The black beauty
Guo Anna
Class 1
Once I read The black beauty, I would feel the strong love the author for horses, animals and the nature.
Anna Sewell wrote this book in order to persuade people to be kind to horses. It took her six years to finish this masterpiece” The black beauty”, which is also the only book she wrote. The author passed away soon after the book came out, and it had solden more than 3,000.from then. Sewell was, remarkably, paid only twenty pounds for the book and it was published three months before her death, in 1877. However, its immediate success gave her great pleasure and she died in the knowledge that the book had indeed encouraged people to treat animals less cruelly.
The whole book just narrate a growth course of a black horse in the authority of an animal called “Black Beauty”.
The novel portrayed the real condition of working horses living in Britain during the Victorian Era. In that time period, the wealthy thought that their horses were treated well because they never stepped into the stable. In order to call people’s attention to horses’ hard life, Sewell tells the story through the first-person narrative voice of a horse. This innovative personification of an animal made the book a real success. Readers heard the stories straight from the horse’s mouth, literally, as an animal spoke of extremes of joy and suffering. People were shocked by the truth exposed by the novel and changed their attitudes towards animals.
In Beauty’s mind, the first place he can remember well was a pleasant field with a poind of clear water in it. I was attracted by the beautiful sinery at once. It grows like a child like we everyone. Beauty’s mother is his idol, he never forgotten his mother’s advice. She was a clever and sensible old horse. As him, I also admire my mother. She brought three children but never had any complaint. She is a strong woman, who set a good example for her babies. She taught me to be a staunch girl, nobody would destroy your strong inner power. When I made a mistake, mother would instruct me to correct it and improve myself. A man loves his sweetheart the most; his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
Sewell formed the novel with three kinds of characters: Black Beauty, Ginger and other farm animals. Through their different experiences, I saw similarly painful lives led by the animals. This method made the earnest appeal for animal rights become more and more persuasive.
As a domestic animal, Black Beauty was continuously sold from one family to another. Over the years Beauty enjoyed good masters but also endured mean ones. Sometimes, he was cared for and at other times tortured. In the end, everything turns out all right in a story that is so tender and yet meaningful. His story was so vivid that caught the readers’ heart. The novel brought people laughter and tears and also enlightened them to understand animals at the same time.
Ginger was the friend of Beauty who led a much more miserable life than Beauty did. Once she told Beauty: “When I was trained, several men caught me in a corner of the field and one held my nose so hard that I could only just breathe. Then others pulled my mouth open to put the bit in, and I was pulled along and beaten from behind. They didn’t give me a chance to understand what they wanted.” The most important thing in the story of Ginger and Beauty is the pursuit of freedom. For the first four years of Beauty’s life he had a large field where he could gallop around at full speed---with no straps, no bit, and no blinkers. The eternal pursuit of freedom dose not only belong to human beings, but also animals, for they also have the right. Poor Ginger, kindness was all she needed. She was frightened seriously so she bit or kicked to defend any possible attacks. The more she was whipped the more she bit, the more she bit the more she was whipped. In this way, both animals and humans were trapped in a terrible cycle made by human beings. Consequently, humans were frequently hurt by frightened horses. The author thus portrayed Ginger to tell me that harming animals may also harm us.
History always rezembles each other. When we human beings are cornered, we are hungry for freedom. And when Beauty stood in a stable, night and day, except when he was wanted for work, and sometimes when Jhon took him out, he could feel so strong, so full of life, that he wanted to jump or dance. Ginger was also a role like this.
Sir Oliver, the old horse, had a 20-centimeter-long tail. His beautiful long tail was cut off just because the owners thought it was fashionable. Humans never understood how pained a horse is when he can’t brush flies off his sides and back legs.
Sky, the terrier, had had a part of her ears sheared off. Her owners wanted to make her look cute and ignored that parts of her ears were intended to protect the delicate parts from injury. “Why don’t people cut their own children ‘s ears to make them look lovely?” Asked the poor dog angrily. Yes, why can’t we think from the animals’ perspective?
Kindness and cruelty also exist among animals. They can not say words as human beings, they can not write letters as we students, they can not cry when could not get something as babies. As though, they also convey their feelings in their own way. They are tierd, they refuse to carry people; they feel it dangerous, they would stand still, and sometimes they rescued human being’s lives. They know who is good and who is evil. They almost have the same setimental feelings as people.
