1. Cowardly Lions:
The suppressed-predator hero archetype in The Lion King and Ice Age
A thesis submitted by
Mason Engelander
297367
to the School of Culture and Communication
in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing
in the subject
Minor Thesis – Creative Writing CWRI90008
Supervisor: Hayley Singer
October 2014

2. 1
Abstract
This thesis presents a close textual analysis of The Lion King (1994)
and Ice Age (2002) through the lens of Carl Jung’s hero archetype and
Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. While many writers have explored
and interrogated these concepts, I have identified a textual frisson in
archetypal hero and journey representation in cases where the hero is
an anthropomorphised predator, such as a lion or sabre-tooth cat,
coexisting peacefully with prey characters. It is my contention that if
a predator animal is represented fulfilling the hero’s journey, as
outlined by Campbell, then their predatory instincts must be
suppressed. The underlying process for this manipulation of natural
predator-prey relations finds its basis in anthropomorphism, for
which I consult Mary Midgley and Sowon S. Park. The theories of
Murray Smith and Pete Porter build on anthropomorphism by
providing an interpretive schema and cues for character recognition
in fictional animals. By utilising Christopher Vogler’s contemporary
contextualisation of Campbell’s hero’s journey and Christopher
Booker’s interpretation of the Jungian Self, I will show how the
instincts of predatory animal heroes in The Lion King and Ice Age are
suppressed to fulfil the hero’s journey.
The creative element of this thesis presents an anthropomorphised
protagonist who does not fulfil the hero’s journey. Titled The wolf,
this piece draws source material from Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of
Wall Street (2013). In The wolf I maintain a slippage of imagery
between the animal and human worlds. By following elements of
Campell’s and Vogler’s narrative patterns, I aim to illuminate how

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predatory animal behaviour can be equated with exploitative,
human carnivoro-social behaviour. The conclusion of The wolf
implicates its hero in his failure to suppress his predatory instincts.

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Acknowledgments
In the creation of this thesis, all of my thanks must go to Hayley Singer.
Her brilliant and ongoing support, advice and insight has not only
helped me along this journey, but will doubtless be a light in the years
to come.
I thank my family, all of them, for a lifetime of irreverence and
laughter.
And I thank Echo, whose thumping tail is ever the only thing that
can drag me from my work.

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Table of contents
Chapter One
Introduction: Feathered, scaly, furry heroes .................................. 5
Literature review .............................................................................. 9
Methodology................................................................................... 18
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20
Beetles are not people, but baboons and hyenas are? Allocating
personhood........................................................................................ 20
Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 31
Carnivorism sterilised: Sabre-toothed for nothing in (the) Ice
Age ...................................................................................................... 31
Conclusion ................................................................................................. 41
Hunger’s heroes................................................................................ 41
The wolf......................................................................................................... 42
Bibliography ............................................................................................... 75
Part One
Critical theory element – 60% Chapter One

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Introduction: Feathered, scaly, furry heroes
... in no other way can I explain why it is that they
occur universally and in identical form, whether the
redeemer-figure be a fish, a hare, a lamb, a snake, or a
human being. It is the same redeemer-figure in a
variety of accidental disguises.
Carl Jung, “Fundamental Questions
of Psychotherapy” 1951
This thesis contributes to creative writing theory by identifying and
exploring the construction of a recurring fictional character type: the
“suppressed-predator hero archetype.” To this end I examine Simba,
the lion protagonist of The Lion King (1994) and, Diego, the
sabretooth cat protagonist of Ice Age (2002). These two characters
exemplify the “suppressed-predator hero.” This variation on Carl
Jung’s and Joseph Campbell’s hero archetype, which is examined at
length in Jung’s compiled works Jung on Mythology (1998) and
Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949), frequently occurs
in narratives where prey and predator co-exist in ostensible
harmony. Using The Lion King and Ice Age as two case studies, I aim
to explore and expose the ways in which natural reality is
significantly manipulated in these filmic texts to suppress the
predator animals’ instincts so that they can fulfil the hero archetype.
This argument builds upon Mary Midgley’s definition of
anthropomorphism, which describes how humans “attribute to
animals feelings or motives that [animals] do not have” (344).
Anthropomorphism can be so significantly utilised in narrative that
some animals characters are designated as analogous to human

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characters. Murray Smith suggests that anthropomorphic characters
are produced according to his proposed “person schema,” which
allows nonhuman beings to be allocated what Smith terms
“personhood” (21-22). Building upon Smith’s theory, Pete Porter
argues that the use of certain cues in fiction promotes varying
degrees of human character identification in animals. Porter
proposes that the strongest correlation between fictional animals and
human characters arises in those animals attributed human speech
(408). As human analogues, these animals fulfil archetypes that are
currently understood to be exclusively human. To Jung, Campbell
and others, the most ubiquitous of these archetypal narratives is
known as the “monomyth” or “the hero’s journey” (Campbell 23). As
Robert Segal points out in Jung on Mythology (1998), Jung argues that
“the myth of the hero symbolizes ... the psychological life cycle”
(145). Its archetypal pattern, Segal writes, represents the arising
understanding within an individual that they are separate to the
external world, followed by the revelation that they are, in fact, part
of a greater whole (145). In Jungian terms, the hero’s journey
represents the rise of the self-centred, conscious ego followed by its
reintegration into the primordial unconscious, forming the notion of
a complete “Self” (Jung 144).1
In narrative, this process has been conceived of as the pattern
of “the hero’s journey,” and it involves various stages with which the
fictional hero figure must interact with or rely upon other characters.
1 This demonstrates the distinction I will maintain between the (lower case) self
(denoting an individual) and the capitalised Self (Jungian term for reintegrated
conscious and unconscious).

