In this essay, I am going to look into two different
elements, anthropomorphism and character and archetype and how they are
portrayed within illustrations.
Anthropomorphism
Within children’s literature, anthropomorphism is rather
popular. Many past and present children’s books include the idea of animals
having human characteristics. The earliest animal stories available to children
were fables and fairytales with their talking animals.
Aesop’s fables uses
animals to show how humans should behave. These also, are to show and imprint
the ideas of what each animal shows in relation to the emotions humans already
show. We already have deep set ideas of animals and their connections with
human qualities.
The ideas of animals having human qualities can be rooted
back to times and ancient cities and the ideas they had for their Gods.
For example, In Ancient Egypt, the God Anubis was associated
with the underworld or the Dead. He is depicted as a man with the head of a
Jackal or a wild dog. Within Ancient Egypt, Jackals and wild dogs often
patrolled the edges of the desert, near cemeteries where the dead were buried.
Jackals and wild dogs would have been associated with the
dead in Egypt. Therefore giving Anubis the head of one of these, the people of
ancient Egypt would automatically assume the role of Anubis amongst the Gods.
Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter’s animal stories are a prime and popular
example of anthropomorphism in children’s literature.
Her character Peter Rabbit is first presented to us
as a “normal” rabbit. The drawings do not suggest any anthropomorphic
qualities. Within her stories, Potter wanted to portray realistic versions of
animal’s lives. To show this further, within her stories, the anthropomorphic
qualities Potter gave to her character Peter Rabbit cause him trouble. Peter’s
jacket causes him to be trapped within a net, and his shoes slow him down.
This illustration shows the minimal amount of human
qualities that Potter gave to her characters. Peter Rabbit is drawn with a blue
jacket and a pair of black pumps. Apart from this, Peter is a “normal” rabbit.
Also, the illustration portrays the life of a rabbit
realistically. The environment and the situation that the rabbit is in again
show a naturalistic life of a rabbit.
Within her stories some of the animals are not drawn with
the human qualities that characters such as Peter Rabbit portray. They are
drawn simply as realistic animals. This is significant as it is again to show
that these are just animals. Potter's animals look like animals, see the world
and are seen from an animal's point of view.
“Part of the
attraction that Potters stories hold for the reader is their naturalism and
charming English countryside setting “[1].
Because Potter stories are not exaggerated too much and keep to more realistic
ideas of an animal’s life, it almost makes the “fantasy more real and the pleasure more possible, the animals
humanity... more natural”[2].
Wind in the Willows
Another child’s story book was The Wind in the Willows.
These stories were also based around the life of a group of animals that took
on human qualities.
The Romantic belief in the child’s unity with
nature is a major drive behind the production of animal stories for a young
audience. The child’s imagination blurs the boundaries between animate and
inanimate objects. Grahame has taken advantage of this. In Wind in the
Willows the characters wear clothes,
possess technology, pursue human activities but guided by animal instincts.
This illustration shows the characters Mole, Toad and Rat in
their anthropomorphic states.
Beatrix Potter disapproved of the descriptions of the
animals. She believed that the animals were too human, that the animal nature
was lost. He had not taken into consideration the realistic values of the
animals.
Another person who may have seen
Grahame’s characters as too human would be John Berger. He proposed “that anthropomorphism makes us uneasy
because animals have gradually disappeared and it is from this new solitude
that the unease appears”[3].
Fantastic Mr Fox
Roald Dahl’s story, Fantastic Mr Fox, is about Mr Fox and
how he outwits his farmer neighbours to steal their food from right under their
noses.
Foxes are associated with the human attribute, slyness. Foxes
and wolf characters have also long served as a "metaphor for dangerous human behaviour"[4].
Within the story, Mr Fox is a clever and tricky character. However, we do not
feel as if Mr Fox is the villain in the story, Roald Dahl has written the story
so that we are rooting for Mr Fox and instead are against the three farmers in
the book, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Instead we want him to succeed with stealing
the food from the three farmers. Quentin
Blake has depicted this through his illustrations.
Similarly, to Potter, Mr Fox’s stories are kept fairly
realistically. He lives in a burrow and “scavenges” and steals his food source.
However, Quentin Blake has exaggerated some of the features and the attributes
to Mr Fox.
This illustration shows Mr Fox wearing a jacket, waistcoat
and neck tie. This illustrates that Mr Fox is clever and proud. Within these
illustrations, the “snouts and eyes are
exaggerated, and the animals more often than not have beaming, enthusiastic
smiles”[5].
Willy the Wimp
This book is by
Anthony Browne. It’s about a gorilla who is bullied by another group of
stronger gorillas. Willy answers a bodybuilding advert and grows big and
strong, determined no one will ever call him "wimp" again.
This story is one that was developed to help teach children morals and
situations they may face in life. The animals is this book have the “power to set ties between
childhood and nature which gives a highly flexible area for children’s
socialization in society and plays powerful role in their educational,
sentimental and cognitive development.”[6]
Because the book is fairly simple, in that
the sentences within the book only give the minimum amount of information, the
illustrations tell the rest of the story.
Using gorillas as the animal within this
story is significant as they are considered as the closest animal in relation
to humans. Browne has anthropomorphised the gorillas rather a lot which is
clear from this illustration. Willy is drawn almost like a human boy wearing
trousers, shoes, shirt and jumper. It’s only the head of the gorilla that shows
he is an animal. Unlike other stories where the animals only take on certain
human qualities, this story portrays the characters as human and the only
animal characteristic that they keep is the animal’s appearance.
