Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Only the Animals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Interconnectedness of Humans and Animals
Animals and War
Human Cruelty
Kindness and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
The black bear tells the witch to write down what he has to say—he can’t speak to humans without her. As she breaks bread over her knee and tosses it into the bear pit, she encourages the bear to stay silent. If he speaks, he’ll be judged as a human. The black bear ignores the bread, and when the witch encourages him to eat before his “friend” wakes up, the bear scoffs. He’s waiting for his so-called friend—a sleeping brown bear—to die so that he can eat her. The witch asks why he’s waiting, and the bear explains that if he eats the brown bear while she’s still alive, then people will think he’s heartless and will stop trying to bring him bread.
The idea that people will judge the black bear like a person if he speaks complicates Henry Lawson’s insistence in “The Bones” that animals make people look worse by comparison. This is perhaps because animals can’t speak—so there’s less to judge them for. Even so, the bear also seems to understand that he has to work to seem like the kind of animal people want to keep alive. If he starts to act murderous, he could end up like the elephants in the previous story.
Themes
A shell lands down the slope “in the city under siege.” The witch wonders where it landed and shrinks back against the fence. It’s late summer in Sarajevo, and people are thirsty enough to risk being shot in their quest for water. The black bear wishes people would bring him dead bodies instead of bread, but the witch stays silent. She looks for movement across the zoo. The zoo is in no man’s land near the front line, and there aren’t many trees left.
This story takes place during the siege of Sarajevo, which is the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. Given that the bear dies in 1992, it’s still early in the siege (it began in 1992). As the story takes place in a zoo, it shows again how dependent animals are on their caregivers. The bears must hope that people continue to bring them bread—otherwise, they’ll die.
Themes
The black bear stands on his hind legs and stares at a dead Bosnian soldier. He was shot while trying to bring the bear food, and the Bosnians are waiting for nightfall to move the soldier’s body back to their military base. The black bear asks the witch how the black market is treating her, and she affirms that she’s getting rich on Marlboros. In the cave, the emaciated blind brown bear sits up, and the black bear greets her by calling her “fatso.” The brown bear greets the witch, but the witch ignores her. The witch insists it’s “decadent” to smoke in summer, and the brown bear inhales the smoke. It’s the same cigarette brand that the zookeeper and his wife had smoked as they strolled amongst the animals in peacetime.
The black bear doesn’t seem to have much compassion for the very people who are trying to keep him alive. In this case, rather than making people look worse, the bear makes them look better: the black bear appears ungrateful, picky, and predatory (he plans to eat his fellow bear and seems to want to eat the soldier who risked his life to bring the bear bread from his own rations), while the soldier is portrayed as selfless, kind, and brave. Indeed, the bear seems more human than a lot of the collection’s other animal narrators have, in large part because of his selfish attitude. (This is a sharp contrast, for instance, from the communal elephants in the previous story.)
Themes
The brown bear launches into a story about a prince, a human baby, who was turned into a bear. The black bear groans, saying “Here she goes again,” but the witch insists that the brown bear will taste better with “fairy tale still on her tongue.” The brown bear continues her story about the baby, who was a Persian prince. The boy’s mother, wanting the king to marry her, had asked a witch for help orchestrating this and agreed to pay with her first son in return. So one day, the mother woke up to find a bear cub in her son’s crib. Terrified, she left the bear prince in the mountains and told him to never come home.
Though storytelling emerged as an important tool in “I, the Elephant, Wrote This,” it takes on a different meaning in this section. Here, the witch says that the brown bear will taste better if she gets to tell a story right before she dies, which suggests that telling a story will make the brown bear happier. The black bear’s comment of “Here she goes again” implies that the brown bear often tells stories—possibly this same particular story—which suggests that storytelling perhaps bolsters the brown bear spirit or provides her with a distraction from her suffering.
Themes
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The bear prince fell asleep. Unbeknownst to him, a young Polish man named Karol was walking with a group of soldiers through the mountains. He’d survived a war camp in Siberia; it was World War II, and many men were on the move. Karol discovered the sleeping cub and fell in love with him immediately. He’d watched his own baby boy sleeping like this before Karol was arrested in Poland, right after the Russians invaded. He’d wanted to hold his baby since the Russians decided to conscript their Polish prisoners into their ranks.
