Introduction:
I've been blogging about how to write in a literary fashion. Someone asked me recently what that even means. It just means writing with greater than surface meaning. A lot of literature throughout history has employed animals in their writing. Animals can be employed to show deeper meaning in a story or poetry.
Animals-as-animals
Frequently in literature, animals play their conventional role in the lives of human characters. Dogs, cats, horses, and so on show up in the Bible, in Shakespeare, and in so many other places as an animal, often simply a tool or companion for humans. Eden is full of animals that later appear on the ark or that fill a lord's menagerie, a farmer's pens, or a child's backyard. In many places, they're just part of the setting, the source of the sounds of mooing, the smells that fill the nose, or the meal on the table. They can give your fictional world its flavor, sometimes literally. They can also be called on for all the standard symbolism, snakes as sinister, dogs as embodiments of loyalty, foxes as sly creatures, etc. It's a little harder to recreate the symbolism into something less conventional, but many have achieved it.
However, their literary capacity comes alive when the writer transforms them into part of the meaning of the book. An animal can be employed to reflect and highlight some aspect of your main character. In The Three Musketeers, one of the Musketeers shows his carelessness and deep character flaws by gambling away his and the protagonist's horses. Basically, horses mean mobility and power, both of which he loses. Ivanhoe, meanwhile, is empowered and aided through the loan of a horse. Likewise, riding a horse in Shakespeare often shows the power, grace, and might of kings and other important characters. In each case, animals reflect some critical aspect of human characters, who play the primary role in a story.
Animals-as-metaphoric-humans
In some works, animals play the part of animals-as-metaphoric-humans. Authors mask some aspect of the human condition or character in the guise of an animal. Stories like Aesop's Fables, Seuss's books, and fantasy novels, among others, feature animals as human-like characters. This kind of story has a long history. In Aesop's Fables, animals act as human stand-ins. We are to learn from their stories lessons we can apply in our lives, such as the tortoise who wins the race over a hare through steadiness or the ant whose practical preparation stands in stark contrast to the near-sightedness of the grasshopper. The reader is meant to learn how to behave based on the animal's actions.
The personified animal continued to appear through oral and literary fairy tales, sometimes to show morals and sometimes for other reasons. Puss from "Puss in Boots," for instance, is the main actor, who outsmarts the enemy in order to bring the human character his happily ever after. The cat, then, would be a stand-in for a clever human. Because of the fictional cover, he does things humans can't or won't do, such as eating the enemy transformed into a mouse, but he shows the reader they can solve problems. It's a melding of fantasy and triumph of the human(ish) spirit.
Animals continue to stand in for the reader into the modern literary era, especially in children's books. The characters in Green Eggs and Ham, for instance, are clearly meant to seem like an adult and a child having a conversation, though they are both clearly furry and animalistic. Through their whimsical dialogue, the reader learns to have an open mind. Animals-as-humans can teach the reader lessons. The lessons aren't so moralistic in more modern tales, but they're still there.
Today
In recent years, editors have taken to discouraging the use of talking animals, but yet, they continue to be available to writers as a literary trope. In Harry Potter, the spiders act as speaking characters, but they are clearly meant to be alien and other, the dangerous and predatory side of human nature. Their characterization also complicates the idea of a simple moral. They are neither clearly good nor truly bad, neither clearly ally nor unequivocally enemy. Aliens, half-humans, and others that are not human may appear in the same way, as something that is other and yet reflective of some aspect of human nature.
How do animals appear in your writing, if they do at all? How can you bring added meaning into your story by employing either animals-as-animals or animals-as-humans-in-disguise?
