Deyanira Bustos - Humanimal Analysis

Deyanira Bustos

Joseph Cooper

CRWR 212 Y

April 22, 2014

Humanimal Analysis

In the book Humanimal, Bhanu Kapil illustrates the hardships and life changing events that two young girls go through as they are changed from “animal” like creatures to “humans”. This story is very interesting and provides a sense of how far people can go in order to spread civilization. The book goes in depth of explaining the life of these two girls through the use of simile, point of view, imagery, syntax, flashback, and detail.

In the book, Kapil is able to portray different points of view in order to demonstrate her ideas as well as the the ones from the two girls. Through out the book she separates her work through numbers or the use of letters. Each of these describes something different and from my understanding, she tries to demonstrate the ideas and thoughts of the two girls and her findings and research all together into the book. She includes personal pronouns in the book such as “my” and “I”, and the text also changes in font to separate and distinguish the different points of view. For example, Kapil states “They tore strips from my spine” indicating that it was an act performed on one of the girls.

Kapil uses a lot of imagery in order to describe the lives of these two girls and with that detail and simile are incorporated. The imagery of Kapil is very astounding and goes on a very different level for example when she states “All the branches stir in their silver.” It seems like a very basic but very in depth description of the trees and the way they “stir”. You can imagine the tree “stirring” with the wind and the leaves rattling but the description that was used by providing the word “silver” is very rare and different. Silver tends to describe the image, color, and strength or material in which something is made. In their strength or color or brilliance is something that could describe the tree branches and the tree itself. Similes were also used such as “She opens her coat like two wings and I step into her cloth heart, her cleft of matted fur”. This line describes how the wolf was her shelter and how she was sheltered and taken in by the wolf’s “wings” almost like an angel. The wolf was the childrens savior and was something they knew and trusted. There was also a lot of description and mentioning of colors. For example, “intensely white in the pale pink day” in order to provide more description and images of how everything seemed to be.

There is also small and short syntax and a lot of flashbacks throughout the book. The author goes on to describe things and state them each in very small sentences in order to emphasize. An example that demonstrates the use of short syntax is “This is waking. I want to. All branches fear life. It pushes and pushes: life.” This also incorporates personification when stating that the “branches fear” because that is a human characteristic. There are flashbacks in the work recalling to the girls point of view or experiences but these point of views come from the author. These flashbacks recall when they were fed by the priest, shaved, them escaping, and a lot of other things. These flashbacks allow for us to have more knowledge on the situation and how the young girls felt.

This book was very well built and allowed for their to be a well organized and described way in which the young girls suffered and how they were transformed. Their life changed drastically and this was well perceived by the author very well. The imagery and descriptions were superb and other use of figurative language helped complete the story and there was a lot of meaning behind it all.