Il caso di Snitter e Rowf (e di molti altri animali): scienza e crudeltà in The Plague Dogs di Richard Adams

Abstract

The essay focuses on the history and debate on vivisection, offering an account of the first dawning of humane feelings toward animals during the xviii century, as in Hogarth’s Four stages of cruelty; it then moves to the foundation of associations for the protection of animal rights, such as rspca, navs, and finally iaapea, and the Victorian debate which cast scientific research against the practice of vivisection. The culminating episode was the story of the Brown Dog, and the riots that took place in London, in 1907, when medical students from London University destroyed the monument placed in memory of a vivisected terrier dog in Battersea Park. The core of the essay is provided by the analysis of the novel by Richard Adams The Plague Dogs (1977) in which Adams builds the story of two dogs who manage to escape from the laboratory where they undergo cruel experiments and surgery. The setting of the story is the sacred ground of the Lake District, ironically a nature sanctuary. Realistic hints, such as the names and action of renowned animal activists and naturalists (Brigid Brophy, Peter Scott, Ronald Lockley) set the story at the core of the recent debate on vivisection. Following the two dogs in their pilgrimage, Adams also shows how newspapers and the media can exploit the news, and involve the Army and the Ministry, by suggesting that the dogs are contaminated with the plague. The happy ending follows, while the issue of vivisection is still the object of future debate, insofar as the author does not provide a solution to it, but just releases the two dogs from their painful captivity.