For something to be gained something must also be lost
We see it in several scenarios:
Take two friends standing next to each other, one who is warm and the other, cold. The warmer friend will experience heat loss due to the indisputable laws of chemistry. Heat will always flow from a region of higher temperature to lower temperature. This heat energy will be then transferred to the friend. On the upside the friend is now warm, but it came at the expense of their companion.
A similar scenario happens in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, where Victor, the mad scientist, loses peace of mind, and mental stability in order to pursue his need to gift life to a non-living being (Shelley 84).
There seems to be a pattern in the science realm and the literary world; to gain one thing comes at the expense of another. Even in short stories, such as Useless Animals by Nathan Goldman, the author enjoys employing this concept in a multitude of ways.
When reading this short story, it is easy to just assume that the theme of the text encompasses the idea of: living in a sickly and catastrophic environment can ultimately make someone lose their sense of humanity. What with the apocalyptic world that is described and the broken familial relationships that are exposed ,it makes sense (Goldman 1). However, I kept on asking myself…why?
Why does the father shred his runaway daughter’s letter?
Why does the mother shred Paris?
Most importantly, why the hell is a shredder the object of attention?
There must be an underlying theme here…and that’s when I started analysing the characters actions.
At the beginning of the short story, after the Almond family find the note that was left from their runaway daughter, the father “took the note and turned it to the shredded, his passion lately” (Goldman 1). It makes sense that this can be summed up as him being driven crazy due to this destruction that surrounds him but…maybe not. The action of taking a loved one’s last words and completely disregarding them seems to me as a coping mechanism.
This family finds themselves immersed in a broken world where “warm ash” rains from the sky, where everyone is “looking thinner” and “grotesque” (Goldman 1). Now, amidst this catastrophe, his daughter left him. This shock-inducing action of shredding her runaway letter is simply done for the father to control at least one aspect of the destruction that surrounds his life. His survival came at the expense of his daughter.
The mother also play’s into this theme, on several occasions, one being when she feeds “Paris into the shredder to make confetti for [her daughters] return” (Goldman 2). This tour guide of Paris held images of the city before it was turned into “ashes and flame” (Goldman 2). She ultimately sacrificed Paris for her own war, keeping faith that her daughter will return. The diction used in this quote play into this mage of satisfying this beast in order to obtain something in return; the confetti symbolizing Mrs. Almond’s hope, the beast being the shredder. Something must be taken, in this case Paris, for another to be obtained, meaning hope.
Taking a look at the setting…how does this play into the main idea of this short story? When the author employed imagery to describe the horrifying, famine-stricken region where a graveyard is filled with “broken bodies and things” a post-war setting came to mind also the eventual result of continuous resource exploitation (Goldman 1). Both catastrophic scenarios have a common denominator: this would only happen from a human need for gain. Concerning war, it is the gain of conquering and winning; likewise, depletion of natural resources is for technological and human advancement which are both personal gains. However, these lethal needs came at the death of an ecosystem and healthy environment.
Finally, we get to the shredder…. how the hell does a shredder fit into this? The way I thought of it, is as being the ultimate beast. You must feed the beast a loss for it to grant you a gain. The mother reflects on how she loves “the feel of debris on [her] toes” but for there to be this debris there must be destruction (Goldman 1). The shredder was used as a coping mechanism for the father and a source of hope for the mother (Goldman 1-2). In fact, it takes the ultimate symbol of giving one thing up to obtain a final product of one’s liking, of what one wants…debris; which can symbolize a multitude of things for us.
I may just be pandering but this is what the short story translated to me: For there to be a gain it must always come at the expense of something else, however one has to determine whether or not it’s worth it.
Works cited:
Goldman,Nathan.“UselessAnimals.”2013, https://madscience2011.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/here.pdf.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus: the Original 1818 Text, Edited by Kathleen Dorothy Scherf and David Lorne Macdonald, 2nd ed., Broadview Press, 2012.
words: 800
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