Queer Fish: Following the Great Transgender Fish in the Book of Jonah

Abstract

Abstract This paper builds both on Raymond Person’s “The Role of Non-Human Characters in Jonah” where he argues that the book of Jonah is a satire of an anthropocentric worldview and on the work of transecological notions of enmeshment. The great fish stands at the center of the text and Jonah’s transformation, but the fish itself is transformed, starting the journey as a male fish and later becoming a female fish. Queer bodies and animal bodies are often mere metaphors in literature, examples of their andro-anthropo counterparts who are the subjects of the story. By taking the fish’s transition seriously, the fish’s queer body becomes the center of the satire and cannot be dissolved as merely a device for teaching Jonah a lesson. The fish is everything that Jonah is not: a transgender or gender fluid being with a nurturing nature and a fierce obedience to God.