Animals cannot speak so understanding is significant to them. Once, for example, Beauty was drawing the carriage to a wooden bridge. The bridge was flooded out in the river and John, the groom, was not aware that it was cracked. But the quickly realized that something was wrong because of Beauty’s abnormal behavior. Momentarily, a man shouted to them, “Stop! Stop!…The bridge is broken in the middle. If you come across, you’ll fall in the river!” Beauty had saved John. However, if John had not tried to understand what Beauty wanted to tell him, there would definitely have been an accident. I learnt from the story that understanding animals is not only essential to them but is also beneficial to us ourselves
Such cases happened in the storm they encountered. The story described it as this. It was nearly dark when we got to the wooden bridge. We could see water over the middle of it, but this often happened when the river is high. But the moment my feet touched the first part of the bridge, I was sure something was wrong, and I stopped suddenly. “Go on, Beauty,”said my master, and he touched me with the whip. I did not move, so he hit me sharply, but I would not go foreard. “There is something wrong,”said Jhon, and he jumped from the carriage and began to look round. He tried to lead me forward. ‘Come on, Beauty, what’s the matter?’
Of course I could not tell him, but I knes the bridge was not safe. Just then a man ran out of the house on the other side of the beisge. ‘Stop ! Stop! ‘ he cried. ‘What is the matter?’ shouted my master. ‘ The bridge is broken in the middle,’ said the man, ‘ and part of it was carried away. If you come across, you will fall in the river!’
Look , Beauty rescued his masters.
They can feel each others’ heart, so animals and human beings shou understand each other very well.
To summarise the life of Beauty, we may describe it like this. Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a foal on an English farm, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses.
As a person, we seldom think about the feeling of animals, especially those that we use, train and eat, on the contrary, we often take it for granted. I remember that Gary Francione once said, There is simply no “defect” that humans and animals do not share, in contrast to human infans and the mentally retarded, who have very limited intelligence. Since the retarded have the same rights as people who are not retarded, it is nothing but “speciesism” to deny animals their rights.
Animals also have their own right. Animals are natural resources that people have wasted all through our history. Animals have been killed for their fur and feathers, for food, for sport, and simply because they were in the way. Thousands of kinds of animals have disappeared from the earth forever. Hundreds more are on the danger list today. About 170 kinds in the United States aloneare considered in danger.
Luckily, some people are working to help save the animals. Though the take different methods. Like our author, she wrote the only book to appeal people to be kind to animals. Others have their own ways. Some groups raise money to let people know about the problem. And they try to get the governments to pass laws protecting animals in danger. Quite a few countries have passed laws. These laws forbid the killing of any animal or planton the danger list. Slowly, the number of some animals in danger is growing.
Fairy tales we read in our childhood often have animals as heroes. Most of our childhood readings contain stories about lovable animals.From very young, we learned that monkeys are smart, rabbits clever, mice busy carrying food into their holes, and Mother Bear and Daddy Bear work haed to raise their children as humans do. However, we grow up by eating animal flesh; we grow up to see little animals being experimented on in laboratories. Medical advances in treating diseases of human beings, it is claimed, are made through such experiments on animals. Do not you think our childhood education about animals seems to be paradoxical to what we have to face later in life? Are we justified to test on and kill animals to appwase human suffering?
“Animals deserve our kindness, sympathy and understanding,” that is what Anna Sewell－the author of Black Beauty－wanted to convince her readers. Thanks to Sewell, I now think about the animal－human relationship from both the human and the animal’s point of view.
“Black Beauty is a heartbreaking story,” I thought when my mother read it to me when I was a child. As a child I was haunted by the described cruelty to those horses. Now I deeply hope, in the future, we will be able to tell our children that because of the book, and others like it, such mistreatment of animals no longer exists. And they just need to enjoy the novel as a beautiful historical documentary recording the progress of upholding animal rights. At that time, the dream of the author will have come true and her hard work will have been rewarded.
It is the autobiography of a horse, the black Beauty of the title, who narrates it. Through various owners who ask different tasks of Black Beauty, he grows and has numerous adventures. He goes from being a riding and carriage horse through being a mistreated town cab horse to eventual happiness in a secure home. Notably, the animal keeps strength and good temper throughout his suffering and the story was extremely influential as pro-animal propaganda but it is also an extremely exciting and moving children's story.
