Red Peter: Simians, Sacrifices and Scapegoats
In Red Peter's account of his
becoming human, there is a sacrifice being made by Red Peter, and Red Peter
becomes a scapegoat. Red Peter sacrifices his own apeness, his "simian self"[1], to find "a way
out"[2] of his predicament. This may
also be construed as a trade, though I will demonstrate why I believe the term "sacrifice"
is more fitting. Moreover, Red Peter
acts as the scapegoat for Hagenbeck. Red Peter carries the sins of the
Hagenbeck poachers, who release him from their control.
For
our purposes I will offer this loose definition of sacrifice: an offering, made
to appease or solicit the favor of some deity or natural force. Red Peter
offered his "simian self" to the humans around him to gain "a
way out". At first glance, this does not seem like a sacrifice, however, I
believe it is similar enough to a sacrifice to be analyzed as such. The
"way out" is only possible through the recognition and the actions of
the humans which surround Red Peter in different stages of his transformation.
In this sense, he solicits their favor to gain the "way out". The
humans which surround Red Peter also hold God-like power and authority over
him. So, while Red Peter does not make an offering to a deity, he does make an
offering to people who have a near-divine power over him.
Red
Peter's sacrifice flips the usual relation of humanity and nature in sacrifice.
Usually, in a sacrifice, it is a human or a group of humans sacrificing either
its members or its products to a deity or a natural force. I would seem that,
in a sacrifice, it is usually humans making an offering to nature. Whether a
deity is a part of nature is dependent on the deity. With that said, sacrifice
seems more akin to natural functions of deities, as bringers of seasonal
change, abundance, and good fortune. Sacrifice to more animistic, pantheistic, immanent,
or local sorts of deities is more of a sacrifice to nature, as these deities
inhabit a natural, somewhat physical space. However, transcendent deities are
by definition external to nature. The more transcendent a deity is, the less a
sacrifice to said deity is a sacrifice to nature. Regardless, the usual
relation seems to be humans sacrificing to nature, or to nature's master, or to
a subset of nature. However, in Red Peter's sacrifice, a captured part of
nature is offering a sacrifice to humans. Red Peter's "simian self",
his natural apeness, is sacrificed to numerous humans. In return, Red Peter
gains a way out. This way out is uncertain, and dependent on Red Peter's human captors,
not unlike the uncertainty in the act of sacrifice to a deity. In both cases,
the entity to which the sacrifice is offered may not reward it.
What is this "simian
self" that Red Peter offered? We know very little of it. Red Peter himself
reports that this state of being is as far from him as the ape ancestors of the
gentlemen of the academy are from them. Still, we have glimpses of it. We know
that it lacks memory, seeing as Red Peter's first memories are of his
interaction with humans. This echoes Nietzsche's description of animals as
a-historical, mentioned in class. We know that this "simian self" is
social, as Red Peter went to the watering hole with his companions. We know,
based upon Red Peter's description of his female companion, that simians are
bewildered by human training. Do human norms bewilder the simian self, or is it
the cruelty of training by humans? In our world, Hagenbeck marketed itself as
training the chimpanzees in a humane manner.[3] Both Red Peter's description
of his female companion and his description of the innate cruelty of his
learning process cast doubt on whether so-called humane training is even
possible. We also know that this
"simian self" "tumbled out of itself" in Red Peter's rush
to become human. A-historical, social, and driven away by the implementation of
human norms upon it. These are the only characteristics of the "simian
self" that we can gather from the report.
One
could construe Red Peter's transformation as a trade rather than a sacrifice:
Red Peter traded his "simian self" for a "way out". This
would account for the flipped relation of nature to humanity seen through the
lens of sacrifice. One could argue that the rational judgement of captured Red
Peter has traded his "simian self" with the rational actors around
him. Presented in this manner, "trade" seems to fit better than
sacrifice. If I were to mention that this exchange is unfree, unfair, and
unequal, one could retort that this reflects the nature of trade between Europe
and places like the gold coast, where Red Peter was captured.
I would argue that, in a
trade, one knows what one is trading for, and has a claim to receive it. Had Red
Peter's transformation been a trade, he would have had a claim, an assurance,
of a "way out". However, he clearly does not have that. He fights for
the "way out" in every step of his transformation. His intense and
draining learning process, his insistence on variety shows, even his retort to
the reporter who questions his humanity, are all attempts to secure his
"way out". He is more akin to someone making valuable sacrifices to
omnipotent gods then someone trading gold for guns.
Now I shall turn to the other
sacrifice-like act described, albeit indirectly, in the report. That is the
scapegoating of Red Peter by the Hagenbeck company, in particular by the
poachers which captured him. For this analysis, I will use the conception of
scapegoating made in Danta's essay.[4] This conception is based on a
day of atonement ritual outlined in Leviticus. The scapegoat is one of two
goats chosen through casting lots. One goat is sacrificed to the lord, while
the other is released to the desert, carrying with it the sins of the
community. The goat released to the desert is the scapegoat.
