Carnal Knowledge
It is our human spirit that separates us from animals. Because animals lack a spirit of their own, they have no conscience to guide them with the inner sense of right and wrong. T.C. Boyle’s “Carnal Knowledge” portrays two people, Jim and Alena, who live as if they lack a human spirit. Like animals, they act as they please, satisfying their own wants with no sense of morality. From Jim’s lies of being a vegan to Alena’s hatred towards mankind, we see an underlying theme. This theme is that a human being without spiritual depth and moral reasoning becomes just meat. Being the first-person narrator, Jim tells the reader about himself and eventually exposes what an animal he is. “I saw those ads in the magazines, the ones that showed the veal calves penned up in their own waste, their limbs atrophied, and their veins so pumped full of antibiotics they couldn’t control their bowels, but when I took a date to Anna Maria’s, I could never resist the veal scallopini” (Meyer 242). Even in his introductory words, Jim expresses his numb feelings towards tortured animals. From the way he describes the sad life forced upon the veal calves to the way he talks about his love to feast upon this same breed, it becomes clear that Jim h
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Approximate Word count = 1305
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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