Voice against silence
Elizabeth Costello in her lecture depicts an image of a voice of a man and silence of an animal. “In the olden days the voice of man, raised in reason, was confronted by the roar of the lion, the bellow of the bull. Man went to war with the lion and the bull, and after many generations won that war definitely. Today these creatures have no more power. Animals have only their silence left with which to confront us”. The image created helps the lecturer to support her ideas concerning animals – the rights of which are neglected and not treated respectfully. Though animals have done enough for people to come to the state of “reasoning”, people forgot about the impact of the animals.
The place of shame
After the lecture performed Mrs. Costello is invited to a dinner with all the professors and other guests. There at the table a conversation starts, and one of the present speaks about shame: “Animals have no shame. Animals don’t hide their excretions, they perform sex in the open. They have no sense of shame, that is what makes them different from us.” The image of the animals portray their essence as of beings which are opposite to humans.
Image of animals in poetry
In her second lecture, which is called “Poetry and animals,” Elizabeth Costello speaks about images of animals in three particular poems: “The Panther” by Rilke, and “The Jaguar” and “Second Glance at a Jaguar” by Ted Hughes. The images created held her to reveal one of her main thought – that to become more sympathetic towards the animals people should like put themselves into the body of the animal and look at the world from the animals’ point of view. This message she tries to bring to the audience using the images used in the mentioned poems.
