35 pages • 1 hour read
Peter SingerAnimal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Animal Liberation
As the book’s title suggests, the idea of “animal liberation” is central to Peter Singer’s arguments. At its most basic level, the term suggests a history of oppression and enslavement that the public may not connect or associate with animals. Despite the general ignorance toward the treatment of animals in both the past and present, the history of humanity’s attitude toward animals has been built upon religious and cultural foundations. While also the name of the Animal Liberation movement, the term in and of itself is a symbol, a metaphor for the “dominion” of humans that results in the imprisonment of animals in a cycle of use and abuse. Just as mankind is responsible for the mistreatment of animals, it, too, has to be the solution. Human intervention is unfortunately unavoidable. While the title is a summation of Singer’s points on “speciesism,” it also speaks to the ultimate goal that he believes both society and the individual should be working toward. The title also taps into radical rhetoric used in the civil rights and feminist movements, an echo of the comparisons Singer himself repeatedly uses to bolster his arguments throughout the book.
Vegetarianism and Veganism
While vegetarianism and veganism are diets that many cultures and individuals have subscribed to for centuries, they are also symbols of something larger than gastronomic preference. Vegetarianism is a boycott of cruel animal practices and slaughter and is thus a symbol of commitment to the Animal Liberation movement. Each active choice to participate in the boycott is a willful strike against animal cruelty, depriving the meat industry and companies that fund animal experiments of the capital they require. Singer echoes a similar sentiment when he writes that:
until we boycott meat, and all other products of animal factories, we are, each one of us, contributing to the continued existence, prosperity, and growth of factory farming and all the other cruel practices used in rearing animals for food (161).
Singer further encourages vegetarians to be vocal about the reasons behind their diets in order to convince others to boycott the ill treatment of animals.
Cages
Cages are a recurring motif in Animal Liberation. While cages house animals and hold them captive, they are often also torture instruments. From “battery cages” that cause the claws and flesh of chickens to grow around the wire bottoms to enclosures where cows and pigs are unable to turn around or move, these prisons represent the current state of the animal rights movement. The Animal Liberation movement, as Singer calls it, is met with resistance on all sides, in the form of ignorance from the public, institutional and establishment interests, and government inaction.
Cages also symbolize the suffering of animals; these creatures have been placed into these enclosures by humans, and without direct human involvement and aid, they will be unable to escape.
Farms
The symbol of the idyllic farm, an amalgamation of mostly defunct farming practices that is far from representative of the current state of the US food industry, speaks to one of the animal rights movement’s biggest obstacles. This impossible, imagined farm is a lie that has been sold to the American people, a façade that thinly veils the truth of the mass production and “factory farming” that actually occurs. Singer directly pushes back against the stereotypical image of the idyllic farm throughout the book and refuses to address it as such. Instead, Singer deliberately utilizes the term “factory farming” in order to dismantle the illusion.
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