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In achieving their goal, the hero often encounters assistance from
“helpful animals” in myths (Jung 159) or “protective figures” in the
form of supernatural aid (Campbell 57). In The Lion King and Ice Age,
many of these helper/ally archetypes are animals that in natural
reality are prey to the predator heroes, e.g. Rafiki the baboon
mentors Simba the lion; Manny the mammoth risks his life to save
Diego the sabre-tooth cat. Development executive Christopher
Vogler, who adapts Campbell’s theories for contemporary
Hollywood, suggests that these helper/ally beings represent positive
aspects of the hero’s Self. Lessons offered by the helper/ally
archetype to the hero must be incorporated and absorbed into the
hero’s development in order for the hero to attain their goal/s (24-25).
Contrasted with the obstacles to be overcome, the “Dragons [that]
have now to be slain” (Campbell 90), these ally prey characters
cannot be devoured by the predator heroes as their death would
surmount to a rejection of the positive aspects of the Self.
Acknowledgment and incorporation of these positive aspects into the
Self ultimately enables the hero to achieve their goal.
The goal of the hero’s journey in The Lion King is the
restoration of Simba, the exiled and rightful heir and hero, to the
throne usurped by his uncle, Scar. The desolation wrought by Scar’s
brief rule over the Pridelands is contrasted with the peace and
prosperity the kingdom experienced under Simba’s father and
legitimised king, Mufasa. As the film’s denouement shows, peace
returns once Simba reclaims his rightful place on the throne. In this
sense, Simba’s internal development facilitates an external goal, the
restoration of peace to the kingdom, that has benefits for many. As
Campbell writes: “The effect of the successful adventure of the hero

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is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of
the world” (32). The success of the journey for Ice Age’s animal
protagonists – Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth and Diego the
sabre-tooth cat – is measured by the return of Roshan, the human
baby, to his tribe. In contrast to the goal set for Simba, the return of
Roshan effectively threatens the lives of Ice Age’s protagonists;
Manny and Diego point out that humans hunt both of their species.
Given that Diego is initially tasked with kidnapping and killing the
baby to punish the humans for hunting sabre-tooths, he is initially
designated as antagonist. For Campbell, this is because “he turns to
his own advantage the authority of his position” (289), measured in
this environment by his predatory physiology. This is tested when he
forms a loose alliance with prey animals Sid and Manny. The
external, physical journey they undertake together facilitates
development of the Self in Diego, who suppresses his predatory
nature, accepts and is accepted by his prey friends and thus upholds
a greater social order.
While The Lion King features a hero whose destiny – and
depiction as a hero – is ordained from birth, the hero of Ice Age
begins the narrative as an antagonist whose goal is to devour a baby
and, later, his mammoth ally. My decision to examine these two texts
is based upon this contrast; as opposed to Simba’s relatively smooth
transition to a Jungian Self, Diego faces many inward developmental
challenges as he grapples with his vilified, selfish carnivorism. Both
narratives, however, adhere to the hero’s journey. By exploring the
The Lion King and Ice Age, I will show how the suppression of the
instincts of predatory animal heroes is vital to the fulfilment of the
hero’s journey. This research is significant because the theories of

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Jung and Campbell, and Christopher Vogler and Christopher
Booker, whom I will discuss below, focus upon morphologically
human characters, and thus primarily the human psyche or the
physical stages of the journey. My study will build upon these areas
of theory by focusing on anthropomorphic animals who, as human
analogues, function as human characters. Their representation as
such also reveals how predator and prey animals can be
conceptualised in fiction.
In their article “The Conceptual Separation of Food and
Animals in Childhood” (2009), Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole
investigate the human allocation of a value-based status to various
animals in The Lion King. They do not, however, focus on the
narratological implications. I build upon the work of these writers by
exploring the hero’s journey as it pertains to animal characters
functioning as human analogues. This thesis examines the necessary
distortion of predatory animal realities to make Jung and Campbell’s
hero’s journey function for nonhuman animal characters.
Literature Review
Personhood and fictional animals
In her study of animal-based insults, “Curs, crabs, and cranky cows”
(2014), semiotician Dagmar Schmauks points out that “Much of our
knowledge about animals is not grounded in our own experience but
in depictions in art or media” (102). Although naturalistic and
documentary forms of art often attempt replication of reality,
alternate realities arise when animals are anthropomorphised.
Anthropomorphism, as Mary Midgley states in her book Beasts and
Man: the Roots of Human Nature (1979), can be understood as the

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assignation of human traits to animals (344). That humans as a
species should – rightly or not – identify laughter in a bird or
mourning in a dog does not seem remarkable. According to Sowon S.
Park in her article “Who Are These People?: Anthropomorphism,
Dehumanization, and the Question of the Other” (2013), such
common conceptualisations arise from the human brain’s necessity
to discern interpersonal knowledge from other entities (154). “[T]he
healthy human brain,” Park writes, “is equipped with mechanisms
that enable us to attribute mental states to another being ... this
expectation about people and other beings is part of normal mental
life” (157-158). But attributions of mental states and human traits
fluctuate and vary on an extreme scale. In his book Brutal: Manhood
and the Exploitation of Animals (2007), Brian Luke contends that
human conceptualisation of animals depends chiefly on factors such
as whether a human lives in an urban or rural setting, or upon their
daily interaction with animals. Luke concludes that “All of our
dispositions are conditioned by our environment” (33). Further
defining how humans conceptualise animals, Kate Stewart and
Matthew Cole, in their article “The Conceptual Separation of Food
and Animals in Childhood” (2009), suggest that the status an animal
is granted in the eyes of a human is defined by that animal’s
presumed utility (459-60). Accordingly, this utility can be mapped on
an axis that Stewart and Cole argue correlates with the fate of the
animal (460-61). The map polarises subjectivity and objectification on
the horizontal plane, while visibility and invisibility are polarised on
the vertical. In these terms, utility can be defined in a number of
ways. For example, although farmed animals and working animals
perform corporeal function for humans – such as meat cows and

