Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“Now pay attention, there’s something you’re not seeing here, the crucial starting point of a process that’s hidden from you, but that’s worthy of the highest attention.”

Big Foot’s little finger supposedly offers this advice as it points upward in rigor mortis. His words echo William Blake’s notion that the macrocosm is contained in the microcosm. They also reinforce Janina’s insistence that everything in life is connected. 

“That’s why I try my best never to use first names and surnames, but prefer epithets that come to mind of their own accord the first time I see a Person. I’m sure this is the right way to use language, rather than tossing about words stripped of all meaning.”

Janina rarely views the world from its surface. She always looks for deeper meaning. Thus, she recognizes that language can often obscure truth. Names are the product of a specific social order, but they have nothing to do with the truth of an individual life.

“Sometimes I feel as if we’re living inside a tomb, a large, spacious one for lots of people. I looked at the world wreathed in gray Murk, cold and nasty. The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.”

Again, Janina is keying on inner truth rather than outer sensation. At the same time, she also alludes to the prison of social convention that allows people to slaughter animals without a second thought. They wouldn’t know how to live without this cultural tradition that constitutes a prison but a familiar one.

“As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.”

Many of Janina’s gloomy observations can be attributed to a fact that the reader doesn’t learn until the end of the book. Her little girls have been slaughtered, and their murderers will go unpunished. The world she lives in has no mechanism for delivering justice to them. As a result, she experiences life as unrelenting sorrow.

“The world is a great big net, it is a whole, where no single thing exists separately; every scrap of the world, every last tiny piece, is bound up with the rest by a complex Cosmos of correspondences, hard for the ordinary mind to penetrate.”

In making this statement, Janina echoes Blake’s philosophy and articulates her fascination with the study of the stars. Astrology is based on a system of correspondences—as above, so below. The ordinary mind cannot see this because anyone who isn’t a misfit is immersed in conventional beliefs that exclude such possibilities.

“I never know when an Attack will occur, or when I will feel worse. Sometimes it’s as if I’m composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.”

Janina’s mysterious physical ailments may well be a reaction to living in a world from which she feels so alienated. The laws of her culture and the behavior of her community all seem wrong to her. She sees no formal channel for the redress her grievances. Quite possibly, her body rebels because this is the only outlet for her existential misery.

“We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage, we don’t really know anything about it and we need all sorts of Tools to find out about its most natural processes.”

Janina is puzzled by the behavior of her body. Following her logic, everything is connected, but she fails to see the emotional cause of her physical symptoms. Her existential malaise likely finds its most immediate expression in bodily pain.

“It was a state I recognized—that same state of clarity, divine Wrath, terrible and unstoppable […] and it felt as if my entire body were being flooded by a bright aura, gently raising me upward, tearing me free of the ground.”

Janina equates wrath with clarity. Her description of her physical reaction also implies that she feels relief from her afflictions during her rages. Anger causes her to take action. In lashing out at the cause of her misery, the hunters, she finds some measure of peace. She makes many statements about blind rage and mental lapses. These all offer a subtle hint that she is an unreliable narrator and isn’t telling the reader the whole story.

“But what about the deluge of butchered meat that falls on our cities day by day like never-ending, apocalyptic rain? This rain heralds slaughter, disease, collective madness, the obfuscation and contamination of the Mind. For no human heart is capable of bearing so much pain. The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing.”

Janina is briefly experiencing a global awareness of the enormity of animal slaughter to feed the masses. As a vegetarian, she knows such food is unnecessary for human survival. It amounts to murder on a staggering scale. Her words suggest that people trick themselves into continuing this bloody practice because accepting the guilt for their mindless actions would be insupportable.

“We live in a state of siege. If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one might choke with terror. Within our bodies disintegration inexorably advances; soon we shall fall sick and die. Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain.”

Again, Janina’s perception of life is a tragic one. She speaks of a lost past that presumably includes the death of her little girls. She cannot move past their loss until she has avenged their murder. Her rampage makes sense as a personal catharsis when interpreted in this light.

“These people make one feel as if a stronger memory of our former innocence remains in them, as if they were a freak of nature, not entirely battered by the Fall.”

Janina is talking about Good News. This young woman has overcome personal hardships without losing her kindness and optimism. This mental state is entirely at odds with Janina’s tragic vision. Nevertheless, the older woman is drawn to the light and warmth that her young friend exudes. Good News allows Janina to experience hope vicariously.

“The truth is I had a lot in common with them—I too saw the world in other spheres, upside down. I too preferred the Dusk. I wasn’t suited to living in the Sunlight.”

In this quote, Janina describes the bats that fly around Oddball’s orchard on summer nights. They perceive the world through sonar, not sight. They roost upside down. Bats are contrarians in the same way that Janina is considered a contrarian by most of her community.