Red Peter himself was a
scapegoat for the Hagenbeck poachers. He is given a way out, like the scapegoat
is released. Other members of his
species captured by the poachers die on the same ship, paralleling the goat
which is sacrificed in the ritual. With that said, the goat's release into a
hostile natural environment seems more akin to the suicidal freedom Red Peter
contemplates than to the way out he chooses. A goat released alone to a dry and
hostile desert has more in common with a wild ape trying to swim then with Red
Peter's human lifestyle.
Does the goat's release
parallel Red Peter's way out? What is this release? In the day of atonement
ritual, control over the goat's movement is relinquished and the goat is placed
in a hostile environment. Therefore, if Red Peter is a scapegoat, his way out
should include Red Peter's movement no longer being controlled by Hagenbeck,
and Red Peter being in a hostile environment after control is relinquished. It
seems that the trainers and poachers of the Hagenbeck company did relinquish
their control of Red Peter's movement. He now has a manager, not a trainer, and
it seems he decides where to be of his own volition. Is he, like the goat,
released into a hostile environment?
Red Peter certainly has no
predators stalking him in his apartment or in his shows. However, he constantly
re-affirms his humanity, which could hint towards his humanity being threatened
or questioned. He reacts aggressively to a reporter claiming his simian nature
has not been sufficiently suppressed. He distances himself from his simian past
as much as he can, claiming it is far away from him as humans' simian past is
from them. He behaves in a civil, respectable manner to the poachers who
committed violent crimes against him, sharing drinks with the leader of the
expedition. This act is not an expression of forgiveness; at least, not an
honest one. His habit of removing his pants to expose the scar on his leg indicates
that he still has resentment over what was done to him. The act of drinking
with those who brutalized him seems to be a way for Red Peter to show that he
is one of them. By drinking with the head of the expedition, Red Peter
demonstrates that he has more in common with the criminal humans than the
victimized apes. This reassurance indicates that Red Peter's humanity is being
questioned. In his new environment, Red Peter has fewer threats of further
damage to his body, but his "way out" seems constantly under threat
of being taken away.
This consideration of the
environment into which Red Peter is transported has some weight when compared
to the historic Hagenbeck company. Hagenbeck justified their capture and
display of animals by claiming to liberate them from the cruelty of nature and
from hunters in their original environment.[5] Life in captivity is
preferable to life in nature, according to the captors. We know little about
Red Peter's past, simian life. He was captured from the wild, so it may have
included some threat of predation and hunting. Whatever his former environment
was, his current environment has its own, subtler hostilities, as previously
mentioned.
The most important, though
most subtle, parallel between Red Peter and the scapegoat is that Red Peter
carries the sins of the Hagenbeck poachers. He physically carries them in his
body, in his limp and in the red scars from which his name is derived. He also
mentally carries the poachers' aggression. He internalizes this aggression and
expresses it both in showing his scars and in aggressive fantasies of his own. He
does not seek justice for what he describes as "criminal acts". In
spite of his apparent humanity, in this sense, he may be as helpless as the
biblical scapegoat. The reader does not know his legal status, however, even if
he did have some legal personhood, I doubt he would be successful in pursuing
justice for the criminal acts committed against him. Red Peter is forced out of
the environment in which he grew up, loaded with the sins of those who forced
him out, and released to a hostile environment. He is a scapegoat.
Red Peter's process of
becoming human contains a sacrifice and a scapegoating. Red Peter sacrifices
his simian self to humanity. He solicits the favor of his human masters to
secure his way out. The Hagenbeck company, its poachers in particular, use Red
Peter as scapegoat. He carries their sins on his body as he is released into a
hostile environment.
Bibliography:
Danta, Chris. " "Like a Dog... like a Lamb": Becoming
Sacrificial Animal in Kafka and Coetzee." New Literary History
38, No. 4, On Change and Exchange in Literary Studies (Autumn, 2007): 721-737. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20058036
Harel,
Naama. "בעלי
חיים בעולם הקפקאי"
Kafka, Franz. "A Report For an
Academy" in The Unhappiness Of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories.
Translated by Alexander Starritt. London: Pushkin Press 2018
Norris, Margot. "3: Darwin,
Nietzsche, Kafka and the problem of Mimesis" in Beasts of the Modern
Imagination. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.
I like your choice of this story, with the complex issues it brings up relating to forceful modification of a being’s nature by an oppressive society, and how that being experiences this process, possibly rationalizing it as a sacrifice or sees itself as a scapegoat. There are missing links in this argument, but, even if accepted, more should be provided in specifying a point gained by this process, something shown by the story. Is the story condemning this choice of the oppressed RP?
I wish you a rewarding continuation of your studies
Tzachi
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