How closely are taxidermy and the profession of the butcher associated? Is there a tie between Darisa and Luka? If taxidermy is "restoring the dead," what is the job of a butcher?
Interesting...we have Darisa hunting for Death, and the deathless man, who is related to Death...
What is the relationship between hunting and death? By default, then, what is Darisa's relationship with death once he becomes a great hunter?
Why wasn't Darisa with his cart and oxen? Was this a trap set by him to catch the tiger? Or the tiger's wife? And what hit the tiger when it attacked the oxen? Darisa was nowhere in sight...
Why did Darisa try to kill the tiger's wife and the narrator's grandfather? What reasoning would he have?
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The relationship between hunting and death can differ greatly but can also vary greatly. When someone hunts you're killing what you're hunting which causes the animal to die. So, the outcome of hunting something is death. In contrast, hunting is a huge part of life which puts food on families tables. Without hunting we wouldn't have meat which keeps human beings alive, which if we did not have meat it could possibly lead to death. I know you don't technically need meat to stay alive, but it should be apart of a healthy diet. Also, people have in the past hunted animals to protect their villages, communities, and families. Darisa's relationship with death once he becomes a great hunter is he feared what the outcome could possibly be if he did not hunt these animals. Darisa's sister died when he was growing up, and I believe that is why he hunts these dangerous animals. Darisa doesn't want to see anyone else die from both the tiger and other dangerous animals.
The relationship between Darisa and death is extremely interesting to me. At the beginning of the chapter, Darisa is scarred from watching his sister have an epileptic seizure; this leads Darisa on a mission to keep death out of his house; in a sense, Darisa is hunting death. However, as time continued on, as Darisa becomes a skilled hunter, he morphs into a bringer of death. I do not think Darisa realizes this; in his mind, he is a preserver of life. Everything from taxidermy to keeping death away from Magdalena is Darisa’s way of protecting life. Yet, in reality, Darisa is only causing death as a hunter.
In this chapter, even though A butcher and a taxidermist are similar in their professions, the workers in that profession are extremely different. Luka to me seems like a violent person, from the way he treats his wife, and his line of work. A butcher's job is to kill an animal, and make sure it is dead. Maybe this was a way for him to release his anger, and see something suffer the same way he did. On the other hand, Darissa is almost afraid of death whether it be to himself or for protecting his sister. Even though he hunts, once he has a kill, he makes it as beautiful as possible tries to restore it to its natural beauty. Darissa loved to take care of things, whether it be his sister, or his work. The way he does his job, he doesn't see it as killing, but to take something, and make it beautiful in his own eyes.
Darsia wasn't with his cart and oxen because he was out looking for the tiger's wife. I believe he left his oxen out to lure the tiger in so the tiger would be more interested to see the oxen rather than to go out and find the tiger's wife. I think Darisa tried to kill the tiger's wife and the narrator's grandfather because he wanted to finally end the towns fears of having the tiger around. Without the tiger's wife around, the tiger would have no need or want to come back to the town. By killing the tiger's wife and the narrators grandfather, he would eliminate them from being able to lure the tiger back to the tiger's wife's house and to also stop the tiger's wife from getting rid of all of Darisa's traps. Having them both gone allows him to set more traps and kill the tiger once and for all.
Death and hunting are related in that they are a struggle for existence. The predator hunts the pray to keep itself alive, while the prey keeps away from the predator to stay alive. People and animals alike have a instinct of self preservation, in order to postpone the inedible as long as they can. Also a butcher and a taxidermy are similar lines of work. They make use dead animals for either decoration or food. Both professions require the person to cut up some animals.
Taxidermy and the profession of the butcher are fairly closely related. In both professions, it is an art form dealing with dead animals. With taxidermy, the artisan is reconstructing the dead while butchers deconstruct the animal. Both professions require a lot of precision. With Darisa, he was afraid of death so he would try to restore the animals to their former beauty as a way to defeat death. In Luka’s case, he was forced into being a butcher from a young age and lost his motivation in music.
