Julia Perez
Brendan Davidson
Biology
12/15/17
When Elephants Weep Review
Reflections:
The book “When Elephants Weep” by Jeffrey Masson is very interesting and insightful. I loved the way the author described each animal, and how they seemed more than just animals. Masson really dedicated time to detail animal descriptions to portray their “characters” better. The majority of the animals he described in his researches were considered very wild. For examples, elephants gorillas, lions etc... In other words, Masson made sure to use animals that we don’t usually see in our everyday life, and that are considered very wild. By doing so, we don’t think so much about their feelings.
The book was a little challenging at times to read. In a couple chapters, Masson, would describe his research and how he got the results that he got from studying animal behavior. Although the results were very interesting, the process where he would explain it all, got a little complicated and confusing. Also, when he described every animal in a lot of detail, the chapters got a little boring. But overall the book was a pretty easy read. And had a few interesting moments. However, this book is not a novel or a usual story, it is a way for Mason to present his researches and discoveries to the rest of the world. Especially to the science community, which was his main focus. Because the main idea to start his research and to write this book was that he was astonished on how little scientists believed and relied on the fact that animals have emotions.
Content:
The book is about how Jeffrey Masson describes his research to prove and show the science community that animals have feelings. Masson starts the book by describing how he notices that in the science world, scientists look over the concept that animals have feelings. For example when the animals are put in cages or into small spaces. Masson described seeing a gorilla in a zoo once, the gorilla was very sad. He then proceeds to explain why he could tell the emotion of “sadness”.
Each chapter of his describes different emotions such as joy, fear, loneliness and how animals show them. However, the animals have a great influence of humans to when feeling such things. For example human trapping wild animals into zoo’s can make animals depressed and sad. Humans hunting and killing animals can give them harsh fear towards us. However, if someone generous feeds a squirrel, they can become very joyfull. One of the main good points of the book was that when you see an elephant weep you then have a complete different perspective of animals and how to treat them and how they feel. I thought that was a cool tie in to the title that just made the book make a little more sense.
Rating: ⅘ Stars
The book not only focuses on animals. As Masson describes how he could tell the animal's emotions, through expressions and actions, we also learn a little bit about humans emotions as well.
I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars. Its is very interesting because I relate to seeing animals with human like emotions. However, the book did lose me a couple of times because it described things in too much detail. The chapter where also a little repetitive in the sense that they would describes different emotions in each one, but they describing how he could see such emotions and each animal was the same.
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