“It occurred to me that every unjustly inflicted death deserved public exposure. Even an Insect’s. A death that nobody noticed was twice as scandalous. And I liked what Boros was doing. Oh yes, he convinced me, I was entirely on his side.”

Nobody in Janina’s culture would find any value in the death of an insect. This represents a strong parallel in her mind with the casual slaughter of birds and wildlife. Yet, as Blake would say, the microcosm contains the macrocosm. All lives deserve reverence because they are all part of the web of creation.

“So for people like me the only thing possible is here and now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched and uncertain, like a mirage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of the air.”

Janina says that older people have lost everyone and everything that once mattered to them. To her, all joy is contained in the past, while the future holds nothing but decay and death. Again, this quote may indicate her unresolved grief over the murder of her little girls, as well as her recognition that love can be destroyed in an instant.

“No, no, people in our country don’t have the ability to club together to form a community, not even under the banner of the penny bun. This is a land of neurotic egotists, each of whom, as soon as he finds himself among others, starts to instruct, criticize, offend, and show off his undoubted superiority.”

Janina is debating with Wolf Eye about ways to protect the endangered beetles. His reaction represents the conventional belief that nature must be controlled for the benefit of humans. Wolf Eye’s statement also implies that humans have mucked up the balance of nature to such a degree that they have no choice but to continue their destructive practices.

“‘There’s nothing natural about nature anymore,’ he said, and at that point I saw who this forester really was: just another official. ‘It’s too late. The natural processes have gone wrong, and now we must keep it all in control to make sure there’s no catastrophe.’”

Janina is debating with Wolf Eye about ways to protect the endangered beetles. His reaction represents the conventional belief that nature must be controlled for the benefit of humans. Wolf Eye’s statement also implies that humans have mucked up the balance of nature to such a degree that they have no choice but to continue their destructive practices.

“‘They taught me quite basic, plain and simple justice.’ I stopped talking for a moment, and then added: ‘We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?’”

Janina talks to one of the summer residents about her little dogs and their sense of fair play. She believes they taught her fundamental justice. In this respect, Janina believes animals are superior to humans in their direct understanding of life. Humans are too busy making excuses for their bad behavior.

“The citizen whom the public services ignore is in a way condemned to nonexistence. Yet it would be a mistake to forget that he who has no rights is not bound by any duties.”

This quote comes from one of Janina’s many letters to the police. When read in hindsight, it contains a chilling warning. Throughout the novel, her pleas and complaints are routinely ignored by the police. She has been deprived of her rights as a citizen. If one follows the logic of her statement, this neglect authorizes her to take action on her own behalf, and her murders are justified.

“I have been practicing Astrology for many years, and I have extensive experience. Everything is connected with everything else, and we are all caught in a net of correspondences of every kind. They should teach you that at police training college. It’s a solid, old tradition.”

Janina tries to bring the police around to her view of the cosmos. Of course, she is fighting a losing battle. However, the quote again emphasizes the reason for her interest in astrology. It connects the microcosm to the macrocosm. Everything has meaning and significance.

“‘Those dreadful murders have brought various minor deceptions and improprieties to light. It turns out I’ve been living among monsters,’ she said fretfully. ‘You are the only honest person in the whole place.’”

The speaker is one of Janina’s summer residents. When read in hindsight, this comment is funny. The resident fears everyone else in the community is a murderer. Ironically, she is placing her trust in the only monster in the village.

“The psyche is our defense system—it makes sure we’ll never understand what’s going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.”

While this quote echoes many of Janina’s other laments about the tragic nature of life, it also implies something more. It offers an excuse for human apathy in the face of suffering. Adverse social conditions persist because people can screen out the misery of slaughterhouses and dead wildlife. To some extent, the quote also refers to Janina’s own ability to forget the murders she has committed during her many memory lapses.

“Now it seemed clear to me why those hunting towers, which do after all bear a strong resemblance to the watchtowers in concentration camps, are called ‘pulpits.’ In a pulpit Man places himself above other Creatures and grants himself the right to their life and death. He becomes a tyrant and a usurper.”

Janina makes this comment while listening to Father Rustle, perched in his pulpit and instructing his congregation on moral conduct. She explicitly makes a parallel between hunting pulpits and preaching pulpits and the arrogance of both occupants. She physically tried to pull down a hunting pulpit earlier in the book and now verbally attempts to topple the authority of the religious pulpit as well.

“Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse?”

This quote echoes the preceding one in its stance toward those who think themselves superior. Those in pulpits are described as tyrants and usurpers. Those who selectively decide on the value of a life are called audacious. Both cases presuppose a stance of superiority toward the rest of creation.