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logging elephants – Stewart and Cole identify some of the many
intangible functions animals can perform. Most visible and familiar
of these is the role performed by a pet in a human household (460;
Shell 148), but other examples include zoo animals, stuffed animals,
cartoon animals and even the idea/ideal of an animal in its natural
state – such as a wild lion – can have a symbolic utility for humans.
The symbolic utility of any given animal is one that varies across
cultures and throughout history.2 Craig Packer and Jean Clottes
contend that Palaeolithic representations of lions in European caves
were often naturalistic depictions as competitors for large prey (52-
57). In their article “The Conquering Lion, the Life Cycle of a
Symbol” (1964), Willy Hartner and Richard Ettinghausen describe
the development of the lion into a royal symbol of authority, power
and leadership. The “image of the royal beast ... then transformed
into the conqueror himself” in the form of heraldry, royal emblems
etc. (168). In arguing against royal absolutism, 17th century poet John
Milton degraded the lion’s positive symbolism by heightening its
traits of carnivorism and its predatory nature (Edwards 237). These
traits were used to further vilify the lion upon European colonialism
in Africa as, Alba Tomasula y Garcia suggests, the lion develops once
again into a dangerous natural force to be overcome; slaughtering
lions would “confirm the glory and progress of civilization” (199). At
present the bars of a zoo or the doors of a dusty Land Rover mediate
2 In their article “Uddering the Other” (2013), Lorna Stevens, Matthew Kearney and
Pauline Maclaran show that in ancient Greece, Egypt and India the cow was a
divine symbol, yet in contemporary Western countries, due to the industrialisation
of bovine farming, that divinity has been desacrilised (159-160). As the
conceptualisation of cows has experienced flux, so too has the symbolism of lions.

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the contact between contemporary urban populations and lions in
Western culture. Now this felid species and its extinct cousin, the
sabre-tooth cat, are represented in children’s cartoons, as stuffed toys
and singing and dancing in musicals. Like the artistic representation
of any animal, an anthropomorphised lion can be a powerful literary
device for facilitating an ideological position (Stevens et al 171).
Determining which animals are likely to be anthropomorphised,
Midgley suggests those whose behaviour falls within a range shared
by humans – from blinking in sunlight to starting at a loud noise –
are the ones upon which humans are likely to project their own
mental states (345-346). Physiological similarities are consequently a
major factor in facilitating anthropomorphism. Big cats, with their
broad, open-featured faces, are easily anthropomorphised, whereas it
is much harder to project human traits onto a spider or a crab
(Mooallem; Morris 197-205).3 According to film and literary theorist
Murray Smith, physiologically varied characters are possible due to
his proposed “person schema.” In his book Engaging Characters
(1995), Smith shows that writers are able to allocate “personhood” to
fictional entities – human or not – provided
they meet the majority of the following:
-a discrete human body
3 But a slew of popular fictional texts that feature anthropomorphised crabs, spiders
and other physiologically disparate organisms attests to the success of writers and
artists in anthropomorphising animals often perceived of as ‘lower’ forms of life.
Such animals include: ants in 1998’s Antz, with a wider scope of various insects and
arachnids in A Bug’s Life (1998); the racing snails of 2013’s Turbo; and the titular
character of the television series SpongeBob SquarePants (1999present), a shirt and
tie-wearing sea sponge.

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-perceptual activity and self-awareness
-intentional action
-emotions
-the ability to use and understand language
-persistent traits (21)
The animals of The Lion King and Ice Age do not have human bodies,
but, as Smith points out, and particularly in light of extant
physiological similarities with humans, a human body isn’t
necessary (24).4
In “Engaging the Animal in the Moving Image” (2006), Pete
Porter builds upon Smith’s schema and proposes a set of cues that
writers and filmmakers “supply, or fail to supply ... thus cueing or
constraining an inference of personhood with regard to a particular
character” (405).5 Porter divides these cues into “primary,”
“secondary external” and “secondary internal” categories. The latter
two categories are pertinent here since primary cues, being the
performance of a real, living animal, are essentially exclusive to
audio-visual texts. Secondary external cues involve inference of
4 Developing Smith’s schema, video game designer and theorist Petri Lankoski
points out that because a ghost, a comatose patient and Mickey Mouse subscribe to
the majority of the person schema, they can each be recognised as human agents
(23). Although these three characters do not fulfil the entire schema, they are able to
be depicted partaking in narrative much the same way as conventionally depicted
human characters.
5 Pete Porter acknowledges the explicitly anthropocentric nature of the discourse
required to develop Smith’s ideas. Terminology such as “prestige category,”
“human and nonhuman” and even “personhood” privilege the human position,
but, as Porter counters, the framing discussion is based on comprehending likely
audience interpretation, not its ethics (405).

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human traits and behaviours in animals. These cues often occur in
the voiceover of a documentary or when a human character ascribes
human traits to an animal, as does the narrator of Jack London’s The
Call of the Wild (1903). Secondary internal cues occur when an animal
is invested with a human voice, as performed by voice actors in The
Lion King and Ice Age.6 An animal character in whom secondary
internal cues have been used invites the strongest identification of
that animal as a person and therefore human character. As Porter
summarises:
Modelling cues of nonhuman personhood as primary,
secondary external, and secondary internal suggests a
continuum along which the inference of the nonhuman
as person gives way to the inference of the nonhuman
as human and therefore person. Put another way, as
secondary internal cues grow dominant, the nonhuman
becomes, in effect, human. (408)
The animal hero
Jung, in his influential work on the intersection between myths,
narratives and the human psyche, proposes that in all the world’s
mythologies and fairy tales, there exists a series of primordial images
he terms “archetypes” (82). These archetypes, Jung argues, arise in
all humans from a “collective unconscious,” described as “the
psychic expression of the identity of brain structure irrespective of all
racial differences” (63). Perhaps the central archetype to this
paradigm is that of the “hero,” which Jung posits as a psychological
6 In literature, these cues are performed by the writer who attributes speech to their
animal characters, as evidenced in The Sheep-Pig (1983).