With hunting comes certain death for the prey. Hunting and death are closely linked as would looking at the sun and blindness (or at least eye problems). This means that by Darisa becoming a great hunter, he is the grim reaper of death. Hunters usually bring upon death to the hunted as do reapers; they come with death in hand.
I agree with Morgan on the relationship between hunting and death. Hunting results in the death of the hunted, but it also results in sustaining the life of the hunter. Also, I believe that Darisa tried to kill Luka's wife and Natalia's grandfather because they were trying to keep the tiger alive while he was trying to kill it. Maybe it was Darisa's frustration that led him to try to kill them, or maybe he thought it would eliminate some trouble of finding and killing the tiger. Either way, on his mission to kill, he ended up being the one who was killed.
I would say that taxidermy and the profession of being a butcher are associated with each other to a certain degree. They both deal with animals and changing them in a way. Taxidermy being "the restoration of the dead" would make being a butcher the opposite and technically, you wouldn't have taxidermy without a butcher. Together, if taxidermy and butchering were to combine (this is kind of weird to say) it would bring together a whole animal. With the "meat" from the butcher and the skin from the taxidermist, it would all combine to be one. With that being said, although the two professions are vastly different, they go hand in hand with each other and are much more related than you would think.
A taxidermist and a butcher are related in some ways. Like everyone saying above, they both deal with dead animals, but in different ways. If the taxidermist restores the animal, the butcher breaks the animal apart. The butcher does the complete opposite. I think their views of the animal are slightly different too. The taxidermist sees the beauty in animals, and the butcher just sees the animal as an animal. Darisa was more caring so he wanted to restore the beauty of the animal. Luka was more careless and his profession of butchering the animal fits his personality.
I think death and hunting go hand in hand. In one direction, hunting leads to the death of the hunted. However, the hunted animals may become food for the living, and lengthen the people's lives by providing them with food so they don't starve. When Darisa becomes a great hunter, he is bringing death itself to many creatures he comes across.
Darisa may have wanted to kill the tiger's wife and the grandfather because he believed they were ruining his hunt. His skills as a hunter were very well known and this hunt was ruining his reputation. Maybe if his reputation was ruined, he wouldn't be commissioned to make taxidermies for people anymore, and he would lose his income. He couldn't stand to lose it all, and he felt threatened by them, so he tried to kill them.
There is a strong connection between hunting and death. You can not have hunting without death. For most of Darisa's young life, the thing he feared most was death. He tried everything he could to keep death away from his home in order to protect his older sister. Once death tragically claimed her life, his role with death reversed. Once he begins to hunt it almost seems like he becomes deaths "assistant". Darisa is now the one bringing death to animals. In the eyes of animals, Darisa is death himself. The one thing he feared the most as a child becomes essential in the success of his career as an adult.
So in my opinion Darisa is scarred from his past and hunting death is his way of coping. When his sister died I'm sure he felt, in a way, that he failed her or even himself because he couldn't control what happened and he couldn't help her. Then after she passed away I feel like to make him think he has a sense of control, he started "hunting" death as a coping mechanism. Obviously this wasn't the right way to handle it especially once he started going after the tigers wife and the narrators Grandpa. Then when he had the possibility to lose his income I feel like he lost it even more because he was losing more control. The more control he loses over situations the more he turns to the urge of "hunting" death.
Taxidermy and the profession of butchering are exact opposites. Taxidermy was said to reverse death and butchering is bringing forth death early. With this in mind, I have no clue why Darisa and Luka were friends. Last time I checked bears don't get butchered but hunted so Darisa would not go to Luka for skins of dead bears. There could be a tie between Darisa and Luka in the way that they both kill animals but they do it for totally different reasons. But Darisa does seem to like Luka's wife for some reason.
Darisa tries to come close to death in every aspect of his life. I can only wonder when he will encounter the deathless man. His work in taxidermy as "restoration of the dead" truly encompasses his obsession. It also establishes a fierce contrast between taxidermy and butchering. If one is restoring the dead, the other is preparing the dead to feed the living. It is interesting how the two both use the carcass of the same animal but for such different purposes. It also is described that Darisa loves his work in taxidermy. He finds his purpose in this work while Luka despises his life as a butcher. This may also explain why Darisa attacks death head on while Luka comes across it despite his intentions to avoid it.
