The Animal Spirit in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House

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It is our human spirit that separates us from animals. Because animals lack a spirit of their own, they have no conscience to guide them with the inner sense of right and wrong. T.C. Boyle's "Carnal Knowledge" portrays two people, Jim and Alena, who live as if they lack a human spirit. Like animals, they act as they please, satisfying their own wants with no sense of morality. From Jim's lies of being a vegan to Alena's hatred towards mankind, we see an underlying theme. This theme is that a human being without spiritual depth and moral reasoning becomes just meat.

Being the first-person narrator, Jim tells the reader about himself and eventually exposes what an animal he is.

"I saw those ads in the magazines, the ones that showed the veal calves penned up in their own waste, their limbs atrophied, and their veins so pumped full of antibiotics they couldn't control their bowels, but when I took a date to Anna Maria's, I could never resist the veal scallopini" (Meyer 242).

Even in his introductory words, Jim expresses his numb feelings towards tortured animals. From the way he describes the sad life forced upon the veal calves to the way he talks about his love to feast upon this same breed, it becomes clear that Jim has neither shame nor organic unity. He acts according to what he wants, knowing full well that he pleasures upon the suffering of others. Later, when he is in conversation with his lust interest Alena, he tries and finally succeeds in making her think that he identifies with her and how she feels about the cruelty done towards animals. In response to her comment about how "every day is Auschwitz for the animals," he tells the reader:

"I looked down into the amber aperture of my beer bottle and nodded my head sadly…I wondered if she's go out to dinner with me, and what she could eat if she did" (Meyer 245).

Here it is obvious now that he only wants to agree with what Alena says to please her so she will agree to go out with him. " 'I don't eat meat myself,' I lied, 'or actually, not anymore'—since the pastrami sandwich, that is" (Meyer 246). Because of his lust for Alena, he immorally and without hesitation acts as if he too is outraged and disgusted by the act of cruelty towards animals and lies to her about being a vegan.

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