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symbol of the human Self (75). Booker interprets the Self as the
unselfish and group-serving aspect of an individual, as opposed to
the self-serving ego (305). As discussed earlier, the journey of
archetypal heroes symbolises the psychological life cycle in
approaching the Self.
Campbell describes this life cycle as represented in narrative as the
“monomyth” (23). By reviewing myths from a multitude of cultures
and eras, Campbell outlines an archetypal journey undertaken by the
heroes – “symbolic carriers of the destiny of Everyman” (28) – which
can be distilled into three sections: separation, initiation and return.
Campbell extrapolates on these sections by identifying 17 stages
across the journey, which, if not included, are often implied (30). Like
Jung, Campbell argues that the hero’s journey is a quest for the
reintegration of the conscious ego with its unconscious. Campbell
observes that in narrative this reintegration is often represented as
the obtainment of a boon that will benefit a social group (30-31). In
my primary texts, such social groups include the animal kingdom of
The Lion King’s Pridelands, or the mutually-supportive friendship
group of the mammoth, sloth and sabre-tooth cat in Ice Age.
Christopher Vogler reframes Campbell’s investigation of the
hero’s journey for interpretation of and application to modern
narratives. In The Writer’s Journey (2007), Vogler maps Campbell’s 17
stages against his own condensed 12 (6).7 As a script consultant,
Vogler re-introduced Campbell’s version of the hero’s journey to
modern writers by circulating a memo among Hollywood executives
during the 1980s (xxix), the success of which led to his involvement
in the developmental stages of The Lion King. Reinforcing Jung and
Campbell’s notions of the journey as a quest for greater maturity

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through reintegration of the conscious and unconscious parts of the
mind, Vogler emphasises the roles that non-hero archetypal figures
play in the hero’s journey. According to Vogler, characters who
provide aid or obstruct the hero in their quest can be read as both
7 Vogler’s stages are: 1.Ordinary World, 2.Call to Adventure, 3. Refusal of the Call,
4. Meeting with the Mentor, 5. Crossing the First Threshold, 6. Tests, Allies,
Enemies, 7. Approach to the Inmost Cave, 8. Ordeal, 9. Reward (Seizing the Sword),
10. The Road Back, 11. Resurrection, 12. Return with the Elixir (8).
positive and negative aspects of the complete Self that the hero must
negotiate, either by incorporating – but not destroying – the positive
aspects of allies, or rejecting and overcoming negative aspects of
enemies (24-26). For Christopher Booker in The Seven Basic Plots
(2003), an analysis of hundreds of narratives and their fundamental
patterns, much of the hero’s quest through this phase of
encountering allies and enemies is concerned with learning the
lessons of allies and integrating them into the Self (308). It is within
this “initiation” stage where the hero is most likely to fail in their
quest. The temptation to act selfishly and to satisfy short-term
desires must be overcome for the narrative to reach a conclusion
where the
hero psychologically matures and a greater good is obtained (620).
Sacrifice of those selfish, short-term goals, which Booker calls
“ego-serving,” facilitates the conclusion of hero’s journey narratives.
Like Campbell, Booker contends that fulfilled conclusions are
predominantly represented by the restoration of some sort of social
order. This often occurs through a “succession of the hero ... to
preside over some kind of ‘kingdom,’” as Simba does in The Lion
King, or through a deep inward change within the hero that has

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“immense repercussions for the wider community” (558), as occurs
within Diego in Ice Age. The antagonists who stand in the way of
these heroes’ goals are Scar, Simba’s uncle, and Soto, Diego’s pack
leader – both villains who seek to satisfy only their needs, and who
represent the “shadow” archetype, embodying the negative traits of
the heroes (Booker 708). But, when the heroes overcome these
figures, reintegrating the Self within the process, the hero brings:
general benefit to society and humanity as a whole. The
‘kingdom’ or community which was in the shadows,
threatened by egotism, has been brought back into the
light and restored to itself. The elimination of the dark
power by one individual has consequences felt by all.
(558)
For Jung, also, “The universal hero myth ... shows the picture of a
powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil ... and enemies of all
kinds, and who liberates his people from destruction and death” (95).
As I will show in this thesis, predator heroes must have their
predatory instincts suppressed so that they do not devour their allies,
who symbolise necessary aspects of the Self, or risk the “kingdom”
or “community” by short-sightedly killing and eating members of
their own social group. The manipulation of reality to achieve this
goal when those allies and members of the social group are prey
animals constitutes the basis for my “suppressed-predator hero
archetype.” In the next chapter I will examine how various literary
and narrative devices are used to suppress Simba’s predatory
instincts. Beyond the complete censorship of Simba eating his natural
diet, I will show how grubs and insects are denied personhood so
that Simba can eat them to survive. These non-characters contrast

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with prey animal allies Rafiki and Pumbaa, whose utility to Simba,
and to the hero’s journey narrative, preserves their lives. Ice Age, in
contrast, features no consumption of any animals. The antagonist
predator Diego undergoes a more inward developmental journey in
the film to the point where he finally rejects his predatory instincts.
In doing so Diego fulfils aspects of the hero archetype, such as
growth, taking risk and responsibility and, pre-eminently for Vogler,
a willingness to sacrifice (32). These traits facilitate Ice Age’s positive
conclusion, preserving the lives of his prey friends and helping to
fulfil the hero’s journey.
Methodology
Through this thesis I utilise theories of anthropomorphism, allocation
of personhood and the hero’s journey to examine an as yet
unexplored narrative archetype: the suppressed-predator hero.
Having identified the leonine heroes of The Lion King and Ice Age as
suppressed-predator heroes, I analyse their journeys according to the
theories of Campbell, Vogler and Booker. By analysing these
journeys, I demonstrate manipulation of natural, nonhuman animal
predator-prey relations through representations of prey and predator
animals co-existing peacefully. To show how human traits are
assigned to the animals in The Lion King and Ice Age, I also engage
with Midgley’s and Park’s theories on anthropomorphism. As
human analogues according to Smith and Porter, the animal
characters of The Lion King and Ice Age can perform archetypal
Jungian roles in narrative. I explore the hero’s journey narrative, the
fulfilment of which Campbell, Vogler and Booker contend
symbolises attainment of a higher psychological state of maturity
referred to as the “Self.” In light of these theorists’ proposal that the