The story within the story takes place during World War II, which invites comparisons between this story and the others in the collection that took place during the same conflict. Many of the stories in the collection speak to how devastating and destructive war can be for animals and the natural landscape, but the story about Karol not being able to hold his own baby reminds readers of the human cost of war. The Soviet Union and Germany invaded Poland in 1939—thus marking the start of World War II—so Karol was presumably one of the 500,000 Polish men who were arrested.
Themes
That night, Karol nestled the bear prince into a washing bowl. The other men laughed at first, but soon they all wanted to play with the cub. The bear came with soldiers when they moved off toward British Palestine, where they will join the Polish army. They didn’t have any time to think or feel angry about having been shoved into cattle trains. But there was no time to celebrate being free, either; there was a war to fight.
The way that the bear prince becomes an integral part of the regiment shows how beneficial relationships with animals can be, especially during a war. (Unlike readers, Karol doesn’t know that his new pet is a human who was turned into a. bear.) Just as having Kiki to feed and care for strengthened her adopted soldier’s will to live in the trenches of World War I, the bear prince brings Karol and the other men a welcome bit of levity in the midst of their bleak circumstances.
Themes
In Palestine, Karol found the transition to his new regiment easier because of the bear prince’s presence. The regiment adopted the cub as their mascot. He spent his days sitting outside the commander’s tent or beneath the water truck taps and showered with the men.
Karol and the bear prince’s story is based on the true story of a bear named Wojtek who accompanied a Polish regiment during World War II. And again, as with Kiki and her adopted soldier, Karol and the bear prince’s story shows how beneficial an animal companion can be during a difficult time.
Themes
Back in the present, the black bear interrupts the brown bear’s story to warn that there are people coming. It’s completely dark now, as Sarajevo doesn’t have electricity anymore. These days, visiting the zoo isn’t a fun, lighthearted activity for the masses. The few people who do venture into the zoo grounds do so to bring food for the last two remaining zoo animals, who have become central to the city’s survival—or the idea of its survival.
In Kiki’s section of the collection, the story showed how having Kiki to feed and care for actually helped her adopted soldier survive, because it strengthened his will to live in the midst of incredibly bleak circumstances (WWI trench warfare). The book applies the same idea here, but on a broader scale. To the city’s residents, keeping the two bears alive seems to represent their own tenacious struggle for survival. Just as the bear prince is a mascot for Karol and his regiment, the black bear and brown bear in the story’s present seem to have become mascots for the city.
Themes
The witch disappears into the shadows as two teenage boys, the older one a soldier, step towards the fence. They search for the bears and toss a handful of nettles into the cage. Then, the boys reminisce about seeing the bears before the war. They discuss that the brown bear is blind, and the younger brother looks at both the bears. He realizes he’s never had a zoo animal look back at him. His older brother thinks about their parents and hopes that they don’t go outside together anymore—even though they’ve spent every morning walking together in the park to feed birds. These days, all the birds are gone.
That the young boys risk their lives to feed the bears again underscores that the bears’ survival is important to the community, but it also speaks to the idea that war doesn’t just affect adults—it affects kids, too. The older brother’s hope that his parents aren’t going out suggests that the parents might be based on the real–life couple Boško Brić and Admira Ismić, who were a mixed Bosnian-Serbian couple. Snipers murdered them during the first winter of the siege.
Themes
The witch reappears once the boys are gone and lights another cigarette. She says she misses strawberries the most. She used to be able to smell the strawberry fields, but the fruit rotted in the fields because people couldn’t get through the barricades around the city. The black bear spits that a soldier tossed him a snail the other day and acted like it was a steak. The witch notes that everyone in the city is eating snails these days, though they’re awful without butter.
The purpose of a siege is to cut a city off from supplies—and as the witch reminisces about the strawberries, it’s clear that the siege has done just that. And the black bear continues to present himself as more humanlike than animal-like when he scoffs at the snail. He’s clearly used to much more appetizing fare than a snail—and he doesn’t seem to grasp that to the hungry people of Sarajevo, giving up a snail to feed the bear is indeed a sacrifice.
Themes
The brown bear interrupts this conversation to continue her story. She says that when Karol’s regiment moved to Iraq, the bear prince was no longer a cub. The bear’s “animal presence” elevated everyone, and those in charge knew that a good mascot would keep the men engaged.
