Children's compassion for animals ──Ye Shengtao's Children's Story to Inspire Current Animal Protection
I have observed such parent-child interactions in bookstores.A boy was in the upper grade of elementary school and picked up a book and read it casually. His father also picked up the same book next to him and took it away, and then pulled the child away: "This book is not good, the content is too negative, let's go and read something else."I was quite curious about what this book is. After reading it, I found that it was actually nothing special. It was just that the author's concerns and criticisms about the current situation and social phenomena in the text.
If adults must help measure the life world of children and how many proportions of "dream" and "reality" should be maintained to be suitable for their healthy growth, then what role does animals play in it? How do they move and change between fantasy and the real spectrum? ──Is it gradually changing from the colorful cartoons and toys, and its flesh and blood body appears, and it is abstracted and simplified again in this heavy reality?
From the perspective of animal protection, most participants are sure of this idea: animals are in a miserable situation in human society, and most people do not directly see the situation of animals, so they do not understand or understand the cruelty imposed by humans on animals.Therefore, conveying all kinds of unbearable "live" to the public is one of the important tasks of the animal protection movement.However, in the eyes of some adults, such messages and images seem to be "too negative" and should not be exposed to children; do children only need to obtain joy and satisfaction from animals? Compassion with animals is an unnecessary and unnecessary burden, and may even hinder their competitiveness in social reality in the future?
◆〈The story of tears
About ninety years ago, there was a story for children (Tears) [1] ,The content is that someone is sleepless and looking for something special - "Tears of Compassion" - because he found that all the people in this world have lost this thing, so he decided to help people get this "precious gift".
In his journey of searching for tears, he met a "happy person"."Happy people" never shed tears and smiled every day; they always "do happy things toward happy places", intuitively avoiding all kinds of sad scenes, or even if they see them, they just turn a blind eye and have no real seeing.Therefore, when the person who was looking for tears mentioned "smelling of sympathy" to the "happy person", he felt very strange: "I have never heard of this strange noun, such as "smelling of sympathy".I can't imagine what tears shed and what they shed for."The man who sought tears explained to him, but after hearing this, he couldn't believe that there would be such tears shed for the misfortune of others in the world, and this did not have any benefit to him that could increase happiness: "People are smart and superior to all things, so why are they so stupid?"
It turns out that among these all living beings who have lost "important things", "happy people" are typical! The tears-seeking man silenced him and invited him to search with him, but the "happy people" refused the invitation unhappy because he denied that he had lost something.
The tears went on to search for many places later.He saw some sad scenes in the streets and alleys. He always thought that someone around him should have "sweepings of sympathy" in his eyes, but he still couldn't find them.Until he saw a woman killing a chicken in the countryside, a child simply couldn't bear it for this cage of chickens that could not resist fate.However, a child can do very little for the chicken to be slaughtered. He can only shed tears, hold the woman's right hand, and try to stop the slaughter.In the eyes of adults, slaughtering chickens is just a trivial matter, so the child's actions may seem particularly naive and cute; but in contrast, the child feels uncomfortable when he sees other flesh-and-blood creatures suffering, which is not insignificant in his spiritual world.
The tears finally discovered the "tears of sympathy" that he couldn't find. He immediately held his hand and took the child's tears, and then prepared to travel everywhere, returning the tears to those who are no longer simply sensitive and have lost their natural ability to sympathize.
And the last sentence of the story is "Readers, it's probably coming soon, you'll be ready to receive his gift.""It turns out that the meaning of this story itself can be seen as the "precious gift" that the tears are called by the tears; the tears are the incarnation of the author of the story Ye Shengtao. He is using the words of children's stories to convey the importance of empathy in changing society, and wants to arouse the world's ability to simply and directly feel the sorrow that other lives are feeling.Ye Shengtao believes that young readers are already "feeling emotional", so this kind of story can gain "resonance" from children.
◆ Introduction to Ye Shengtao and his children's stories - Gray aesthetics, ethics and social responsibility
Ye Shengtao (1894-1988)Born in the late Qing Dynasty, he received traditional private school education as a child.In his youth, he was influenced by the May Fourth New Culture Movement and participated in the promotion of new literature, which played an important and pioneering role in modern literary creation.Because he has been an educator for a long time and has been a primary school teacher, his children's story works have received considerable attention and discussion among Ye Shengtao's various types of literary works.The collection of stories about "The Scarecrow" published by Commercial Press in November 1923 is highly praised by people of the time such as Lu Xun and Mao Dun in terms of the foundation and original contribution of modern Chinese children's literature.
However, from the current perspective, Ye Shengtao's work style is not the mainstream of children's literature at present; especially his most famous and most highly praised single story "The Scarecrow", which is full of rich gloom and sorrow, and even suicide plots.This gray tone comes from the 1920s and early 1930s. China was oppressed and threatened by colonial power, and its national power was weak. The vast majority of people living at the bottom lived a life of poverty or enslaved oppression.Intellectuals are eager to reform and introduce various new ideas to resist the social situation they disagree with.When intellectuals realize that children are the hope of the future and traditional ills cannot be inherited again and again, the importance of children's education has become a part of the social reform issue, attracting many intellectuals to participate or discuss.