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goal of the hero’s journey is often attained with the help of ally
characters and is represented by a restoration of social order, I will
show how the predatory animal heroes Simba and Diego cannot kill
and consume prey ally characters who offer aid, especially in light of
the social groups comprised of prey animals that the heroes seek to
sustain.
The drive to act selflessly and to help others is not evident in
Kane Loopis, protagonist of The wolf. In his selfish quest to profit
without regard to the cost of others, Kane Loopis demonstrates the
narrative consequences of an actualisation of predatory instincts in
hero’s journey narratives. The wolf draws upon Martin Scorsese’s The
Wolf of Wall Street (2013), itself inspired by the eponymous account of
the rise and fall of convicted money launderer and securities
fraudster Jordan Belfort. The wolf is a piece of short fiction that charts
a similar trajectory in an animal/human character. By drawing on,
and exposing, conceptual correlations between competitive,
corporate masculinities and conceptions of predatory behaviour, I
will show how predatory behaviour in animals can be vilified in
fictional anthropomorphised animals. Consequentially, The wolf
demonstrates how humans can be zoomorphised to equate them
with predators, and thus as anti-heroes, or villains.

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Chapter two
Beetles are not people, but baboons and hyenas are? Allocating
personhood in fiction
The tendency to erase – and, if you wish, also to rise
above – the ordinary distinction between human and
animal beings suggests the first potentially disturbing
question raised: ... what is (a) human being?
Marc Shell, Children of the
Earth, 1993
This chapter investigates how personhood is allocated in The Lion
King (1994). It asks how the allocation of personhood affects
representations of and relations between predator and prey animals.
The selective allocation of personhood in the The Lion King reinforces
a hierarchical value system where those animals granted personhood
can exploit those who are not. Certain prey animals who have been
delineated as “persons,” however, are necessary to the predator

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hero’s journey. For example, the hero’s mentor takes the form of a
baboon while the role of an ally is performed by a warthog; both of
these animals have been observed in the wild as prey to lions
(Radloff and du Toit 422-423). In The Lion King, I will show that the
natural reality of wild predator-prey relations is distorted, often
suppressed, to successfully represent the fulfilment of the hero’s
journey.
The animated animals depicted in The Lion King’s opening
sequence briefly adhere to anatomical and behavioural realities of
their wild animal counterparts: birds flock through the air, gazelle
bound through the mist and herds of ungulates move across the
plain. This mimetic scene continues until all creatures big and small
are depicted as united in this journey. Several species of birds are
even shown hitching a ride on the tusks of an accommodating
elephant.
The destination is then revealed as the animals gather at the
foot of a rocky promontory.7 A lion stands atop the promontory:
Mufasa, the reigning lion king, who is approached by Rafiki, the wise
old shamanic baboon. Mufasa embraces Rafiki who has arrived to
sanctify the birth of Mufasa’s son and heir to the throne, Simba.
Rafiki does so by anointing Simba with the juice of a fruit hanging
from his staff. Although Rafiki later performs an archetypal mentor
role for Simba, Vogler notes that this baptismal blessing scene was
written to explicitly recall the anointment of new royalty (262). The
7 Although in “The Lion King’s Mythic Narrative” (1996) Annabelle Ward observes
that these are animals that would normally prey upon one another and that their
held peace alludes biblically to the Garden of Eden (3), but for the lions, they are all
herbivorous.

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invitation to view The Lion King as human narrative is further
extended with the depiction of the leonine parents, Mufasa and
Sarabi, smiling proudly at their newborn son. According to Park, the
anthropomorphisation of the lions’ faces offers an immediate insight
for human audiences into their emotional state (157). Aside from the
overtly human culture of this scene, Frans Radloff and Johan Du Toit
have also observed that lions predate upon baboons, not to mention
several of the species in attendance, including giraffe, zebra and
wildebeest (412).
Although none of the animals have engaged in dialogue
throughout this sequence, personhood has clearly been inferred in
some of the animals based upon facial expressions, non-verbal
communication and body language. All animals present understand
the ceremony: they cheer when Rafiki holds Simba aloft, they bow
when a shaft of light falls from the clouds onto Simba’s head, “giving
the divine stamp of approval to the specialness of this child and to
Mufasa’s royal line” (Vogler 262). Beyond this clearly
anthropomorphic and ritualistic scene, the next scene features the
film’s first talking animal. It is at this point that The Lion King can be
read as a human story packaged as an animal kingdom narrative.
In constructing such a narrative, the kingdom’s hierarchy is
formed and communicated by placing animals depicted at various
points along the continuum of personhood recognition. As Porter has
shown, those animals who speak can be identified as human (408).
The first animal to speak in The Lion King is Scar, Simba’s uncle and
the film’s central antagonist. To characterise him as an antagonist,
Scar is shown toying with a captured mouse – who can only squeak

