CNF Online Journal 2: “Wilfredo Pascual’s Animalia”
The story had a simple enough beginning. I had thought it would be a nostalgic piece about a Filipino family from a time long past. “Animalia” however, is anything but simple. The more I read, the more I questioned whether the writer was under the influence or if it was me instead on an acid trip. Parts of the story are so displaced from reality that I felt akin to Alice in Wonderland, except wonderland was superimposed onto reality. The settings are so accurately written in a way that they are recognizable and ever so familiar, that there is an inescapable sense of nostalgia.
I suspect that the ease in which I can submerge myself in the story is with the story’s first person point of view combined with the cultural context that envelops both reader and writer. The descriptions were vivid, and combined with the memories I have, myself being Filipino, I could easily place myself in the locations described. It was an exhilarating feeling, something I associate with reading fantasy novels. A creepy mountain trail, fires burning and smoke rising to the skies. A research facility surrounded by ponds and paddies, torrential rains pouring from a gray sky. A small room occupied somehow by a whole family.
This wonderland set in reality was eerie and creepy for many reasons. The way it depicts a reality that can be easily overthrown by things seemingly fictional, like bats swarming into a previously safe and secure home, a night of massacre. These things that should be impossible, but they way they are set in a non-fantasy world and even in a world that seems exactly our own, was scary to me. At first I assure myself with comforting words “This doesn’t happen in real life”, but then I have to question “Why can’t it?”. It must be related to the second reason this story is so disturbing: it’s moral ambiguity.
From the very first part, there is a large massacre of bats. Followed by a gut-wrenching tale of eating dogs, and the switching of genders of fish, a tale of transgendered tilapia. Like fables, I would assume there is a certain represented meaning when Pascual uses animals. Even without attempting to guess what the animals might mean, there are already plenty of morally dubious factors, such as the massacre of bats and eating of dogs. On the more symbolic side, I was struck by the story about the bugs attracted to light. Humans tower over bugs, and perform experiments on why these beings are attracted to light. When the narrator started walking to the sun mindlessly, losing sense of reason and perception, and his realization of something much larger towering over him, I was enthralled. The revelation that this “larger” being was in fact a stampede of elephants and not a new mystical being was not disappointing in the least. There’s a lesson to be learned, a message from nature, and all of us are no less and no more animal than the other.
