The Lowest Animal {type) To Use As A Writing Model

People are very complicated creatures. It is hard to say where they come from, what rules they obey and what final point they go to. However, some writers and scientists have made a couple of attempts to understand what are the reasons and purposes of people`s behaviour and some of their deeds. Mark Twain is one of those people who were trying to judge people and highlight the morals they use in their lives. He studied the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” and of people using the scientific method (Twain 179) He stated his attitude towards this and showed his ideas on this in his work `The Lowest Animal`, where he reached a conclusion that people tend to be highly immoral and irrational in their nature in comparison to particular animals he studied during writing his work. However, there is also a thought that the thing he does is not so correct for judging. It is worth remembering that all people on this planet are different and every person acts according to the circumstances that come up in life. Therefore, no person has the right to make any assumptions on the actions or deeds of other people without being in their place, without `having walked miles in their shoes.`
The results Twain got were particularly highlighting that people are greedy (the same as earls, while anacondas, for instance, are not), they calculate insults and injuries to have a revenge (while the higher animals do not know what revenge is), they are the source of indecency, vulgarity and obscenity (while animals have nothing like that) (Twain, 180-182). These and other experiments and results were the reason why Twain came to such a conclusion. But what if people behave like that because of the experiences they previously faced?
People go through different experiences and circumstances throughout their lives. Most of the times these occasions shape their personalities and attitudes towards life and the way they act. It is important to understand that a person`s past experiences shape whom he or she has become. Most of the time we tend to say that people are selfish. However, no one does realize what provoked them to become selfish in this situation. Perhaps, the past experience in the similar situation left them hurt and they are not willing to open up anymore. Perhaps, it was experience that pushed people to take a revenge and hurt others for not to be hurt by them once more.
This is the key factor, which lets us to assume that people cannot be compared to animals in their behaviour as experiencing something, animals, can make some conclusions, but we cannot agree that they can analyse their experience and change their personalities or acting according to the conclusions they made after experiencing some circumstances.
Mark Twain uses a great deal of different animals in his short story to conduct a comparison with a man. Apart from anacondas and earls, he uses roosters, cats, squirrels, bees etc (Twain 182). Another conclusion made was that one more difference between people and the higher animals is that people are the only creatures that are cruel, the only creatures who hurt others for own pleasure (Twain 183). It is hard to agree that people can be seen as low as those creatures, but the reasons Twain gives are very convincing. People are definitely smarter because they are capable of keeping in mind the past experiences and knowledge that they have gained. Many times people will record in their mind negative experience and try their best not to repeat it even if they hurt someone else, not their own feelings. Negative experience may be a reason why they decided to change their behaviour and to lower the level of morality. But is still does not justify or explain their greed, wish to be cruel towards the representatives of their own race or simply rob the helpless fellows (Twain 184).
However, the negative experiences in feelings also make people kinder and more open to all the people in the world. It results in close relationship between people, when they are so close to each other that they trust each other more than anyone else does. The examples of such relations are families and friendship. Although the act of friendship was also studied and experimented by Twain, and resulted in the friendly relations between a cat and a dog after a very short period of time (Twain 185), so it is agreeable that people are not the only ones who can have friendship.
That is why one of the Mark Twain’s assumptions about people being very selfish and self-centered can be this time disapproved: friends always try to stick to each other in times of need, true friends never leave each other when times get hard. Therefore, this special kind of relationship helps other to see faith in humanity and understand that people are the special breed. Because of the presence of such deep relations, people cannot be compared to animals or to anything else in the world, as their relationships are deeper and closer than that in the world of animals. The perfect example of the deepest possible relations is, of course, love.
Love that exists between man and woman is another unique feeling that makes people kinder and not comparable to animals. Love breathes new feelings into the life of every person. When someone is in love and the feelings are mutual, then this person tries to live only for this person and can become self-sacrificial just because he or she is full of the feeling of love. Love can give someone the wings to fly and the tenderness in their heart to take care of someone else rather than just focusing on personal feelings.It is important to nourish love because it can fade away. However, people who were truly in love with each other would never wish bad for the other person because they appreciate the feelings that have been between them throughout the times when they made each other happy. Therefore, love is a feeling, which may be unfamiliar to the lowest animals. Love is very significant for humans and they cannot live without it. Love is a feeling that keeps them together, makes them stronger and happier in their lives, and cannot be found among animals.
Although Twain pictures people as immoral creatures, it is necessary to state that they still can be moral and kind, because they are aware of the feelings of the other people on the planet. Mark Twain was very strict in his characterizations of people and comparison of them to the lowest animals. In fact, people are capable of different feelings and activities that animals still need to master, they just sometimes bury these feelings inside not to be hurt. Therefore, people cannot be seen as highly immoral creatures, because when they open, they can feel love and friendship, they accept certain people in their lives. The reasons of such behaviour are mostly based on their previous experiences. It is much easier to live in this world believing that there are good people surrounding us then the creatures that are lower than the earls or cats.