24. 23
pitifully – as he soliloquises over how unfair it is that he will never
be king. This sentiment is juxtaposed in polar opposition to the social
order established in the preceding coronation scene where predator
and prey are united in ritual harmony. As though to highlight that
juxtaposition, and just as Scar tells the mouse that it will never see
the light of another day, Mufasa’s hornbill herald, Zazu, interrupts
Scar and announces the king is on the way. “Oh now, look, Zazu,”
Scar complains coolly as the mouse escapes. “You made me lose my
lunch.” Despite Zazu being close enough to eat, Scar engages in
conversation for a short while before losing patience, chasing Zazu
and enclosing him wholly in his jaw. “Scar,” comes the stern voice of
Mufasa from the entrance to Scar’s cave. “Drop him.” Zazu pokes
out his beak through Scar’s ‘lips’. “Impeccable timing, your majesty,”
the bird exclaims.
This scene establishes the boundary between positively
represented predatory-suppression and the vilification of predators
who would act on their instincts. The relationship between Zazu and
Mufasa demonstrates how relations are formed between prey and
predators in The Lion King and accounts for the prey animals who
will assist Simba in the hero’s journey. As Stewart and Cole have
shown earlier, the status of an animal perceived by a human is often
determined by the animal’s presumed utility (460). Since Stewart and
Cole contend that “the human audience are implicitly invited to
identify” with the lions in this film (467), it follows that Zazu’s
relationship with and service to Mufasa preserves the hornbill’s life.
Rafiki also serves Mufasa by sanctifying the birth of Simba and
legitimising the reign of their family. According to Stewart and
Cole’s map of animal conceptualisation, apart from charting highly

25. 24
on the subjectivity and visibility axes (461), Zazu and Rafiki can be
closely identified as working animals, and are therefore not likely to
be seen as objectified sources of food. According to Dagmar
Schmauks, however, Rafiki’s morphology might already place him at
an advantage to be allocated personhood. Schmauks argues that
morphological similarity of animals to humans is a key aspect of
designating human traits to animals (99). Similarities between real
human and real baboon, such as tapered fingers and the ability for
bipedal locomotion, are evident in nature. But Rafiki is further
allocated human traits when he is depicted enacting a culturally
human ritual and coddling a baby lion cub. Zazu’s morphology is
similarly manipulated so that he can fold his wing inwards to point
as though a hand, and cross his wings as arms to express disdain.
Expressions and behaviours shown by Zazu and Rafiki meet
criteria of Smith’s person schema, which includes demonstration of
perceptual activity, intentional action and emotions (21). But another
aspect of Smith’s person schema and one that characterises many
animal narratives is the use of language. So successfully has Scar
been represented as a human analogue through his use of human
language that Vogler describes Scar as though the lion was a subject
for psycho-analytical assessment.
[Scar] can be read as a harsh model of adulthood, in
which the early wounds dished out by life have
become excuses for jealousy, cynicism, sarcasm and a
victim complex that turns into tyranny when the
lifelong
victim finally gets power. (261)
For Vogler to be able to infer such traits, Scar’s ability to articulate is

26. 25
paramount. The mouse who Scar threatened could not protest
intelligibly, unlike Zazu who was able to plead with Scar and
articulate his fear of being devoured. The variation shown in the
respective representations of the mouse and Zazu locate these
animals in different positions on Porter’s continuum of personhood
recognition (408), with Zazu far enough along the continuum to be
allocated personhood.
Some animals in The Lion King experience a transitional
personhood where they are located somewhere along the
continuum’s middle. Simba seems able to choreograph a group of
these animals – giraffes, ostriches, anteaters, crocodiles and a
rhinoceros – in a song and dance number titled “I Just Can’t Wait To
Be King.” Although these animals do not speak for themselves or
express their own emotions, a degree of personhood can be inferred
based upon their participation in the performance and their ability to
follow instruction. As discussed in the previous chapter, Porter’s
secondary external cues of personhood recognition are utilised when
human intermediaries imply personhood in animals (407).8
Continuing in their analysis of The Lion King, Stewart and Cole
identify two groups of animals located further along the continuum
and farther away from personhood: 1) the large African herbivores,
some of which are discussed by the featured lions as prey, and 2) the
beetles and grubs that Simba survives on during his time in the
8 Zazu uses such a cue on a rhinoceros who, at the end of “I Just Can’t Wait To Be
King,” is sitting on top of him. “I beg your pardon, madam,” Zazu begins, “but ...
get off!” The rhinoceros doesn’t react, but Zazu’s mode of address infers that she
should.

27. 26
wilderness (467-468). Mufasa refers to the first group of large African
herbivores when he instructs Simba on the nutritional value derived
by lions from gazelle, a group of whom are leaping silently past in
objectivity. The closest to any realistic depiction of the slaughter of
large herbivorous prey is the bloodless zebra haunch used by Scar to
facilitate a deal with the hyenas. The hyenas devour the haunch in a
frenzy as Scar outlines his plan to overthrow Mufasa, further
vilifying the eating of meat and, by extension, predation, which is
being visibly associated with the evil characters (Stewart and Cole
467). In forging this alliance, however, Scar and the hyenas have
demonstrated another manipulation of predator realities, as “These
two species are potentially serious competitors” in wilderness areas
(Trinkel and Kastberger 220). Such is the only ‘unnatural’ avenue
available to Scar to accomplish his goals. Scar’s overwhelming desire
to overthrow Mufasa identifies him as the tyrannical “Dark
Fatherfigure,” “the older man who has in some way replaced the
hero’s lost father” (Booker 244). Vogler suggests that Scar – like any
antagonist or villain – fulfils the “shadow” archetype, a figure that
represents “the energy of the dark side, the unexpressed, unrealized,
or rejected aspects of something” (65). As meat-eating and predation
are explicitly being rejected in relation to the hero’s journey of The
Lion King, Scar and the hyenas who embrace their predatory instincts
are
vilified for doing so.
While Stewart and Cole argue that lions are disconnected
from killing in The Lion King (467), Mufasa’s earlier valuation of
antelope highlights the natural reality of meat’s significance to lions.
The hierarchical relations that separate the lions, who have been

