We are Animals

In life you need guidance, whether it’s your parents, your friends or events that change you; for the good or for bad. But few people think that your instincts guide you as well. Some call them your conscious or your gut that usually tells you something is wrong. Your instincts are what truly guides you through life. They are supposed to lead you down the path of goodness and not down the road to darkness. However sometimes, when in great danger, they stray you way from that path of right and down a path that you later on wish you had never chosen. The need and the want to survive can let evil seep into your soul and lead you down the road of no return. We, human, are animals and although we don’t act like it; we too have instincts that lay deep inside of us that makes us animals. They sleep until the time has come for them to be wakened. In the book “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael’s instincts awakes and leads him down a path that, if he were in his human mind, would have disgusted him. But he wasn’t in his human mind, he was in his animal mind, and that mind decided to become a child soldier so that he would have a chance to survive. Ishmael, the human, didn’t want to join in the army, no he wanted to leave the war and find his family, but he has no choice. He was backed into a corner and the human him could see a way out. And although he wanted to listen to his heart, he can’t for his instincts to survive had woken; “It is better to stay here for now.’ He signed. We had no choice. Leaving the village was as good as being dead,” (Beah 107). ‘No choice meaning no escaping death,’ that it what our human mind would think but our instincts think ‘There is a way, there is safety in numbers. The path to survive is to join;’ to join the war, to fight, to cut others lives short when the reason is not clear. This is decision is what makes us afraid of our instincts. The thought that we would leave our humanity behind and kill another human, makes us sick. And though that do think that they are not a human but a sick, twisted animal; when it is really is just nature. Elie Wiesel, author of “Night,” also lived through a time of great terror and a time of many human leaving humanity. He lived through the Holocaust, and just as Ishmael’s instincts awoke so did Elie’s. However Elie was able to fight them off, while Ishmael wasn’t for he was still a child and therefore unaware of what was happening to him. For Elie, he not only saw his instincts being awoken; he saw other waking up too. Like Rabbi Eliahu’s son, who instincts told him to leave his father behind for he was letting his chance of surviving slip away. Unfortunately later on Elie’s instincts were telling him to do the same; “I gave him what was left of my soup. But my heart was heavy. I was aware that I was doing it grudgingly,” (Wiesel 107). Fortunately for Elie god did not let him make that choice of whether or not to end his father’s life, the SS officers made it for him. This is nature, this is real life. No technology, no cities, no towns but pure nature. And in nature you live by eat or be eaten rule, or the be the hunter or be hunted standards. Sometimes your instinct to survive isn’t the only one that has awoken or could have already been there. Sometime other instincts get in the way of the one that tells you to survive and you lose the game of life because of it. Elie watched as a son killed his own father for a piece of bread, that his father had fought for just for him. The father’s parent instincts were still there, telling him to watch and care for his son, but his son’s instincts were to get food even if it meant killing someone and that someone was his father. In the end both of them lost their life for their instinct of danger yield to their other instincts, “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t’ you recognize me …..You’re killing your father…..I have bread….for you too….for you too.’….. The old man mumbled something, groaned and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread and began to devour it. He didn’t get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him. Others joined. When they withdrew there were two dead bodies next to me; the father and the son,” (Wiesel 101 - 102). The father instinct to care for his son overpowered his instinct to survive and to watch for danger; he never thought that it would his own son that would carry that angel of death upon him. In turn the son’s instinct to eat left his neck open for an attack; never let the instinct to eat overpower the instinct to check for danger. For then you automatically lose. We, humans, think we are so superior to other beings; that we would never lower ourselves to a level below that of ours. That we would never have to make life or death choices whether for ourselves or for another, that situations of great despair will never happen to us or that we won’t be force to abandon our humanity and join our animal brethren once again but we are wrong. Though we have hands, walk on two feet and can talk many different languages; while our animal brethren have paws, walk on four legs and can’t even speak words. But they are above us, for they use their instincts every day and in turn don’t fear them. While we fear and have disgust for those of us human who use our instincts; those some instincts that were given to us by god to guide us through life. Some may think god is insane then, but he is not. It is us who is insane, we who are disgusted with something that is a part of us and will always be a part of us.