◆ Animals and people in the story: reflecting the unfortunate reality
In Ye Shengtao's children's story, there are many plots that reflect the injustice and the misfortune of the society at that time. Even in the era of people's livelihood, Ye Shengtao did not miss the suffering of animals, but instead ranks it with the tragic encounters of humans.Perhaps some people tend to interpret this writing style as: using the suffering of animals to describe the suffering of the lower class. However, in fact, most of these stories of Ye Shengtao are based on the actual situation of animals.
In "The Scarecrow", the Scarecrow witnessed all kinds of sad scenes in the countryside: the widowed old peasant woman worked hard but did not harvest, the poor fisherman worked hard for her livelihood, the sick child was not well cared for, the crucian carp caught by the fisherman desperately wanted to jump out of the wooden barrel but failed, and the weak woman who was about to be sold by her husband threw herself into the river and committed suicide.On the one hand, the scarecrow feels sympathy for the experiences of sentient beings, and on the other hand, the scarecrow hates that he is powerless to actually share the sufferings of others, because it is just a scarecrow, without the ability to act, and no one can hear its inner cry.Scarecrows are like the children in "Tears", they are limited in their abilities and cannot change the facts or turn misfortunes around.
〈The Lame Beggar tells the story of an elderly man who was despised by the residents of the town. He was a popular hard-working postman in the past. He was proud of his career and cherished the work of sending letters to convey messages and feelings between people.Later, he met a rabbit shot by a hunter. When he was dying, he hoped that the postman would bring a letter to his companions in the mountains and forests, and informed the hunters in advance tomorrow that they would go to the place where they gathered to hunt.After hearing the rabbit's words, the postman said, "I felt very sorry for it, and tears fell from my eyes." He hurriedly traveled through mountains and rivers to the woods to deliver the message.Just as the little beasts finished reading the letter and fled one after another, the postman heard the sound of shooting and the hunter's bullet shot into his legs.He became a cripple and was not qualified to be a postman again, so he became a beggar.Although adults look down on the lame beggar, the children like him because his story resonates with the children.Compared with the children who sympathize with animals but are ignorant and helpless in "Tears", and the protagonist who witnesses all kinds of sorrow and wants to take their own life instead of suffering, "The Lame Beggar" presents another ending development: the postman takes action to change the current situation, bears the suffering that other weak people originally had to suffer, but finally abandons them.
(Blind and deaf )Describes two people who have lost their vision and hearing since childhood, and are eager to gain audio-visual experiences that they have never had before. With the help of magical power, they have fulfilled their wishes and switched their audio-visual abilities. So the blind man becomes a "new deaf man", and can see scenes that he has never seen before, and the deaf man becomes a "new blind man" and begins to hear the sound of the world.But their new senses did not bring new and interesting encounters to the two, but after opening their eyes and ears, they deeply felt the unfair treatment of the people at the bottom.The final climax of the story is when they encounter a pig killing scene: "New Deaf" was frightened by unprecedented blood. When he saw the butcher's knife enter and exit the pig's body, he also felt "a slight and uncomfortable pain rises all over his body, like many knife tips pricking there." He did not want to bear this pain anymore. He "covered his eyes with both hands and shouted: "I don't want to see anymore! I don't want to see anymore!" "New Blind" heard the pig's sharp scream "making his heart feel like he was stabbed by a cruel cold arrow." From the wailing of frightening to the last faint cry, the sound of killing the pig torture him, causing him to give up the hearing ability he had finally gained.
◆ 「The Power of See the Dark Side: Thinking about the Inspiration of Story from the Animal Protection Point
In the 19th century British and American culture, animals were closely related to educating children.Li Jianhui sorted out the publications of readers targeting children in British society during the Victorian era, indicating that in order to achieve the goals of social discipline, religious education, and moral education, writers often chose animals as the protagonists of the story to attract children, "The animal world is like humans."kindThe mirror of society reflects the moral concept of Victorian society” [2]。 also, Grier Katherine In the study, it is pointed out that although people in the Victorian period in the 19th century believed that children were born innocent and kind, they were also susceptible to acquired factors and had bad words and deeds.In order to cultivate children's socialization and good character, "raising pets" played an important "internal discipline function for family"; between 1820 and 1870, middle-class American families also widely accepted this concept and defined children and pets from an adult's perspective. /The ideal relationship between animals [3] (This is why there is no lack of a dog in the typical images of contemporary American middle-class families presented in the movie )。
However, from the development of modern children's literature in the Chinese world, we read from Ye Shengtao's pioneering works to another way of looking at the relationship between children, animals, and society: in the sad social situation, animals are also a weak link, but the suffering of animals is often only visible and helpless children can perceive and feel.From the perspective of animal protection movement, we can read (Blind and deaf )The truth revealed is: Once we open our eyes and ears and eyes, and once we have a deeper understanding of life, we can no longer escape from the ignorant state of ignorance in the past, which is the life that the "happy people" in "Tears".Ye Shengtao encourages children to develop compassion and change their identities to understand the sufferings encountered by different lives, because this is the energy that drives gradual change in society.