Animals deserve our kindness, sympathy and understanding. This is what Anna Sewell－the author of Black Beauty convinced me. Thanks to Sewell, I now think about the animal－human relationship from both  human’s and animal’s point of view.

   Anna Sewell was born in 1820 Norfolk, England and was crippled when she was still very young. Due to her disability, she relied on horse-drawn carriages and grew to love horses as a result. She also became appalled by the careless and cruel treatment horses often received from humans and determined to write a book.

   The novel told the readers the real conditions of working horses living in Britain during the Victorian Era. In that period, the wealthy thought that their horses were treated well because they never knew what the horses’ real feeling. In order to call people’s attention to horses’ hard life, the author told the story through the first-person narrative voice of a horse. I think it is the key of the success of the book. Readers heard straight from the horse’s mouth their joy and suffering. I was shocked by the novel and changed my attitudes towards animals.

   There are three kinds of characters in the novle: Black Beauty, Ginger and other farm animals. In spite of their different experiences, I saw similarly painful lives.

   Black Beauty was continuously sold from one family to another. Over the years Beauty not only enjoyed good masters, but also endured cruel ones. Sometimes, he was cared for and at other times tortured. His story was so vivid that caught my heart. The novel brought me laughter and tears and also enlightened me to understand animals at the same time.

   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 he quickly realized that something was wrong because of Beauty’s abnormal behavior. Suddenly, 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 men ourselves.

Ginger was a friend of Beauty and 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.”

   Poor Ginger, all she needed was kindness. She was frightened seriously so she bit or kicked to protect herself. 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 in a terrible cycle made by human beings. Consequently, humans were frequently hurt by frightened horses. Ginger’s story further told us that harming animals may also harm us.

   When I get to know other farm animals’ experiences, it is simple to find more examples of cruel things humans do to animals out of ignorance.

   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 was when he couldn’t brush flies off his sides and back legs.

Sky, a dog, 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?

   Black Beauty is a heartbreaking story. Now I deeply hope, in the future, such mistreatment of animals no longer exists. We human being must take care of our friends-animals from now on, or our future generations are not likely to forgive our lack of concern for the integrity of animals.