The Sight: Book Discussion

I finished The Sight by David Clement-Davies today. Its nothing like any of the books I’ve read so far. With the ideology of the wolves blending with the ideologies of Christainity which is extremely noctiable throught out the book. As well as a allusion to Yugoslavia which I didn’t notice until I read the author’s note on the back. In some of the wolf books I’ve read quite a bit of them have birds or other animals aiding the wolves this one included. There’s also some other similarities that this book has to other wolf books. I will have some questions about the similarities below as well as a few other topics. Feel free to write your own answers in the comments below.

1. Why are authors so obsessed with killing off the main character whenever the main charter is an animal? Marley and me, The Wolf Chronicles, Black Beauty, Where the Red Fern Grows and even A Dog’s Purpose (although that one wasn’t as sad). In the end of most of these books the main character always dies(excluding a Dog’s Purpose for what I can remember). Why is this?

I think maybe it has do to with the animals not being able to live as long as we do. Or maybe its the author trying to give a wake up call to do better. Since in a lot of this books the animals seem to always try to help people. With a lot of wolf books the wolves find that there purpose is to bring people closer to nature and to not be as destructive. Often, this destruction has come at the cost of the main character’s life. I like books about animals, but the more book I read where the author kills them at the end, the more I don’t want to read it anymore.

2. When Brassa told the story of how the first wolf on earth was made how did you feel? When she said, “the great gods made Dammam, the first wolf… Then, because she loved him, Tor took one of Dammam’s teeth and out of it fashioned the she-wolf Va, to be his mate,” What did you think at that time? And then what did you think after you read the book?

At first I thought it was super unoriginal. I was mad that the author gave the wolves an ideology so similar to the christian one. I had wanted something different since I was tired of hearing the same story. After I had finished it I realized the ideology connected them to the child and the stories his community was telling at the time. It made more sense afterwards.

3. In the book, a Grandfather talks to his grandson, Roman about the superstitions the people around them have of wolves. He goes on to say that he thinks they have these superstition because. “they see something in the wolf that they hate and fear in themselves…. For few have the imagination to see what its really like to be a wolf.” Then he goes onto to say, “haven’t we always used the animals like scapegoats?” Then he told a story of how people who put their hands on goat and then drive it out into the forest as a way to get rid of their sins. Do you agree with the boys grandfather? Do you think there is something in wolves that we don’t like about ourselves? Do you think we use animals as scapegoats?

I agree mostly with the boy’s grandfather. I can see how people think we need to take a bunch of stuff —such as the lives of prey— in order to survive. And since wolves do that too maybe it reminds us of the terrible things we had to do to live and we didn’t like it. I can understand how people pf that time needed meat. But no is a different time and I have been vegan since a graduated from high school. I think we are far far worse than a wolf will ever be. A wolf takes meat because if it doesn’t it will not live. We take meat because we are selfish and even eat an excess amount of it. We have lied to ourselves about who we are and its caused mass destruction to the world and the animals that live in it. In wolves a see something that is helpless without it own kind. Something that must destroy to live, while we destroy lives because we’re careless. I do think we have used animals as scapegoats. We still continue to do this even with our pets, we blame them for things that they might never understand. We hurt them and take them away from our families so they can be part of ours. We’ve killed some to extinction because we thought they were evil.

4. Slavka was the rebel leader. In the book she tells Huttser about how she killed her own pups so the humans wouldn’t get to them. She blames the humans for this and hates them for a while in the book. Do you think she had a right to do this? Do you think it made her strong as she claims or weak?

I don’t think she had a right to do this. She didn’t even try to save at least one. I think its her own fault they all died, not the humans. There might have even been a chance they didn’t get to any of them if she had just tried. I think that made her weak and not strong. It seemed she just wanted control of the situation and thought it best to kill them all so she didn’t have to watch them possibly suffer at the hands of someone else. Only if she had tried to save them and then the humans killed them. Then it would to be the fault of the humans.

5. Larka talks to Start about the sight and how when she tries to kill she can sense the terror of the prey and it dying in her jaws. Skart tells her there is a way for her to kill compassionately. Do you think people do this? Since we buy most of our food at the supermarket do you think that we never really think of something being killed so we can eat it?

I do not think we kill compassionately. There is no compassion in something if it is not a nessacity. Again, wolves need meat and we don’t. They have to kill animals themselves everyday and they use as much as they can. While we throw out half of food carelessly. Not even stopping to think that we killed something or that we didn’t even need the meat to begin with.

6. In the end, why do you think Palla choose to name her second litter after all the wolves in her pack that had died?

Honestly, when I read this I thought it was super depressing. Palla had named Fell after her father, but Larka wasn’t named after anyone as far as what the book says. I think Palla might have done this since she’s been super sentaimental throughout the book. And maybe some part of her believed in some kind of recarnation and that somehow giving her litter those names the wolves she loved would come back to her. I don’t think the book mentioned anything about wolves coming back. But it did mention something about bodies recycling.