In contrast to Lawson’s assertion at the beginning of the book that animals make people look worse by comparison, the bear prince makes the people in his regiment look better. But unlike other examples throughout the collection, this is not because the bear is poorly behaved compared to the soldiers, but because he gives them something to fight for, which consequently inspires them to be more engaged and tenacious fighters.
Themes
At the new base, there were Polish women fighting in the Women’s Signal Corps. The men and women were only supposed to mix at mealtimes, but the extreme heat made everyone more laidback about the rules. One afternoon, the bear prince entered the co-ed mess tent with women’s underwear and bras on his head. He’d stolen their underwear off the clothesline, as well as the pole—and he marched with the pole like a rifle. The men in charge decided to punish the bear, but the bear tried to look very ashamed, like a person. Nobody would punish him, and when Christmas arrived, the women gave him figs, dates, and honey. Not long after, the women decided to take revenge by letting the bear drink the men’s beer and then encouraging him to shower. The bear used up two days’ worth of the men’s water, and the men and women called a truce.
When the people in charge choose not to punish the bear prince because he looks sheepish and ashamed like a person would, readers are reminded that the bear prince actually is a person trapped in a bear’s skin. It’s interesting that the men in charge are resolved to punish the bear prince when he acted more bearlike, but no one is willing to punish him when he acts more humanlike. This suggests that what possibly allows people to think that they’re superior to animals is the fact that animals seem so different than people. When animals behave in uncannily human ways, it gets harder to maintain this line of thinking.
Themes
The brown bear continues her story. She says that the night before the men’s regiment was supposed to leave for Egypt, the men snuck into the women’s camps to say goodbye to their sweethearts. Karol sat in his tent with the bear prince. He wanted to say goodbye to a woman named Irena, but he also missed his wife and son—and he cried when he couldn’t recall his wife’s face. The bear comforted Karol and thought of his own mother. Irena entered the tent and sat on the other side of the bear to tell a story of her own.
In real life, a civilian woman named Irena cared for Wojtek when he was a small cub, so the character named Irena is a nod to her. The deep grief and longing in this passage as characters say goodbye to loved ones and/or miss their families back home highlights the emotional cost of war.
Themes
Irena told the story of a handsome king who was strolling in his menagerie one day when a bear spoke to him, offering him some of her honey. The king was shocked but unafraid, so he entered the bear’s enclosure and ate with her. The bear then sang a beautiful song, which made the king fell in love with her, and they had sex. When the king woke up in the morning, he was ashamed and repulsed and wondered what “unnatural magic” made him fall in love with a “beast.” He then exiled the bear but spent the rest of his life heartbroken over her and disgusted with himself. The bear, banished to the “cold islands of the west,” had a daughter, who was also cursed. Like her mother, she was a princess in a bear’s body, who could sing and recite poetry. The bear knew that her daughter and her granddaughters would be forever cursed to have men fall in love with them and then destroy them.
This section of Only the Animals contains several layers of stories, all of them about the close relationships between humans and bears, and many of them framed as fairytales. With this, the book implies that there’s a reason that bears so often show up in folklore: they can behave in ways that are shockingly humanlike. (The section opens with the story of the brown bear and black bear in the zoo, then the brown bear tells the story of the bear prince, and then within that story, the bear prince hears Irena’s story about the cursed bear princess.) On another note, the idea that men will fall in love with animals and then destroy them encapsulates one of the book’s central ideas: that people do love animals, but often lead those animals to death and destruction. This points back to Peter the chimpanzee’s section: he and Evelyn (a human) had a romantic relationship, but it ended with Evelyn, on the brink of starvation, killing and eating Peter.
Themes
When Irena finished her story, she kissed Karol’s hand. He admitted he had a wife; Irena said she had a husband. They then kicked the bear prince out of the tent. Feeling abandoned, the bear prince began to run away, but the camp’s Dalmatian barked and gave him away. Karol felt bad and fed the bear treats, and the bear fell asleep dreaming of the bear in Irena’s story—a human trapped in a bearskin, and possibly the only woman who could ever love him back.