Ever since fearing death could took his sister at a young age, Darisa has been completely obsessed with everything to do with death. When he became old enough to work, he went into the "deathbusiness". From taxidermy to hunting, the center always involved death in one way or another. I think taxidermy and butchering are only similar in that they both deal with dead animals. In taxidermy, you are working to maintain the presence of the animal, almost like you are trying to freeze the moment of time. The animal will forever be that way and look the same. Conflictingly, butchers take an animal and just cut it into pieces. They tear it apart, destroying it forever as there is no way to put it back together again. Also, as Vanessa said, taxidermists see preserving the animals as a style of art where as butchers see animals in only one way: food.
The relationship between hunting and death is that killing an animal while hunting brings death to it, but then brings life for the ones who eat the animal for food. Darisa fears death, and in doing so begins to hunt death, since death took his sister away. His careers as a taxidermy and as a butcher were the same, they both involved animals. As a taxidermy he kept the animal in a stand still as long as possible. As a butcher he would carve the animal into pieces of meat that people could eat.
I found it very interesting the way Darisa obsessed over Death. Even from a young age, he was dead set (ha, ha) on keeping Death out of his house, he was obsessed with finding Death and telling him to leave, that he wasn't wanted there. The tendencies he had as a young child transferred over into his adult life, where he first became a taxidermist in hopes of reversing the effects of Death, by surrounding himself in it. Was he that afraid to die, I have to ask myself? It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but it seemed like it was at the core of every decision he made for himself. Was it out of fear, or out of fascination? He became a taxidermist as an ode to Death, as a way to preserve it's effects and bring some sort of life back to whatever died, and then later became a hunter, which is the bringer of Death. In a way, it was like Darisa became Death- at least, for all the animals he hunted.
Also, off topic, but did anyone else find the story of Lola the bear somewhat peaceful? I thought Obreht did an amazing job in the passages regarding the description, life, and death of the bear- despite it being saddening.
I definitely agree with Vanessa and Hannah when they said that taxidermists see preserving the animals as a cultural tradition of art and butchers only have one view on animals: they are food. The relationship between hunting and death is greatly similar and also vastly different because it depends how you view both of them just like a taxidermists and a butcher. When someone hunts they are looking to kill an animal for food meaning the outcome is death. Hunting is very important to society I think because even though people are killing animals, they have to get yummy meat that you eat for dinner somewhere. Darisa’s relationship with death once he becomes a great hunter is what he feared about his life and what it would be like if he did not hunt and hurt the animals. I agree with Morgan I think he is protecting others from getting hurt from animals so he feels like he has to kill them all so he does not risk the dangerous animals killing anyone else just like Darisa’s own sister.
Hunting and death go hand in hand. It is interesting to see Darisa's relationship with death change as he becomes a hunter. From a young age, Darisa has an obsession with death. After witnessing one of Magdalena's epileptic episodes, he feared death while caring for her. He even searched through the house in hopes of finding Death, so he could tell him he was unwanted. After seeing the trophy room, and all the animals preserved in the way they were, he learned to find life in death. It's ironic that as a taxidermist, someone who preserves life, must kill it in order to do so. As he continues his life, he moves on to becoming a great hunter. It's just interesting to see how his obsession with death has progresses through life, starting off as a fear and ending with him being the one who brings death.
I had the pleasure of creating my own sausage once- it's one of the reasons I'm NOT a vegetarian. The rewards of meat-eating are way to amazing. Anyway, I've had to do some of the jobs of the butcher at my Grandfather's farm. Whenever a bull starts acting up and tearing through the fence, BAM, cheeseburgers, or half of a broken body. In my opinion, not enough people think about the meat they're eating and respect it as they should- I'm not saying don't eat it, that's your own business. Anyway, my Grandfather does both taxidermy and light cattle raising in his free time, and it's pretty evident whenever you walk into his cow barn. So, in answering the difference between TAxidermy and Butchery, here's what I imagine he would say; "Well, in one thing you eat the meat, in the other you don't. Pretty simple. What's wrong with you?" Before I'd have to defend the question. But the point stands- in both, you must respect the animal that has died for you, lest you lose that respect and begin to take your hobby for granted, like the people who shot buffalo for sport from a train. Though I will admit, that does sound like fun. Of course, I could never willingly hurt a buffalo, because they're cute despite their massiveness, and there's a stuffed bison above my desk right now I got from the grand tetons. His name is buffy, or Frank for short-not-short.
