ABSTRACT
Anthropomorphism, or the projection of human attributes on the non-human realm, is a concept that often surfaces in discussions of both fictive and non-fictive representations of non-human animals. As the author argues in connection with the American writer James Agee's short story 'A Mother's Tale', they can also be performative in ways that have consequences for how the limits of anthropomorphic practice are negotiated. The tale documents a single steer's long journey in the cattle car to the massive stockyards, his confrontation with the 'Man With the Hammer', and his eventual escape back to his home farm to reveal the truth about the train, the humans, and the grim fate of earthly existence. Anthropomorphic thinking, in turn, is opposed to allegory, since it needs the animals as animals in order to wittingly or unwittingly confuse the human-animal divide.
