70 pages • 2 hours read
Lynda RutledgeWest with Giraffes
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Adventure as a Catalyst to Self-Discovery
Walking With Giraffes is essentially an adventure story. The adventure itself is almost absurd: A young man finds himself driving two giraffes across the United States through a plethora of fights, cataclysmic weather events, and conflicts. Rutledge emphasizes that through adventure, people can truly discover themselves.
Woodrow’s bildungsroman occurs because of his adventure. He learns how to be resilient, how to hope for a better future, and the importance of loyalty. Woodrow was brought up in a very particular community (rural, white, and religious). Through his adventure across the country, Woodrow is exposed to people and places that revise his understandings of the world around him. For example, his experiences with the Jackson family teach him to recognize the humanity in Black people. In 1938, violent Jim Crow laws and formal segregation kept white people and Black people apart. Before his adventure, Woodrow had never met a Black person. Thus, his adventure exposes him to new people, which forces him to reflect on his internalized and taught racism. Another example of adventure as crucial to development is Woodrow’s drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains. He never saw a mountain before, and he must navigate steep, windy, perilous mountain roads with the lives of Riley and the giraffes at stake. He successfully navigates these roads, proving to himself that he is capable of anything he sets his mind to. These discoveries might never have happened had Woodrow not undergone his adventure.
Red is also an example of the importance of adventures. As a woman during her time period, she was relegated to the home. She was expected to marry, bear children, and keep a home. However, Red has big dreams of traveling and becoming an influential photojournalist. Though her adventure ends in heartbreak, and she is forced to return home, Red cherishes the journey for the sake of adventure itself. Throughout the journey, Red proves herself as enterprising, generous, brave, and resourceful. If Red stayed with her husband, away from work and the opportunity to travel, she wouldn’t have accomplished some of her dreams. For Red, the adventure proves herself capable of great things despite society wanting to quash those dreams.
Animals as Sentient, Wise, and Valuable
Central to this novel is the message that animals are sentient, wise, and as valuable as human beings. This theme is indicative of the lack of understanding about animals in the 1930s, but it is also relevant to contemporary readers.
Throughout his upbringing, Woodrow was taught to view animals as expendable. In his rural life, animals were seen as necessary for food, farm work, and travel. Beyond their usefulness, animals were seen as unworthy of the same care and emotions that humans hold for one another. For Woodrow, this was naturally untrue. He had a special connection with the family horse, and when his father forces him to shoot and kill the horse, he leans into his resentments for his father and resolves to leave home. Despite all he’s been taught, Woodrow cannot see animals as lesser in value than himself. This brings him to the giraffes. Few people would see giraffes on a harbor in Manhattan and follow them across the country, but Woodrow is special. His affection for the giraffes motivates his adventure and changes his life. In the giraffes, Woodrow sees the face of God, highlighting the sublime importance of animals. Even when Woodrow learns to give and receive love from people, he still considers the giraffes the apex of his emotional depth.
After the war, Woodrow spends every day with the giraffes, valuing them because he doesn’t need to put up the same boundaries with the giraffes the way he must with people. The giraffes don’t judge him, but they do hold him accountable. In this way, Rutledge characterizes the giraffes as wise, instinctive, and profound. Woodrow can sense that the giraffes know and sense things about the world that he can’t even imagine. Thus, it’s not just a passion for animals that motivates Woodrow. Rather, Woodrow is determined to keep the giraffes safe and well because he views them as superior to human knowledge and experience.
This theme is also emphasized through the brutality of other people working with animals. Circuses were a popular form of entertainment during the 1930s, but people didn’t consider what circus life meant for animals. To keep their circus going, men stole, imprisoned, and abused animals. Tearing animals away from their natural habitats significantly shortens their lifespan, and torturing them until they bend to human will kills their spirit. Characters such as Percival and Cooter represent the evil humans are capable of inflicting onto animals. These antagonists see animals as controllable and unworthy of emotional response. They cage animals and use them for their own business. This book is therefore not just about promoting the value of animals, but also about criticizing the inclination to use animals for entertainment at the expense of animal well-being.
In the 1930s, animal rights did not exist. Today, laws can protect animals against abuse, and many states consider hunting permissible under strict parameters. However, animals are still mass-manufactured through breeding, and slaughterhouses still exist to feed billions of people worldwide. Many incredible animals are extinct or endangered, proving that the lack of empathy for animals has caused a worldwide crisis in animal existence. In this theme, Rutledge criticizes the lack of animal rights of the past, but she also encourages her reader to consider their own role in protecting animals as valuable, worthy of respect, and sentient.
The Power of Memory and Storytelling
A major motivating factor in Woodrow’s narration is the preservation of memory and the importance of storytelling. As an older adult man, Woodrow is determined to invoke his past to preserve the memories of Red and Riley. He sees it as his mission to ensure that Red’s daughter learns about her mother’s impressive adventure, especially because Red’s daughter never got to meet her mother. In writing down his story with urgency, Woodrow keeps the memory of Red alive and honors the memory of their adventure. He is determined to guarantee the story of the giraffes ends with his own death. This highlights Rutledge’s message that storytelling is essential to the human experience because it connects us across years and experiences. Rutledge is herself a storyteller, which makes this theme metacognitive and crucial to the reading experience.
Memory is a complex but important topic throughout this novel. As a young man, Woodrow is haunted by the memories of his past. His dreams take the shape of nightmares in which he relives his traumatic memories on a loop. Though he never truly rids himself of the past, Woodrow learns how to appreciate and honor memories without allowing memories to ruin his idea of himself. Riley provides a different version of this idea: He doesn’t tell anyone the truth of his past, keeping his memories sacred to himself. In Rutledge’s theme, there is a fine line between memory and storytelling because memories are stories, and stories are memories. It is the memory of his past that keeps Woodrow motivated to honor the giraffes above all else, but these memories morph into a story. This signifies the importance of acknowledging and exploring memories. Rather than repress memories, confronting memories can help improve our present and our future. For example, when Woodrow is forced to revisit his family home, he is also forced to revisit the painful memories of that home. In revisiting those memories, Woodrow frees himself of his survivor’s guilt.