The bear feels abandoned in part because Karol, for seemingly the first time, doesn’t prioritize spending time with him. But the bear’s loneliness also has to do with Karol specifically choosing his lover over the bear prince. This makes the bear prince grapple with his own loneliness—he’s lonely both because he doesn’t have a sweetheart and because he’s seemingly the only bear-human that exists outside the confines of Irena’s story.
Themes
The brown bear suddenly runs out of energy. She sniffs in the black bear’s direction as though the air is “perfumed, intimate.” She falls asleep and when she wakes up, the soldier’s body is gone. She can tell it’s fall. Weeks pass, and people continue to bring the two bears food. The people are confused by fall’s arrival. They’d been confused in spring, too, when the cherry blossoms bloomed early in the siege. They feel nostalgic, as they do every autumn, and feel betrayed. They think of returning to work or school, but it seems like the planet hasn’t noticed that it’s impossible for any of these things to happen again.
Referring to the air between the two bears as “perfumed, intimate” suggests that there’s more between the bears than the black bear’s cruel behavior might suggest. With the descriptions of the changing seasons, the story illustrates that life goes on even during wartime, but that life is also fundamentally changed. In Sarajevo, for instance, there is no school to go back to because of the war.
Themes
The sharp autumn air is deadly; fog and rain protect the city from the snipers that surround it. And winter seems like it would be preferable, since it seems like the right season for a siege. Trees disappear from parks as people burn through floorboards and furniture to keep warm. The Sarajevo Center for Security broadcasts daily and reports that the city is mostly calm. It advises people to stay away from places where lines will form, such as at bakeries or office that distribute ration cards. Otherwise, the announcement says, it’s a nice day.
As winter comes, the war seems to have more of an effect on the landscape, as people burn trees to stay warm. This points back to the book’s broader claim that war doesn’t just affect people—it also impacts animals and the natural world. But while both the wartime climate and wintertime climate seem increasingly bleak, the daily broadcasts also suggest that to some degree, life goes on.
Themes
One night, a group of “important foreigners,” escorted by several soldiers, venture into the zoo to feed the bears. As he drops bread through the bars of the bear’s cage, one man says that “we’ve” airlifted animals out of civil wars before, since civil wars tend to be so hard on animals. A woman in the group sarcastically suggests that unlike in civil wars, animals don’t suffer in “normal, garden-variety war[s].” Another man, though, says that they can’t smuggle bears out of Sarajevo in a food-relief convoy, as it’d raise a whole host of difficult questions, like why they’re trying to save bears when they could save babies.
The first man, like so many of the other soldiers and civilians who bring the bears bread, believes that it’s important to show animals kindness during wartime because war isn’t just a human conflict—it profoundly impacts animals, too. The woman in the group also speaks to this when she emphasizes that all wars, not just civil wars, can be destructive for animals and their habitats. Though the second man doesn’t necessarily suggest that animals are unworthy of taking care of, he does stress that there’s a clear hierarchy among humans and animals, and that humans’ well-being needs to be prioritized.
Themes
The man speaking is the only one who didn’t bring bread for the bears. In the bear enclosure, the black bear makes a show of leaving bread for the brown bear. He knows how much humans like seeing stuff like this, but the brown bear doesn’t touch it. Instead, she comes forward enough to let the humans see her opaque, unseeing eyes.
The black bear again looks very humanlike when he makes a show of being kind and generous. He’s not actually kind—it’s just an act, and so he makes the people who leave bread look even kinder in comparison.
Themes
The woman in the group is distraught to learn that the brown bear has always been blind. As she watches the black bear pace, she asks if he’s always been so restless. A soldier insists that he’s a bear in a zoo. The first man in the group suggests that the bear is experiencing zoochosis, which is when animals “go a bit nuts” and do odd things in captivity. This man has his blood type stenciled on his jacket, in case he’s wounded and somebody pays attention. The man who didn’t bring bread says that no matter what, the bears will end up in a zoo elsewhere. The woman muses that Sarajevo is a Turkish word for “palace in the fields.”
Zoochosis is a common affliction that affects animals in captivity, especially in zoos. Many perform repetitive behaviors for no apparent reason. The man who explains zoochosis is the same one who discusses airlifting animals out of wars, so he seems to be compassionately suggesting that animals don’t belong in zoos. In noting that Sarajevo means “palace in the fields,” the book is implicitly underscoring the irony in animals being caged in the midst of what should be a land of open fields. The book also seems to be suggesting with this comment that war has such a widespread impact—it affects people, animals, and the natural landscape—that it has transformed this “palace in the fields” into the bleak place it is now.
