Animism is the belief in spirits or souls in humans, animals, or objects. It can be used in literature to explore cultural heritage, self-discovery, environmentalism, and fantasy. Examples include Things Fall Apart, Bless Me Ultima, Dances with Wolves, and fairy tales.
Animism generally refers to the belief in spirits or souls, whether they are humans, animals, or objects such as features of the earth. It is often presented as part of the author’s cultural heritage, but it can also be used in other contexts, such as to give a whimsical feel to a story or to make some particular moral or philosophical claim. Typically, animism is the belief of true groups of modern or historical people, but in literature almost any reference to souls can be considered animistic.
Many popular works of animistic fiction are based on the author’s cultural heritage. One goal of such literature is to expose the beliefs of that culture to a wider audience. An example of this is the novel Things Fall Apart by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The novel traces the changes in the Ibo animistic characters and culture of Nigeria as a result of interaction with Europeans. The animism in Things Fall Apart introduced many Western readers to the intricacies inherent in African intercultural interactions.
Animism can also be part of a character’s self-discovery, as in Rudolfo Anayo’s Bless Me, Ultima, a coming-of-age story that explores the connections between Catholicism and Native American mystical beliefs in Chicano culture. In Bless Me, Ultima, mysticism represents a rich way of life free from simplistic answers or moral platitudes.
In other cases, literature involving animism may not draw on the author’s background but still use the beliefs of a group of real people. Given animism’s frequent emphasis on the souls or spirits of natural features, this point sometimes has environmental or conservationist overtones. These works can emphasize the destructiveness of modernity as opposed to the beauty of living in harmony with nature. An example of this is Michael Blake’s novel Dances with Wolves, which he later adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name.
Many works of fantasy or fable, in some ways, can also be considered animistic. The existence of ghosts, for example, presupposes some sort of soul or spirit. Some magical realism works fall into this category. Even in fairy tales animals are attributed human characteristics that sometimes border on the spiritual, but can also be simply anthropomorphic. The term anthropomorphism is a figure of speech in which the author figuratively attributes human characteristics to a non-human creature. In the context of the story, an anthropomorphized object is not actually considered spiritual.
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