28. 27
granted personhood, from the antelope, who are silent and
objectified, bare structural correlation to the hierarchical asymmetry
maintained between humans and animals by a carnivorist social
order (Petsche 104). An analogous divide in The Lion King could be
conceptualised between animals granted personhood and animals
from whom it is withheld. Predation, then, for the ‘good’ characters
of The Lion King is only permitted if personhood is withheld from the
objectified prey animals. While this raises the question of how
hegemony is maintained over beings with whom one cannot
communicate, it also leads to Mufasa’s death. His fate is the result of
the earlier plot by Scar and his hyena allies to usurp the throne. A
stampede of wildebeest triggered by the hyenas sees Scar urging
Mufasa to rescue Simba, at hazard in the stampede’s midst. Mufasa
is forced to leap into the stampede to save his son as he cannot
reason or communicate with the wildebeest. Moreover, Stewart and
Cole illustrate that the wildebeest are “without autonomy, without
voices, without intelligence and without distinguishing features”
(467). Absent of the majority of Smith’s person schema, they are
ultimately without personhood. Mufasa dies beneath their hooves,
and although Simba survives this ordeal, Scar makes Simba believe
that he was responsible for his father’s death and exhorts Simba to
flee. In yet another vilification of predation, Scar sends the hyenas to
catch Simba and devour him.
The separation of Simba from his father and the kingdom he
calls home signals the end of Campbell’s separation stage, or its
theatrical correlate “Act One.” “Act Two,” according to Vogler (260),
or the “initiation” stage, according to Campbell’s monomyth model

29. 28
(81), begins with Simba’s escape from the hyenas into the desert. For
Vogler, the tests of this stage prepare the hero for the final
confrontations that enable the fulfilment of the journey (136). And so
Simba’s negotiation of this stage, and his very survival, are pivotal to
the narrative. Fortunately for Simba, the arrival of two omnivorous
prey animals increases the likelihood that he will live. Timon the
meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog accidentally rescue Simba from
being eaten by a pack of vultures. An example of the ‘might is right’
logic of this animal kingdom plays out when Timon and Pumbaa
discuss what do with the discovery of the unconscious lion cub.
TIMON. Jeez, it’s a lion! Run, Pumbaa! Move it!
PUMBAA. Hey! Timon, it’s just a little lion. Look at
him. He’s so cute and all alone. Can we keep him?!
TIMON. Pumbaa, are you nuts?! You’re talking about a
lion. Lions eat guys like us!
PUMBAA. But he’s so little.
TIMON. He’s gonna get bigger.
PUMBAA. Maybe he’ll be on our side.
TIMON. Ha! That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.
‘Maybe he’ll b—’ Hey, I got it! What if he’s on our
side? Ya know, having a lion around might not be
such a bad idea.
These two characters represent a blend of Vogler’s archetypal roles.
In one sense Timon and Pumbaa are “threshold guardians,”
individuals who attempt to block the progress of the hero (129),
shown by Timon’s temptation to leave Simba to die. In yet another
they are “allies,” characters who provide advice and material
assistance in Simba’s dietary adjustment (137). And in yet another

30. 29
archetypal role, they could be considered as “mentors” (117),
imparting wisdom in the sense of their philosophy on life: hakuna
matata (no worries). But Timon and Pumbaa cannot fulfil the more
facilitative archetypal functions unless Simba passes one of his first
tests upon Campbell’s “road of trials” (81), that is, not eating Timon
and Pumbaa. Upon Simba regaining consciousness the pair offer him
a new philosophy on life and a new home in their jungle paradise.
But Simba has been roaming the desert, and he now expresses that
he is so hungry he could eat an entire zebra. Timon responds
nervously as though ‘zebra’ was a common pantry item.
TIMON. We’re fresh out of zebra.
SIMBA. Any antelope?
TIMON. Nuh-uh.
SIMBA. Hippo?
TIMON. Nope. Listen, kid. If you live with us, you have
to eat like us.
And so Timon and Pumbaa, anxious to suppress the lion’s appetite
for red meat, introduce Simba to a diet of beetles and grubs. Timon
gathers these animals onto a leaf platter as one might gather fruit
and vegetables into a supermarket basket. For Simba, his predatory
hunting skills are no longer required. He doesn’t need to risk
alienating his benefactors, Timon and Pumbaa, without whom he
would be dead. And when Rafiki reappears after years of believing
Simba was dead, Simba does not feel the urge to attack and eat him.
Rafiki now is free to invoke a Mufasa apparition that offers Simba
advice and propels him towards reclaiming the throne. At this stage
Rafiki’s wisdom and his magical assistance provide a vital archetypal
function in providing “supernatural aid” (Campbell 57). In reality

31. 30
the increased energy demands of a growing lion, combined with
their proximity, would mean that a baboon would be unlikely to
survive this encounter in the wild (Radloff and du Toit 412). As both
Rafiki and Pumbaa serve positive archetypal functions to Simba, the
maintenance of his beetle and grub diet is necessary. The beetles,
animals denied comprehensible language, evident emotions or
perceptual self-awareness, and thus personhood, like the earlier
featured herds of large mammals, have been deinviduated to an
“undifferentiated mass” (Stewart and Cole 468).
Although Vogler worked as a script consultant on The Lion
King, he is critical of several aspects of this beetle-eating phase of
Simba’s “initiation” stage, or, as he calls it, Act Two.
The almost photographic realism of the Act One animal
scenes is replaced with a more old-fashioned Disney
cartoon style, especially the comic rendering of Timon
and Pumbaa. Simba is a growing carnivore and there is
nothing realistic about him subsisting on a diet of bugs.
(264)
In terms of the hero’s journey, Vogler argues that the film would
have been stronger had it featured scenes depicting Simba learning
how to hunt to survive, as opposed to dining on semi-vegetative
grubs (264). Yet the characters who Vogler advocates as teaching him
his hunting skills are the three prey ally/mentor archetypes outlined
above: Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki. Vogler’s point is valid in that
there is nothing realistic about a lion subsisting on beetles and
insects, but then neither is there realism in a lion’s prey animals
teaching a lion cub how to hunt. The implications arising from such a

