I’m writing about wolves, but only in the sense that they are turned into symbols of avarice, greed and disregard for human wellbeing.
It got me thinking about Animal Farm, George Orwell’s book about the collapse of the aspirations of communism to produce a classless society. A book that seemed to please many people after the war, as a living proof that you could not really be having social equality; and all of the things that go with it.
There is certainly anenormous rise in the amount of books that try and return to the communist project. People are talking about Marx as if he was the best and most incisive critic of capitalism. As if you might be able to weld Marx on to something more self-sustaining than the former Soviet Union and its imperial ambitions.
I’m writing about wolves because I am writing about the enemies of the poor – if one can see their enemies as represented by one symbolical piece of animal-hood. An animal that frightened the life out of people in the old days. An animal that led to countless Little Red Riding Hood stories. Did you know, by the way, that the last wolf killed in the British Isles was by Sir Ewen Cameron in 1680, in Perthshire? Wolves haven’t dominated for over 1000 years, and yet they represent so much.
One of the reasons the wolves are so successful in ripping exploitation and profit out of the poor is that their supporters are inept
The wolf in my piece of writing is like The Wolf of Wall Street, that lovable piece of anti-capitalism and greed where the really nasty wolves come out as the heroes. I saw the 2013 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and it was done in a sexy, ‘let’s all join in’, ‘what’s wrong with some raunch and fun?’ type of way.
The wolves come across as your regular Joes with scams aplenty, as if a precursor to what was to happen to US politics not long after. Perhaps explaining why supposedly wolf-like behaviour has become so desirable and so normal in modern America.