Lost Animals and Magical Realism in Blu's Hanging

"You are all a lost generation."
Gertrude Stein

While Jamie James does seem to make a point about the “redundancy of scenes of cruelty to animals” in Blu’s Hanging, I think there may be more to the animal scenes than simply “to create a symbol of the maltreatment of poor children on Molokai.” The scenes are certainly, as James notes, “repellent”; however, what the text illuminates through the scenes is not only a symbolic representation of children, but also a symbolic representation of the loss of a native, natural connection with the land. The animals are symptomatic of the loss of connection with the land. Leslie Marmon Silko’s text, Almanac of the Dead, uses a similar motif to demonstrate the ultimate and utter downfall of humanity when it takes animals away from their instinctive, natural environments. Thus, I don’t think the reader should focus solely on the animals as symbols for the children. It’s more complicated: the animals also represent and simultaneously demonstrate the supernatural, narrated through the motif of magical realism. And in Blu’s Hanging, that the animals have been removed from the natural / supernatural realm causes the humans’ inability to negotiate their world.

Ivah, Blu (later), Maisie, and Poppy all realize that Ka-San is, somehow, in the magical realism sense, their mother, and Hoppy Creetat is clearly also a spirit creature, sent to take away some of Poppy’s sadness. Both Big Sis and Sandi Ito recognize at least the cat as having power. The Reyes sisters, Uncle Paulo, and Mrs. Ikeda, however, don’t see the animals’ power. It is possible that “the Kuro-chan” with too many dogs does, but we aren’t ever really certain. The characters who don’t ‘recognize’ the animals remove them from their natural contexts and the animals’ connection to the natural / spirit world is desecrated and ultimately severed. Hoppy Creetat’s first litter of kittens is killed by the “cat killers”—the Reyes sisters, Paulo kills any number of other cats, and Mrs. Ikeda deserts her ‘beloved’ dogs in the cellar and lets them die horrible deaths (though Blu would like to bring them home “ For make friends with Ka-San” (112), which perhaps demonstrates his latent understanding of Ka-San’s identity and the dogs’ innate power).

Furthermore, Mrs. Ikeda’s dog-breeding business and Blu’s business of washing dogs and cars demonstrate the commodification of the animals that is, at least in part, the reason for removing them from their natural environment. And, from the number of customers that Blu gains in a short time, the commodification seems to be a societal norm. The damage to both animal and human, though, is severe. Having been domesticated by the children, Hoppy’s instinctive protective nature is compromised, her kittens are killed, and the children must wait longer for the black kitten that will heal Poppy. The dogs in the basement are forced to suffer enormous physical pain, and their owner, who refuses to admit that she is abusing them, does represent all of the adults who ignore the damage done to innocent young children, such as Miss Owens’ treatment of Maisie, interestingly the first character to ‘recognize’ Ka-San; but more than simple allegory for children, the dogs also point to the caging that keeps Eleanor from going ‘home.’ If the animals can’t find their way because of loss of supernatural capability, then neither can the humans.

The animals’ inability to function as representations of the supernatural gives the novel an unexpected complexity: there are moments in the text, as my good friend Jeremy noted, when although one expects magical realism to be woven into the fabric, one notes that it is not there and the text is curiously flat. I would like to argue that the reason for this is because of the fact that the animals have been so compromised. Magical realism depends on animals that hold some element of the supernatural, and in the novel, the animals are no longer able to exist completely in that capacity. Ka-San, for example, is not only the family dog but also in some very real sense Eleanor, the children’s’ mother. But Ka-San suffers from the same cultural malaise as all of the other characters—both human and animal, and thus cannot function on the instinctive level that should not only be instinctive but also be infused with magical realism. There are times when Ivah takes Ka-San’s tears and rubs them into her eyes, seeing Mama, and there are also times when Poppy just pats the dog on the head and walks down the street.

Moreover, Ka-San / Mama cannot let go of her children and find her way to heaven. Rather than it lighting the way for her, the light draws her back to her ‘home’. And the dog stays with the children instead of leaving, as her instinct should lead her. In a sense, then, Ivah’s recurring wish to fly is an interesting one, insofar as metaphorically speaking, the animals in the book don’t seem to know how anymore, either, and cannot teach her. Hence, Blu’s pre-adolescent sexual experience is a debased, commodified substitute, as is Poppy’s drug addiction.

Animals should never be lost. They are supremely instinctive beings that don’t need the compass in my Chrysler van. When they are taken out of their natural environments, caged, abused, and commodified, animals are subject to the same sense of loss or ‘lost’ as many of the characters in Blu’s Hanging. Moreover, the text suggests that the supernatural or magical realism that does actually exist, interconnected with the land and the animals, enriching and guiding, will be lost, too, and humans will reap what they have sown.