p=GLS&sw=w&asid=384f6811a9ba4d9b3aa655af6b494fd1>
- This article discusses the use of animal imagery by Malcolm X in his writing; reversing the roles of Blacks and Whites that had been used to degrade Blacks previously.
