Mythical Animals as Symbols in Cultural Narratives: Then and Now

The intentional use of animal figures is part of a long tradition in the art and literature of all cultures. Animal imagery dates back to cave painting times when the desired success of the hunt and concerns over sexuality and fertility were often the subject of creative expression and symbolism. But animal symbols in contemporary cultural discourse differ from those that have longer traditions.

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Contrasting Ancient and Modern Animal Symbols

Living in a decaying natural environment and alienated from animals, we surround ourselves with humanized caricatures. Sometimes they are real, like fashionable poodles or trained Chimpanzees, but more often they are like Mickey MouseMickey Mouse. How do we view animals today? Lovingly? Hungrily? Humourously? What do we normally see in everyday urban life? Crows, dogs, cats, little else beyond television and specimens in the zoo! We eat them, wear their skins, race them, kill them for sport but, in the greater part of the industrialized world, we do not naturally coexist with other animals. Our original state of nature, our evolutionary past, was once a reality that is now only imaginatively recreated in such classical forms as the Hellenic Golden Age and the Hebraic Garden of Eden.

Interpreting Animal Symbols: the Serpent

Literary animal symbols serve as a mythical means of escaping modern life and our growing alienation from nature. In ancient Greece animals were domesticated and used for ploughing, transportation, and, significantly, sacrifice. People who lived thousands of years ago (or who still live in relatively undeveloped areas) had a relationship with animals very unlike ours today. Consider the archetypal serpent. The literal serpent must make someone for whom real snakes are part of their daily environment quiver at the reptilian part of their brainstem, an affect we might not share having never met a live snake.

Of course, the fear of snakes is a primary, fundamental fear, and that may partly explain why serpents so commonly serve as opponents for Greek heroes. The two snakes crawling towards the baby Heracles cause him, perhaps instinctively and unconsciously, to instantly throttle them. We understand this reaction, even living in the concrete jungle.

We might not know is that this first heroic act parallels the ritual initiation underwent by Athenian youths in their early military conscription, and for whom Heracles was no doubt an inspiration. The defeat of the serpents validates Heracles' heroic and masculine status, but it also enshrines the supremacy of the human over the animalistic, civilization over barbarism, law over chaos and reason over passion.

In the Book of Genesis the Satanic snake figure likewise resonates with connotations of chaos and lust. And the word `serpent' still evokes instinctive responses of fear and disgust that serve a didactic purpose by aligning the reader against the morally poisonous. But the immediacy of the emotive effect of a hissing snake is lost on us; Mickey Mouse is more meaningful to us if we have real mice in our backyards.

Animal Symbols Losing Cultural Significance

Apart from selling t-shirts it is hard to see what significance Mickey Mouse has as an animal symbol in popular culture (although there are probably books on the subject).

Hellenic and Hebraic animal symbols clearly utilized our pre-conditioned instincts and associations to function as rhetorical devices for purposes of political and religious persuasion. Whether we agree with the arts of persuasion or not, we do need myths that effectively re-connect us with animals and nature, to heal that rift we created ourselves. But increasingly animal symbols in our culture are less representative of philosophy or spirituality than they are of commerce.