Rebecca Moore - Humanimal analysis

Rebecca Moore

Joseph Cooper

CRWR212Y

4/21/14

Analysis of Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal

            Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal is a tale her travels to India in order to create a movie that tells the story of two wolf-girls found in India who, when rehabilitated to be more humanized, suffered greatly and died. Kapil uses many literary devices throughout this work to tell the girls’ story. The book is more than just the telling of the two wolf-girls, it is Kapil’s way of conveying that every person has a little animal inside.

            Throughout the piece there is a visible difference in the stanzas. The stanzas are written in one of two ways. The first way in is a font that’s sans serif, such as Arial. The second way is a font with serifs, such as Times New Roman, and is labeled with a number. This visual difference contributes to the juxtaposition Kapil creates between the wolf-girls and humans. This juxtaposition mostly happens between the human stanzas and the wolf-girl stanzas through point of view.           

            The human stanzas are written from various points of view of different humans. Some stanzas are written from the author’s point of view as she goes through the film process, such as stanzas 20 on page 26, 25.i on page 29, 60 on pages 64-65, and many others. Other stanzas are written as though they are from the point of view of someone in the past watching and recounting the happenings of the two wolf-girls. The beginning of stanza 31.i on page 36 tells of a scene at the orphanage where a priest, Joseph, had taken in the wolf-girls. Joseph is cutting the hair of Kamala, the oldest wolf-girl, and his wife is dressing her. They then seem to baptize her though it is not plainly stated.

The wolf-girl stanzas are written from the point of view of one of the two wolf-girls. On page 11 this is obvious is stanza B. The first two lines are “I want to stand up but I can’t do that here. They would know I am a wolf by my sore hips, the look in my eyes.” The wolf-girl stanzas continue capturing the observations of the wolf-girls on the human world.

The author further juxtaposes the human stanzas and the wolf-girl stanzas through sentence structure. In the wolf-girl stanzas, the sentence structure is very simple, if present at all. The stanza G on pages 22-23 exemplifies this in these lines: “The nest is brown. Best is brown next to yellow. Best is blue then brown. Best yellow.” It represents the thought process of the wolf-girls, though there and forming, it is not complete. The sentence structure of the human stanzas is almost always complete, except when trying to make a point. Not only are the sentences complete, by some are complex in structure. Stanza 32 on page 39 is a good example of the human sentence structure in the lines “The cook left a dish with a bloody sauce outside them, glancing up from her work, until, like one big eye, Amala crawled out to get it.” The complete and more complex sentences represents the thought process of the humans as being further evolved, more humanized.

Dialogue is used frequently throughout this work from both the wolf-girl and human perspectives. The dialogue adds to the scene, as if the reader were present. In stanza 40 on pages 47-48, a human stanza, there is dialogue between Kapil and her film crew and the District Forrest Officer (D.F.O.). The manner in which the D.F.O. speaks is through broken English and not grammatically correct. The dialogue in the wolf-girl stanzas are usually from adults working at the orphanage who are trying to humanize them. Examples such as F page 19 and J page 32-33. There is one example, L page 38, which is of the wolf-girl. It is a list of her version of a word, followed by the Bengali word and the English translation.

The literary device that perhaps most clearly conveys Kapil’s point is metaphor. The first example is “The Mother brought the doctor a plate of buttered chicken and chilies, which he ate quickly and sloppily, like a dog” on page 25 in stanza 18. The author blatantly compares the doctors eating habits to a dog, an animal. Another example is in stanza 29.iii on page 35 in the line “Barefoot, his feet resembled those of a goat’s: hard, rough, and smooth.” This compares the physical attribute of a human to those of a goat. In both examples, a human is similar to an animal. She refers to these as “humanimal,” which is the title of the book.

Kapil’s Humanimal story compares two wolf-girls with humans, showing that though most humans view animalistic as bad and as something to be rid of, the wolf-girls embraced it in order to survive. She reveals animalistic characteristics in the humans proving that all humans have a bit of animal in them regardless of humanization.