Themes
The accompanying militiamen look toward a sound in the dark, across the valley. They can see a missile shooting their direction. The militiamen laugh that the missile came from Osmica, a former popular nightclub that the Serbs now use as a bunker. Once the soldiers and foreigners are gone, the black bear eats the rest of the bread and the witch tells a joke. She asks what the difference is between clever and dumb Bosnians. The smart one, she says, calls the dumb one in Sarajevo from abroad. The black bear acts like he doesn’t get it.
Osmica’s transformation drives home again that war changes everything, even the landscape and the built environment. The witch’s joke lands poorly with the black bear in part because unlike the Bosnian people, he didn’t have any chance of escaping Sarajevo before the siege started. As a person he could at least try to escape the city, but as a zoo animal, he’s stuck and comparatively powerless.
Themes
The witch fidgets and asks the brown bear to finish her story about the bear prince since there’s nothing else to do. Winking at the black bear, the witch remarks, “And they think you’re the crazy one.” With a hopeful expression, the emaciated brown bear resumes her tale.
Here, the witch is referring to how the visitors who just left the zoo thought the black bear was unusually restless and likely had zoochosis. But according to the witch, it’s the brown bear, with her fixation on the bear prince story, who is the actual “crazy one.”
Themes
By this point, the bear prince was twice as tall as Karol—but despite his size, he was gentle when he play-wrestled with the soldiers. At this time, the regiment moved to Qassassin in preparation for their journey to Italy. To Karol, it seemed like he and his soldiers were just playing at war. They worked hard, but their camps were festive and every regiment had an animal mascot. Karol thought the bear was different; he seemed to be one of them—and he fought for the bear to join the regiment when they left for Italy.
Karol sees some personhood in the bear prince in large part because he is a person trapped in a bear’s body, but this also aligns with the book’s key theme that people and animals are intimately connected and can have extremely deep, satisfying relationships with one another. This passage also emphasizes that the bear is just one of many mascots that help lift soldiers’ spirits. Like Kiki the cat giving the soldiers something to live for in the WWI trenches, the mascots here provide some levity in the midst of war.
Themes
On the day that Karol’s regiment was supposed to leave, Karol watched cranes load trucks onto a ship. He thought again that they were just children playing at war; compared to the massive cranes, the regiment’s trucks looked like tiny toy cars. From within the office, an officer called, “Corporal?” Karol answered, but the officer was talking to the bear prince. The bear had been given a travel warrant to stay with Karol’s regiment.
The bear’s promotion to a corporal is another element from history: to get Wojtak the bear to Europe and sidestep the ban on transporting animal mascots, the Polish army conscripted him.
Themes
But as the ship approached the ruins of the Cassino monastery, Karol felt like he shouldn’t have brought the bear prince along—men were dying in agony everywhere. But Karol was also thankful for the bear’s presence as he slowly drove a truck behind a soldier walking in front—the only way to keep their movements secret from the Germans and not use headlights. The bear prince sat next to Karol, his paws over his eyes. It made Karol smile and kept him calm. As Karol witnessed new traumas, he couldn’t forget his older traumas like the cattle train and seeing his son for the last time. The bear seemed to be the only thing that kept Karol human and “whole enough to remain kind.” Watching the bear sleep, Karol told himself, “I am because you are.”
Just as one might care for a child and protect them from disturbing experiences, Karol wishes he could protect the bear prince from having to see the carnage of this battle. This passage also illustrates the steep emotional cost of war: for Karol, this is one trauma that just compounds all his previous traumas, which makes it difficult for him to hold onto his humanity. The idea that the bear keeps Karol “whole enough to remain kind” speaks to the interconnectedness of humans and animals, and how animals can soften humans when they tend towards cruelty. (Once again, Karol doesn’t know the bear prince is a human in a bear’s body.)