Character and
Archetype
Archetypes are the “ideal
model, the supreme type or the perfect image of something”[7]
“A universally
recognizable element . . . that recurs across all literature and life”[8]
Psychologist Carl Jung called these elements a kind of “collective unconscious”
of the human race, prototypes rather than something gained from
experience.
A key to understanding folk literature is to understand
archetypes. “An archetype is to the psyche what an instinct is to the body. . . . .
Archetypes are the psychic instincts of the human species.”[9] Archetypes are universal in human beings.
Archetypes result in a deep emotional response for readers.
James and the Giant
Peach
The two Aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, from Roald Dahl
story James and the Giant Peach.
Already from looking at the illustration, the
reader is able to identify that these two women are possibly the villains
within this children’s story.
Within illustrations
and stories, the heroes are good looking, pretty. However, the villains are
usually ugly and menacing looking. Something that the two aunts have in common
is that they are both depicted as ugly women. With fairytales and stories, the
villain is ugly, not appealing the eye. For example the evil stepmother and the
ugly sisters that is so popular with the story of Cinderella.
“When evil makes you
ugly, it’s often to exhibit the ‘side effects’”[10].
Evil has caused their external form to change and match their internal form and
therefore their features are exaggerated in order to accentuate their evil
sides, their nastiness. This is apparent in this illustration of Aunt Spiker
and Aunt Sponge.
Aunt Spiker is first the more striking of the two, she
stands tall and her body is elongated and she has sharp pointed features. These
are all things that are associated with harmful things, for examples the sharp features
represent blades or a knife.
She also has her mouth downturned and a long finger
pointing. Her posture suggests an angry look, she looks menacing.
Aunt sponge is the opposite of Aunt Spiker. Whereas Spiker’s
features are exaggerated with her height and the sharpness of her features,
Quentin Blake has exaggerated Sponge in her size making her plumper. Blake has
also made Sponge’s face quite squashed, her features have become distorted and
horrid. Her nose also resembles that of a pig which is associated with “greed”.
Cinderella
Cinderella is a classic fairytale story that depicts many of
the character and archetypes that Vladimir Propp had devised in his book
The Fairy Godmother is an important figure in the story of
Cinderella. The Fairy Godmother is there
as a protector in the story, she is there for when Cinderella needs her help. Professor Sibley explained that the “Fairy Godmother (surrogate mother)—comforts
and directs child, especially when he or she is confused and needs guidance”[11].
Many of the classic fairytales follow a similar theme, one of them being that
their maternal mother has passed away when the princess is young.
They
are usually seen as a helping hand to those who are in need of her help.
Fairy god mothers are usually depicted as older women, to
further enhance and show that they are seen as a motherly figure within the
story.
Also they are usually drawn as beautiful women. Within
fairytales and illustrations, the people that the readers recognise as the good
people within the stories are usually drawn as beautiful people. Within the stories, they are there to help
out and because these are fairytales they are depicted with powers. This
illustration shows the fairy god mother with a wand.
Scottish fairytales
and folktales
Within
this illustration, shows a soldier on horseback. This shows the common example
of a hero within stories. He is also depicted as a young man.
The illustrator has drawn the character looking back. Herz
and Gallo explain that “the hero takes
journey, usually physical but sometimes emotional, during which he or she
learns something about himself”[12]
and that there is also a “parental
conflict by rejecting or bonding with parents”[13].
The hero in this scene may have been drawn looking back as a way to show that
he is leaving his past behind before embarking on this journey ahead.
To further the significance of leaving home before going on
their quest, within this illustration, the illustrator has drawn a small castle
at the bottom of the page. This implies that the prince is leaving his home to
embark on this journey that has an important involvement when it comes to the heroes’
quest and duty.
On his quest, the hero will usually encounter a number of
hurdles of his way. Within this image there is a suggestion of the things that
the hero may face whilst on his quest or journey. On the right hand side of the
illustration there is a green object which may resemble a dragon. Again this
reinforces that the man in the image maybe the hero of this story.
Haunted
This book by William Hussey is a tale of a girl, Emma
Rhodes, who is still mourning the death of her younger brother, when, in the
middle of the night, the strange Harvey Dowd moves into the deserted house
opposite.
The illustrations for this book were created by Rohan
Eason.
The illustration shows this “haunted house” in the middle of a forest.
Professor Sibley said that “Those who
enter often lose their direction or rational outlook and thus tap into their
collective unconscious”[14].
The forest confuses the person that enters it.
Forests are usually used to set
a mysterious edge to the story, to the illustration. Eason has used it to set
the scene within this illustration. A forest is an “unregulated space is opposite of the cultivated gardens, which are
carefully planned and are restricted to certain vegetation”[15].
Trees within an illustration or story “represents life and knowledge”[16],
the trees shows this as the shadows cast arms reaching out to the child that is
walking up to the house and the trees themselves depict face sniggering
foreshadowing the nature of the events if she is to enter the house.
Herz and Gallo say that “character leaves his or her community to go on an adventure”[17].
The girl within the illustration is on some sort of
quest, an adventure to find something for herself. She has left her parents to
go on her own.
In conclusion, anthropomorphism is widely used
throughout children’s literature to aid communication to the children. The
child’s mind is able to blur between inanimate and animate objects and so anthropomorphism
is a clever and fun way for stories to be told. Also, with anthropomorphism,
human characteristics and emotions can be depicted through animals in stories. Therefore,
these illustrations help children different morals and how to handle different
situations in life.
With many stories and illustrations, many follow a
similar system when it comes to representing different characters and
archetypes. Heroes, villains, the wanderer all have their individual characteristics
which are easily written with different stories or are drawn within paintings
and illustrations.
