Philip Levine’s heavily anthologized poem “Animals Are Passing From Our Lives” is a dramatic monologue from the perspective of a pig. The pig is on the way to the slaughterhouse, but the pig upholds dignity unfailingly.
Dead Pig Jogging
The pig is being driven to its death, but it reacts exclaiming that “It’s wonderful” (line 1). Levine’s diction in the first line gives insight into the overall tone. The pig’s movements are defined by a “jog / on four honed-down ivory toes” (lines 1-2). The pig’s language is elevated and its verbal expression is alarmingly artistic.
Idiosyncratic Imagery
The poem is drenched in imagery which characterizes the humans and their murderous microcosm as slovenly and decrepit. The pig
can smell
the sour, grooved block, [it] can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers
that shake out the intestines
like a hankie (lines 5-10).
The butcher’s “pudgy white fingers” are a characteristic analogous to a description of hogs not humans. The apathetic image of the innards being removed as casually as one would shake out a “hankie” is disquieting because the pig does not appear to exhibit any fear.
To Suffer Humanity
The pig continues its monologue explaining a dream that paints the humans, who hold his fate, as the ones that should be more critical of their life-choices than the swine they consume:
In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,
suffering the consumers
who won't meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see (lines 10-15).
The pigs are not suffering because they are about to die, they are suffering because of the exposure to human superficiality. The humans are defined principally as “consumers”, and they lack the fortitude to look their victim in the face “for fear they could see”. The previous sentence ends vaguely implying that humans see nothing and sustain no depth of thought.
Indicting Humanity
“The boy who drives” the pig to the abattoir expects that the pig will fall over and give up
or squeal
and shit like a new housewife
discovering television,
or that [it]'ll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with [its] teeth (lines 19-24).
The pig is indicting humanity for its lack of moral, mental, and emotional resilience. The pig refuses to be pigeon-holed and stands against objectification. The pig will never concede to the tawdry lives that humans lead. “No. Not this pig” (line 24).
Noble Beast
The poem’s whimsy is driven by a morbid humor because the joke is on humanity not the “filthy” pig. In the face of death the pig stands tall and astutely criticizes the shortcomings of contemporary society. Rather than leaving itself behind the pig wants nothing more than to leave with its self intact. The pig’s refined language is a slap in the face to obtuse humans that expect the noble swine to behave as if it were human, but “Not this pig”. If “Animals Are Passing From Our Lives” maybe they have the key to the highway because they will avoid subjection to what humanity holds dear: “discovering television” and unadulterated consumerism.
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