6 ms·

I have to say I really don't understand this story. For those of you who don't want to read, it's a 1948 story about a farmer (presumably E.B. White?) who trie

I have to say I really don't understand this story. For those of you who don't want to read, it's a 1948 story about a farmer (presumably E.B. White?) who tries to save his pig before slaughter that has fallen sick and dies (from erysipelas presumably?). The narrator seems to have a lot of investment in the pig's health: The pig's lot and mine were inextricably bound now, as though the rubber tube were the silver cord. From then until the time of his death I held the pig steadily in the bowl of my mind; the task of trying to deliver him from his misery became a strong obsession. His suffering soon became the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness. The ending few sentences concludes with I have written this account in penitence and in grief, as a man who failed to raise his pig, and to explain my deviation from the classic course of so many raised pigs. The grave in the woods is unmarked, but Fred can direct the mourner to it unerringly and with immense good will, and I know he and I shall often revisit it, singly and together, in seasons of reflection and despair, on flagless memorial days of our own choosing. On a superficial reading, there might be a confusion as to the empathy of the narrator, but the narrator clearly understands what the conclusion of a healthy pig is: I had assumed that there could be nothing much wrong with a pig during the months it was being groomed for murder; my confidence in the essential health and endurance of pigs had been strong and deep, particularly in the health of pigs that belonged to me and that were part of my proud scheme. So it's understood that in the best of cases, the pig is being cared for so that it can be murdered for food. Is the sense of loss one of not conforming to a rigid script that society sets out? Is it because the narrator has a genuine sense of empathy but just ignores the fact that they'll slaughter and eat the thing they have empathy for? Or is it a statement that we are all eventually bound for a soulless premeditated murder and the only thing we can hope for is a comfortable prison before the time comes? Or am I just expecting too much introspection from someone who hasn't examined their own motives and actions?