Well taxidermy "brings back to life" the dead. A butcher brings the death to the living. I think taxidermy is closely associated with a butcher. The butcher kills the animal for the meat and doesn't need anything else from them, a taxidermist, takes the skin of the dead animal and thats all they need. They would probably get along well business wise. There was a difference between Luca and Darisa for a little bit before darisa started killing animals. Then he decided to hunt them so he doesn't run out of business. Now they are basically the same. They both kill animals and use certain parts and get rid of the rest. They are helping the people I guess with food and decorations? Taxidermy is "restoring the dead" and a butcher is "making them dead".
In a similar way with what Mackenzie said, I think Taxidermy and Hunting go hand in hand. Taxidermy restores life and hunting ends life. Hunters hunt for one of two things, for sport or for food. I think sport hunting is more popular, which makes taxidermists more useful because a hunter kills a great beast of nature and is proud, so what does he do? He takes it to a taxidermist then hangs it on his wall or puts it on a stand. That is how I see these two professions working hand in hand. They are opposites in a sense of "creating" life and taking life, but most would agree that opposites attract.
I think that Darisa and Luka have a lot in common. Where taxidermy restores the dead by keeping the fur in its life-like form, butchering an animal and using the meat to sustain people is kind of like making the dead have an impact on the living even after they are gone. Death is something that has been present in both their lives and is something that they struggle constantly with. Their professions seem to have aspects in which they try to cheat death, yet they know they can never escape it. It seems like they are trying to convince themselves they can accept death but I don't think they even can.
Darisa's motive for first becoming a taxidermist was to confuse death. He believed if he was able to make something dead look alive again, he could distract death from his sister. After Magdalena dies, Darisa buries himself in his work which is later recognized by hunters. When Darisa himself becomes a hunter, his motive shifts from distracting death to providing for death. Darisa kills to live, not because he is passionate about it. Later though, Darisa's motives shift back to stopping death. This time instead of trying to confuse death, he tackles death head on by killing bears that have endangered villages. Now hunting means directly stopping death, not just trying to distract it.
Taxidermy and butchering are very closely related in that they both deal with some way of using the dead for something other than burial. Both Luka and Darisa had strange and difficult upbringings. The cart was a trap, I think, to separate the tiger’s wife and the tiger. I don’t know what hit the tiger, perhaps one of the villagers? Darisa probably tried to kill the tiger’s wife and Natalia’s grandfather because they were protecting the tiger and making him look like an idiot in front of all the villagers.
I've always seen taxidermists and butchers as people in similar professions; they take a body and change it from its original form. Though taxidermists "restore" the dead, the creature a taxidermied animal becomes is not what it once was. Moreover, butchers change an animal to an unrecognizable form. Taxidermists remove the life from the animal and leave its form, but butchers take what once gave animals life and give it a new form. I believe people in both professions have respect for animals, they simply express it in different ways. Taxidermists believe in preserving the beauty of an animal, but butchers believe in not letting an animal die in vain and using its body for the nourishment of people. These two fields overlap, and taxidermists use what butchers choose not to. It creates a symbiosis between two fields that profit from death.
Taxidermy and butchering both have the same beginning steps, with a completely different outcome. A butchers main goal is to slaughter and turn what ever he's slicing into product to sell for profit. A taxidermist does kill, but deals with the dead animal very differently. Instead of chopping off the fur like a butcher, a taxidermist carefully removes the fur, making sure it does not get soiled. Instead of breaking precious bones to reach prime cuts of meat, a taxidermist carefully examines the bones, making sure not to break them as they will be needed for a model. Unlike a butchers end product, which is raw chopped up meat ready to sell, a taxidermist combs, remodels, and molds until a life like creation is made. If a taxidermist job is to "restore the dead", a butchers job is to plain, punish the dead, and make sure they never become life like again.
