“They Are Just Like Us”: Interrogating the True Nature of Animals in Alice Walker’s “Am I Blue?” and Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” Anonymous College

Traditionally, humans have touted themselves as the most intelligent and compassionate creatures on Earth. In their interactions with other species, humans have used this claim as the basis for their ill-treatment of those species. But does human beings’ claim to higher intelligence make animals a lesser species? Animal rights activists Alice Walker and Annie Dillard disagree in their respective short stories “Am I Blue?” and “Living Like Weasels.” In their opinion, human beings have not demonstrated that animals are less intelligent or caring, going as far as recommending certain things that humans can learn from animals. Drawing from their personal interactions with animals, Walker and Dillard argue that animal nature is more or less like human nature and use that claim to appeal for a more compassionate and envious relationship between humans and animals in their thought-provoking short stories “Am I Blue?” and “Living Like Weasels.”

In “Am I Blue?”, Walker suggests that animals are just as emotional as human beings. She does this by comparing the loneliness and pain of the horse to that of human beings throughout history. As the story begins, Blue, the horse with whom the writer interacts, feels lonely and isolated as he...