Themes
After six days of shelling, the Allies won the battle. Karol grieved anyway, since so many people died. He sketched the bear prince with an artillery shell and his superiors turned it into a badge. They said the soldiers didn’t die in vain—and indeed, by the next summer, the Germans surrendered. Karol was happy, knowing that he’d soon see his wife and son again. He and the bear prince spent time on the Adriatic coast and whiled their days away on the beach. Karol dreamed of his return home; the bear tormented Italian women by surprising them in the water.
Polish losses in this battle were massive, and Karol shows how ridiculous war seems when one thinks about how many people die. This passage implicitly questions if war is worth it when so many beings—human and animal—either die or suffer severe emotional trauma from the conflict. Channeling his grief into creating the badge featuring the bear, Karol commemorates the bear’s work of keeping Karol—and all the men—human.
Themes
But after a few months, Karol began to worry. The Allies tried to cut deals with Stalin, and the soldiers heard awful stories about former prisoners of war who returned to Soviet-occupied Poland only to be sent to death camps or fatal gold mines. Karol and the bear prince were sent to Scotland instead. And it was impossible to get information about Poland, since letters were censored both ways. Eventually, somebody wrote to say that Karol’s wife and son were dead.
World War II decimated Poland and, as Karol explains, the country struggled to become independent and self-governing again. This passage underscores the human cost of war with several examples: former prisoners of war who were reimprisoned, soldiers prevented from going home, and soldiers’ families dying.
Themes
After getting this news, Karol stopped caring about the bear prince. The other Poles in Scotland told stories about the bear and sent him to Karol to perform funny tricks, but Karol could only stare blankly at the bear. When Karol heard the bear would live out his days at the Edinburgh Zoo, he was envious. He, too, wanted to be cared for and not have to do anything ever again. Karol walked the bear into his new enclosure and then removed the chain, opened a beer, and built a pyramid of cigarettes.
Learning that his wife and son are dead seems to strip Karol of his humanity, his will to live, and his affection for the bear prince, which again stresses the widespread devastation that war can cause.
Themes
When it was time to go, Karol put his hands in the bear prince’s paws. The bear sadly licked Karol’s cheek, knowing he’d never see Karol again—even though they’d live in the same city. Later, Karol heard that the entire city got swept up when the bear prince courted the female bear who came to live with him. Occasionally, Karol would remember Irena’s story of the princess trapped in a bear’s body and would tell himself that tomorrow, he’d work up the courage to return to the bear, to Poland, and to himself.
Living in close quarters with Karol and the other soldiers and being a part of their community allowed the bear prince to be as human as he possibly could be despite being trapped in a bear’s body. Being sent to live in the zoo, though, strips the bear prince even further of his humanness.
Themes
Having completed her story, the brown bear moves to the dirty water in the enclosure and scrubs herself. When she’s soaked, she returns to her cave and lies down, shivering. The witch lights a cigarette rolled with tea leaves, ignores the black bear’s scornful look, and admits she made a bad business decision. She fiddles with a radio as the chocolate factory burns down in the valley, making the air smell like caramel. Finally, she tunes into a station broadcasting messages to families trapped on opposite sides of the siege line.
The way that the brown bear scrubs herself here suggests that finishing the story was cleansing or cathartic for her. The burning caramel smell makes the siege seem even more surreal. Just as it didn’t seem possible that the cherry trees would still bloom in the spring, it seems similarly ridiculous that a city struggling to survive smells like candy.
Themes
The next day, the brown bear dies and the black bear eats her piece by piece. Not long after, as the witch pushes bread into the enclosure for the black bear, she asks what he wanted her to write down a while ago. The bear can’t remember and says it probably wasn’t important—these days, he can’t even remember anything from the day before. Tentatively, the witch asks if the bear knows what he’s done. With a fearful look, the witch gestures to the brown bear’s bones and informs the black bear that the brown bear was his wife. The black bear is silent and doesn’t speak again. He dies at the end of October, holding tight to the brown bear’s ribcage. All the zoo’s enclosures tell the same story: “life mates eaten in madness,” and “beloved consumed at last by their lovers.”
The story suggests that the black bear wanted the witch to record that he and the brown bear were once lovers—a story, it’s implied, that the brown bear just told. The bears’ fate speaks more broadly to the way that during war, both people and animals turn on each other to survive. This also recalls the way that the mules in Kiki’s story ate each other’s tails to avoid starvation.
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