reitanqild 9y ago
I guess the point is to make the reader think. The author is fully aware of the irony that he cares and thinks so much about this pig that he was planning to butcher. It reminds me about when I was a kid and didn't care much about animals until one of my rabbits died because I'd placed it in a cage without shelter and not brought it back in before a heavy cold rain. I had to kill it, as I realized it was suffering and I guess that was the day I started caring about animals.
- abetusk 9y ago
  "Making the reader think" seems reasonable to me, especially after doing a bit more research on E.B. White. While it's nice to think that this is the goal of the story, I also wonder if it's not actually giving people a way to rationalize inhuman behavior. By his own account, White is saying "murder" and it seems this wording is intentional. Looking at other comments, it's clear there's a compartmentalization that happens when people try to reconcile having empathy for living things then murdering and eating them. It's almost as if it's giving permission to people by saying they're more human because they have empathy for a creature that they'll later murder and eat.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Are you actually having trouble understanding the story and the emotions involved, or are you just looking for as many opportunities as possible to call the slaughter of an animal raised for meat "murder", in a non-poetic sense?
    - abetusk 9y ago
      I'm actually having trouble. I do admit that I have a hard time reconciling the empathy expressed with the brutality of murder but I've tried to get at the core of what's trying to be expressed. You're trying to bait me and I think that's unfair. The story itself about the juxtaposition of caring for an animal that can be clearly empathized with while planning a per-meditated murder (White's words). White literally calls it murder. This is what the story is about. You think it's unfair of me to try and discuss it? Before you judge me to harshly, notice some of the other comments to my original question aren't saying that they have a hard time reconciling the murder of animals with their emotional attachment, they're saying they love their animals while not caring that they kill them. It's almost as if they're saying that their empathy towards their animals gives them moral latitude in killing them. Is this what White was trying to express? I don't think so but that's what half of the comments to my question seem to be saying. Was this what White was trying to say? That people should feel better about killing animals because they empathize with them? Or is he saying they should feel worse and work towards a world that doesn't kill animals? Or is he not examining this at all and just expressing an emotion without any introspection? I really don't know and I wanted to see what other people had to say about it.
syntheticnature 9y ago
That we may live, other life must inevitably die -- in fact, this is generally the rule for most life at this point. Even if you consider plants unworthy of the same regard we give animals (how zoochauvinist of you), animal life is lost in the tilling and harvesting from fields, even if pesticides are not used and no new habitat turned to our use. Further, the harvest would be most meager without any pest control, and manual removal of insects, etc. is fairly prohibitive; organic farmers usually make use of more natural options for pest control, like diatomaceous earth, rather than discarding treatment entirely. The real lack of introspection is our handwaving away of this truth from notice, such that we find an unavoidable truth abhorrent.
waynecochran 9y ago
I have friends who own cattle that will later be butchered. They truly love those animals, even though they know their fate in the end. They give even them names. They would be heartbroken if one of them died like this pig did. I suppose this is the mindset of many who raise these animals. There is definitely a sense a humaneness towards their animals, and at the same time enjoy the meat they produce. I have seen cows butchered -- one second they are alive -- one blow to the head they are gone. Sharp transition from death to life. Better than many humans who endure being eaten by cancer while lying in a hospital bed. We are so insulated from death in our society, we almost pretend it doesn't happen. Many who butcher there own animals or hunt for their own meat have a better grip on this reality I think.
- paulajohnson 9y ago
  One of Terry Pratchett's characters, an old shepherdess, summed it up well. From memory: "We are as gods to the beasts of the field: we order the hour of their birth and their death. In between times, we has a duty."
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  A better grip on reality. Yes, and there is not this perverse attempt to replace human company with controllable companions (aka pets), that leads to so much animal antromorphism and hidden missery. I can like a cow, and still know its a cow. A horse can not know what a hand is that holds the sugar cube. For a horse, you are another smaller horse. I live near a horse-stable, where strong-empowered single ladies have up to five horses. The sadness and missery of a live that has replaced what could be a family or just human company with animals - is on par in my eyes with some computer addicted males. You should hear the arguments they have with the vet.
  - aleksei 9y ago
    > I live near a horse-stable, where strong-empowered single ladies have up to five horses. The sadness and missery of a live that has replaced what could be a family or just human company with animals - is on par in my eyes with some computer addicted males. What the actual fuck?
mikestew 9y ago
So it's understood that in the best of cases, the pig is being cared for so that it can be murdered for food. I grew up with livestock that would later be converted to food on our table. Those animals had one bad day their entire lives. Though we intended to eat them, we had no intention of adding to that count of bad days if we didn’t have to. So, though never called upon to do so, I’d stay up all night with a pig if she were sick even if I were going to eat her later.
munchbunny 9y ago
I think the author is trying to get across a mindset that is common among people who raise livestock, which others might find foreign like you seem to. He seems fully aware of the contradictions within it, and isn't making any attempts to rationalize it. He's likely hoping that the reader will try to understand the mindset that makes this contradiction possible.
- abetusk 9y ago
  If this is true, then I would say it's laziness on the author's part to not try to reconcile this contradiction or to at least to address it in a deeper way.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Emotions are not rational; they can be handled, but trying to force them into a rational framework seems...counterproductive to me.
  - haspok 9y ago
    Or maybe it's laziness on your part not making enough effort to understand what he is trying to tell you ... This is not a maths essay, this is literature. Contradiction is part of it (as it is part of life), or even: contradiction is the whole point of it. On the other hand, there is no contradiction at all. Interestingly, your comment is so much removed from what I read in this essay that the only thing I can recommend you is not worry about it, just set this story aside and try reading it again 25 years from now. It will most probably make a difference. I'm not sure why this essay was posted to HN, but I'm glad to have read it. Thanks for posting it!
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >then I would say it's laziness on the author's part to not try to reconcile this contradiction or to at least to address it in a deeper way Authors are not there to force-feed explanations and offer cliff notes. They convey the experience.
smallnamespace 9y ago
> Or am I just expecting too much introspection from someone who hasn't examined their own motives and actions? You're expecting logical consistency from the author, but the author is partly pointing out that our emotions and feelings do not always obey such a rigid framework. The author is examining how they feel about the pig's death; that sometimes comes before, or is not in congruence with, their other motivations. If you reflect on this a bit more, the normal course of a farmer (and to a greater degree, industrial meat production) is to view their animals as a product and to not regard them as feeling individuals, as that might rather get in the way of their work. But the farmer is slowly drawn into a situation where the pig is more than future meat, but a suffering fellow creature.
- ycombinete 9y ago
  Just to add to this point, with something that Yuval Noah Harari said in an interview with Sam Harris: "If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human... must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture."
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    Godel's Incompleteness Theorem proves that at least in math, there's a tradeoff between power and completeness / consistency, in that formal systems than can encode arithmetic can prove more things, but they are necessarily either inconsistent or incomplete. Would make a lot of sense if this tradeoff were also present in other contexts.
Spooky23 9y ago
Farmers respect the animals even though their fate is pre-ordained. There are all sorts of questions that are tough to answer. My thought always was that it's better to live than to not live at all, and if we didn't eat pigs, we wouldn't have any.

