A Mirror Has Two Faces Connecting with Our Animal Nature in
A Mirror Has Two Faces: Connecting with Our Animal Nature in I remember watching nature shows on television andseeing natural predation. There on the screen lions stalk,chase, kill, and eat their prey. A true vision of animalnature. Humans are also animals, therefore, possessinganimal nature. This animal nature can be witnessed everyfall as thousands of hunters across the United States forgeinto the woods to stalk, kill, and eat their prey. Mosthunters even display the heads of their prey in their livingrooms as a testament to their animal nature. Ed Gentry also touches his animal nature in JamesDickey's novel Deliverance. One weekend, Ed along withthree friends, Bobby, Lewis, and Drew decides to canoe downthe Cahulawassee river not knowing what trials laid ahead. Drew is killed, Bobby sodomized, Lewis disabled, and Edseverely wounded. Ed stalks and kills a man in order tosurvive; and through Ed's need to survive in the wilderness,he touches the animal nature within him. Ed goes through life aimlessly. Eventhough he has awife, a boy, and his own business, Ed has no direction, nopurpose. Life is boring. Ed's only break from normal life
"As Ed tracks the mountain man further into the woods, hebecomes more like an animal searching for its wounded prey,"I was thinking like a driven creature. (275-276)Ed has returned to the life he onced lived, but with adifferent outlook a more appreciative, outlook on life. The sheriff believes the story; and Bobby, Lewis,and Ed return to their lives in Atlanta. Eddoesn't have the same fascination for wild things as he oncedid because he found his wildness, his animal nature, "Istill loved the way she looked, but her gold halved eye hadlost its fascination. (191)Eventhough Ed has truly connected with his animal nature byhunting his prey and within a few seconds of making thekill, his human side still shines through complicating hisjudgment. occasional excursions that he takes with his goodfriend Lewis. Ed recovers Drew's body andcondemns it to the same fate as the mountain man's body. Lewisand Ed in one car, and Bobby and Drew in another. Its place was in the night river, inthe land of impossibility (277). full of sinuous forms threadingamong the headlines of war and student strikes. (41)This is how Ed lived, without any connection to the animalnature within him.
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Acceptance Essays
