Beatrice and Virgil

Talking animals signal allegory and give distance from a heavy subject. In Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel used a talking howler monkey and donkey to tell a Holocaust allegory. This let him avoid the usual historical realism, which he finds repetitive: human characters in Europe from 1933 to 1945, always in the same tragic tone.

The animals stand for traits: monkeys are clever, donkeys stubborn and enduring, which Martel describes as a positive stereotype that flatters the Jewish people. He points to Animal Farm, which covered Stalinism in 92 pages "without 17 tomes." He says writers worry about being accused of trivializing the Holocaust, but must be allowed their mistakes: "it allows you a certain distance from your subject."

How I Write▶ 18:20

Ordinary characters facing extraordinary events let the extraordinary stand out. The monkey and donkey are banal beings who want three meals a day and to be loved, and the Holocaust happens to them. Martel prefers this to a strange character facing banal events, because everyone thinks of themselves as normal.

He treats the character as a vessel, like a trusted driver, while the reader looks out at the road, and he avoids physical description because words are better at thought and emotion than appearance. Pi in Life of Pi follows the same pattern. "I'd rather have an ordinary character in the face of extraordinary circumstances."

How I Write▶ 56:11