reitanqild 9y ago

I guess the point is to make the reader think. The author is fully aware of the irony that he cares and thinks so much about this pig that he was planning to butcher. It reminds me about when I was a kid and didn't care much about animals until one of my rabbits died because I'd placed it in a cage without shelter and not brought it back in before a heavy cold rain. I had to kill it, as I realized it was suffering and I guess that was the day I started caring about animals.

abetusk 9y ago
"Making the reader think" seems reasonable to me, especially after doing a bit more research on E.B. White. While it's nice to think that this is the goal of the story, I also wonder if it's not actually giving people a way to rationalize inhuman behavior. By his own account, White is saying "murder" and it seems this wording is intentional. Looking at other comments, it's clear there's a compartmentalization that happens when people try to reconcile having empathy for living things then murdering and eating them. It's almost as if it's giving permission to people by saying they're more human because they have empathy for a creature that they'll later murder and eat.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Are you actually having trouble understanding the story and the emotions involved, or are you just looking for as many opportunities as possible to call the slaughter of an animal raised for meat "murder", in a non-poetic sense?
  - abetusk 9y ago
    I'm actually having trouble. I do admit that I have a hard time reconciling the empathy expressed with the brutality of murder but I've tried to get at the core of what's trying to be expressed. You're trying to bait me and I think that's unfair. The story itself about the juxtaposition of caring for an animal that can be clearly empathized with while planning a per-meditated murder (White's words). White literally calls it murder. This is what the story is about. You think it's unfair of me to try and discuss it? Before you judge me to harshly, notice some of the other comments to my original question aren't saying that they have a hard time reconciling the murder of animals with their emotional attachment, they're saying they love their animals while not caring that they kill them. It's almost as if they're saying that their empathy towards their animals gives them moral latitude in killing them. Is this what White was trying to express? I don't think so but that's what half of the comments to my question seem to be saying. Was this what White was trying to say? That people should feel better about killing animals because they empathize with them? Or is he saying they should feel worse and work towards a world that doesn't kill animals? Or is he not examining this at all and just expressing an emotion without any introspection? I really don't know and I wanted to see what other people had to say about it.

syntheticnature 9y ago

That we may live, other life must inevitably die -- in fact, this is generally the rule for most life at this point. Even if you consider plants unworthy of the same regard we give animals (how zoochauvinist of you), animal life is lost in the tilling and harvesting from fields, even if pesticides are not used and no new habitat turned to our use. Further, the harvest would be most meager without any pest control, and manual removal of insects, etc. is fairly prohibitive; organic farmers usually make use of more natural options for pest control, like diatomaceous earth, rather than discarding treatment entirely. The real lack of introspection is our handwaving away of this truth from notice, such that we find an unavoidable truth abhorrent.

waynecochran 9y ago

I have friends who own cattle that will later be butchered. They truly love those animals, even though they know their fate in the end. They give even them names. They would be heartbroken if one of them died like this pig did. I suppose this is the mindset of many who raise these animals. There is definitely a sense a humaneness towards their animals, and at the same time enjoy the meat they produce. I have seen cows butchered -- one second they are alive -- one blow to the head they are gone. Sharp transition from death to life. Better than many humans who endure being eaten by cancer while lying in a hospital bed. We are so insulated from death in our society, we almost pretend it doesn't happen. Many who butcher there own animals or hunt for their own meat have a better grip on this reality I think.

