Animals play an important role in the novels "Obasan" by Joy Kogawa and "The Wars" by Timothy Findley despite the fact that they mean two very different for the characters of each text. In “Obasan,” animal imagery is used to demonize Japanese-Canadians by comparing the helplessness and oppression they receive from the Canadian government to the treatment of animals. Yet in “The Wars,” protagonist Robert Ross finds the greatest affinity with animals and prefers them to the company of other humans. In this essay I will explore how each text uses animals and their images as they are significant in the demonization of Japanese-Canadians and their national identity, and the role they play in the development of Robert's identity and morality throughout war. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay As a child, Naomi, the protagonist of "Obasan," remembers her parents taking care of "yellow chicks as soft as cotton sticks," placing them in a chicken coop where they looked more like "yellow puffballs" than to chickens (Obasan, 83). Immediately after placing the chicks in the cage without warning, a white hen pecks a chick with the intent to kill it, "[a]gain and again the hen's beak strikes and the chick lies on its side on the floor, with its neck turned backwards, his wings, his fingers outstretched” (Obasan, 83). The chicks with their yellow fur represent Japanese-Canadians, having the stereotypical yellow skin of East Asians, the white hen represents the Canadian government. The pecking of chicks to death is symbolic of the government's brutal acts against Japanese Canadians, such as their forced internment and theft of Japanese Canadian homes and property, while also representing the white Canadian's desire to eradicate all Japanese Canadians outside the country. The chicken is an animal that recurs frequently throughout the novel. For Naomi, being a chicken – especially a chick – means being yellow, oppressed and weak. Essentially, being Japanese. As a young girl she recognizes that being yellow means being a chicken and rejects her yellow color (Obasan, 217). She unconsciously wants to reject her Japanese ethnicity if it means that she and her family will no longer be subject to this discrimination specific to Japanese Canadians, but not German Canadians. Symbolically, Sho and Danny, two Japanese-Canadian boys, helpless and disadvantaged as they are, kill a chicken and are adamant that they must “make it suffer,” choking and decapitating the chicken's head (Obasan, 222). Another example of chicken imagery is when Naomi refers to the house the government forces her family to live in, a small, disgusting house in the isolated town of Slocan, Alberta. He refers to the house more as a “chicken coop,” due to its poor insulation from cold and heat, and the numerous flies and mosquitoes from cows in a nearby stable (Obasan, 279). In winter, the only warm place is next to the coal stove where the remaining members of Naomi's family “rotate like chickens on a spit” (Obasan, 279). The presence of flies and mosquitoes around the chicken coop demonstrates the filthy conditions in which Japanese-Canadians are forced to live, in displaced persons' homes and internment camps. it also reinforces the Canadian government's demonization of Japanese-Canadians, treating them no better than farm animals. Other examples of Japanese-Canadians being treated as subhuman are present through images of animals: they are “despised” and “treated like servile dogs” (Kogawa, 269), and their forced evacuation from their homes resembles “ants in?