As Darisa was growing up, he had a very close relationship with his sister. He felt as if he was her protector. But as her epilepsy continued to worsen, and he experienced an episode of hers for the first time, he realized how helpless he was compared to death. Running to get the doctors made him realize this as well as creating a new image for how death is unchangeable. After she turned out to be alright, Darisa saw death as a being. Invisible to him but always lurking somewhere in the shadows. I think that once he discovered hunting and how it affected him, it gave him a sense of control over death. His feelings for death were once fear for his sister. When she died from such a small coincidence of him bending down only to tie his shoe, I'm sure he has blamed himself ever since for her passing. Hunting may be his way to feel he has power. To feel he has control. Death is his enemy in a way, but through animals and taxidermy, it is a friend.
If you don't know what taxidermy is, walk into Cabela's. It's everywhere. It's basically stuffing dead animals into whichever form you want. A butcher cuts the meat out of animals and sells it. Both jobs consist of cutting open the animals and taking out the insides. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I bet butchers sell the outside of the animals to taxidermists to use. If taxidermy is "restoring the dead," a butcher's job would be "killing the dead," I believe. Hunting is directly associated with death; the hunter is creating death. Darisa doesn't care about the animal's lives when hunting. He only truly hunts because it provides skins for him for taxidermy.
I view hunting as very animalistic and vicious, and it is very closely linked and related with Death. Death probably loves hunting because it is so hand in hand. It aids him, and now Darisa is Death's helper. Darisa aids Death in killing others.
I think Darisa wanted to kill The Tiger's Wife because he believed she was ruining his name as a great hunter. Imagine you were the best in the world at whatever you did and everyone knew your name and called on you for help because they knew you were the best. Now imagine some small, pregnant, deaf-mute girl was foiling your attempts to do what you do best. It would be embarrassing wouldn't it? These times were a bit lawless and I think Darisa was going to kill her out of frustration for ruining his reputation as the best hunter. I'm still confused as to what the narrators grandfather hit Darisa with, was it a bear trap?
Taxidermy and butchering are somewhat related. In taxidermy the object is to restore an animal to its natural state and showcase it for others to bask in the glory of an animal. A butcher on the other hand aims to be a provider for others in terms of nourishment. A butcher uses as much of the animal as they can to use for food. A good butcher and a taxidermist both respect the animal they are using because a taxidermist wants the animal to appear at its best and a butcher wants the animal to not go to waste.
There is a relationship between butchering and taxidermy. They are different in that taxidermy builds a carcass back up while butchering tears it apart. They are similar in that they both bring a new meaning and purpose to the dead animal body. Taxidermy brings a purpose of possession and award for the hunter while butchery brings food to eat.
Hunting and death are also related in different ways. Hunting is related to death in a way that, in the process of hunting, there is death of the prey. But hunting also provides for the hunter which brings life, as well as more opportunities to hunt.
I believe in the context of The Tiger's Wife the butcher is the one who separates the life from the things that are already dead. Where Darisa remakes the pelts of his animals into a reflection of what they looked like in life, Luka makes them into unrecognizable hunks of meat. I think this reflects a little upon his character and the way he too is indistinguishable from the young man who just wanted to play the Gusla. Hunting and death go hand in hand because the ultimate goal of hunting is to capture and, most of the time, kill, your pray. Darisa is a sort of vessel for death as a great hunter because he helps to bring creatures to their end. I think that that is interesting in relation to his fascination with bringing life back in the form of taxidermy.
If taxidermy is "restoring the dead" then butchers create the dead. Being a butcher is about rendering animals dead, and taking them apart into pieces. Taxidermists take dead animals and put them back together to simulate life.
Darisa and Luka are similar in that they have both strayed far from their chosen professions, both now in professions linked with death. Darisa became a hunter so that he could pursue his passion of creating life out of death, but in doing so became a bringer of death himself.
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