paulajohnson 9y ago
One of Terry Pratchett's characters, an old shepherdess, summed it up well. From memory: "We are as gods to the beasts of the field: we order the hour of their birth and their death. In between times, we has a duty."
honestoHeminway 9y ago
A better grip on reality. Yes, and there is not this perverse attempt to replace human company with controllable companions (aka pets), that leads to so much animal antromorphism and hidden missery. I can like a cow, and still know its a cow. A horse can not know what a hand is that holds the sugar cube. For a horse, you are another smaller horse. I live near a horse-stable, where strong-empowered single ladies have up to five horses. The sadness and missery of a live that has replaced what could be a family or just human company with animals - is on par in my eyes with some computer addicted males. You should hear the arguments they have with the vet.
- aleksei 9y ago
  > I live near a horse-stable, where strong-empowered single ladies have up to five horses. The sadness and missery of a live that has replaced what could be a family or just human company with animals - is on par in my eyes with some computer addicted males. What the actual fuck?

mikestew 9y ago

So it's understood that in the best of cases, the pig is being cared for so that it can be murdered for food. I grew up with livestock that would later be converted to food on our table. Those animals had one bad day their entire lives. Though we intended to eat them, we had no intention of adding to that count of bad days if we didn’t have to. So, though never called upon to do so, I’d stay up all night with a pig if she were sick even if I were going to eat her later.

munchbunny 9y ago

I think the author is trying to get across a mindset that is common among people who raise livestock, which others might find foreign like you seem to. He seems fully aware of the contradictions within it, and isn't making any attempts to rationalize it. He's likely hoping that the reader will try to understand the mindset that makes this contradiction possible.

abetusk 9y ago
If this is true, then I would say it's laziness on the author's part to not try to reconcile this contradiction or to at least to address it in a deeper way.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Emotions are not rational; they can be handled, but trying to force them into a rational framework seems...counterproductive to me.
- haspok 9y ago
  Or maybe it's laziness on your part not making enough effort to understand what he is trying to tell you ... This is not a maths essay, this is literature. Contradiction is part of it (as it is part of life), or even: contradiction is the whole point of it. On the other hand, there is no contradiction at all. Interestingly, your comment is so much removed from what I read in this essay that the only thing I can recommend you is not worry about it, just set this story aside and try reading it again 25 years from now. It will most probably make a difference. I'm not sure why this essay was posted to HN, but I'm glad to have read it. Thanks for posting it!
- coldtea 9y ago
  >then I would say it's laziness on the author's part to not try to reconcile this contradiction or to at least to address it in a deeper way Authors are not there to force-feed explanations and offer cliff notes. They convey the experience.

smallnamespace 9y ago

> Or am I just expecting too much introspection from someone who hasn't examined their own motives and actions? You're expecting logical consistency from the author, but the author is partly pointing out that our emotions and feelings do not always obey such a rigid framework. The author is examining how they feel about the pig's death; that sometimes comes before, or is not in congruence with, their other motivations. If you reflect on this a bit more, the normal course of a farmer (and to a greater degree, industrial meat production) is to view their animals as a product and to not regard them as feeling individuals, as that might rather get in the way of their work. But the farmer is slowly drawn into a situation where the pig is more than future meat, but a suffering fellow creature.

ycombinete 9y ago
Just to add to this point, with something that Yuval Noah Harari said in an interview with Sam Harris: "If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human... must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture."
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  Godel's Incompleteness Theorem proves that at least in math, there's a tradeoff between power and completeness / consistency, in that formal systems than can encode arithmetic can prove more things, but they are necessarily either inconsistent or incomplete. Would make a lot of sense if this tradeoff were also present in other contexts.

Spooky23 9y ago

Farmers respect the animals even though their fate is pre-ordained. There are all sorts of questions that are tough to answer. My thought always was that it's better to live than to not live at all, and if we didn't eat pigs, we wouldn't have any.