32. 31
scenario would throw The Lion King’s extant narrative – particularly
one centred on an archetypal hero – into a tangential crisis.
Instead, the conceptual separation of the bugs and grubs from
Simba’s natural prey of large mammals (Scheel 96) – a manipulation
of natural predator-prey relations – allows Simba to grow into a
mature lion and grasp the lessons of Timon, Pumba and Rafiki. This
has been possible due to a suppression of Simba’s predatory
instincts, along with the omission of any preceding predatory
activity in order to maintain his status as hero. By suppressing his
natural instincts, Simba is able to accept the help of his allies,
overcome Scar in a climactic confrontation and take his place as king
of the Pridelands.
Chapter Three
Carnivorism sterilised: Sabre-toothed for nothing in (the) Ice Age
Homo homini lupus est

33. 32
(Man is a wolf to man)
Plautus, Asinaria, 195 BCE
This chapter investigates the suppressed-predator hero archetype in
Ice Age (2002). In order to do so, I examine the role of the hero’s
journey as a metaphor for psychological development. By building
upon the theories of Campbell, Vogler and Booker, I suggest that
Diego, the sabre-tooth hero of Ice Age, is characterised almost entirely
by the suppression of his instincts. This suppression is a gradual,
internal change over the course of the text, but it is a change that is
pivotal to the narrative conclusion and fulfilment of the predator
animal hero’s journey. Although Campbell provides the basic
conceptualisation of the hero’s journey, his comparative study is
grounded in mythology. Vogler’s earlier mentioned 12 stages are
based upon the study of contemporary narratives, and as such this
chapter will refer to Vogler’s model in examining the journey of the
animal characters.
Although any fictional animal character is “an inevitably
artificial construct or human projection” (Norris 4), the extent of such
artifice is patent in a film where a mammoth named Manny, a sloth
named Sid and a sabre-tooth cat named Diego join together to return
a human baby named Roshan to his tribe. According to Vogler,
identifying the archetypal hero in this group is a relatively
straightforward exercise. Taking the function of the hero’s journey as
symbolic of psychological maturation, Vogler suggests that
identifying the hero means identifying “the [character] who learns or
grows the most in the course of a story” (31). The largest character
arc for the three nonhuman characters is taken by Diego, who
initially occupies the role of antagonist.

34. 33
Led by Soto, Diego and his pack stalk a human encampment
and plot punitive action for the humans’ previous hunting of
sabretooths. Diego and Soto are first introduced as they survey the
human tribe from a hidden vantage point. Their attention is focused
particularly on a baby playing with his mother and father. SOTO.
Look at the cute little baby, Diego. Isn’t it nice
he’ll be joining us for breakfast?
DIEGO. It wouldn’t be breakfast without him.
SOTO. Especially since his daddy wiped out half our
pack and wears our skin to keep warm. An eye for
an eye, don’t you think?
DIEGO. Let’s show that human what happens when he
messes with Sabres.
SOTO. Alert the troops. We attack at dawn.
Diego shows no sign of change yet; this is his “ordinary world.”9 But
the planned raid fails, and the mother escapes the clutches of Diego
with her baby by leaping into a river. Soto is furious at Diego for
missing his chance and exhorts him to find the baby, “unless you
want to serve yourself as a replacement.” Further downstream,
Manny and Sid discover the mother and the bundled child on the
banks of the river. A moment of understanding passes between the
mother and Manny as she nudges the baby towards them. The
mother is overcome, presumably from the cold, and allows the
current to sweep her away.
9 The “Ordinary World” is where many narratives begin, indicating the contrast
between the present and the action that follows, “it is the context, home base, and
the background of the hero” (Vogler 87).

35. 34
“Look, there’s smoke,” Sid says. “That’s his herd right up the
hill. We should return him.” As Sid tries to climb the hill with
Roshan, Diego leaps at the pair and snatches the baby. After a brief
struggle between Manny and Diego, Diego backs down because,
alone, he cannot kill a full-grown mammoth. Instead he tries to
reason that the baby is his. “Name’s Diego, friend.” All he was doing,
he claims, was trying to return the baby to its herd. “Nice try,
bucktooth!” retorts Sid, who believes Diego is lying. Manny and Sid
then leave Diego and take the baby towards the human encampment.
It is abandoned, however, and Diego reappears to offer his tracking
skills. Manny is sceptical: “And you’re just a good citizen helping
out, right?” Diego responds, “Well, unless you know how to track,
you’re never gonna reach [the humans] before the pass closes up
with snow.” The ensuing debate could be read as “the call to
adventure” and “the refusal of the call” all at once. The point of the
latter stage, Vogler argues, is to assert that the journey wouldn’t be
an adventure worth taking – or even constitute an adventure – if it
didn’t carry an element of the unknown granting an opportunity for
learning and growth (107). But this scene is also the “meeting with
the mentor.”11 Diego offers his skills in tracking, specialist knowledge
that will enable the quest of the baby’s return to be fulfilled. In this
way, Diego acts as the archetypal “mentor,” a guide in the same
sense of Virgil in Divine Comedy (1555), Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars
(1977) or Rafiki in The Lion King, the keeper of secret knowledge that
11 The function of the mentor is frequently to pass wisdom onto the hero, but, “The
mask of the Mentor can be used to trick a hero into entering a life of crime” (Vogler
121).
can assist the hero. But Diego is also fulfilling Vogler’s “shapeshifter”
archetype, an archetype that, “Many heroes have to deal with ... who

36. 35
assumes disguises and tell[s] lies to confuse them” (62). Diego
successfully hides the fact that he still wants to confound the
protagonists’ goals by kidnapping and eating Roshan.10 Manny and
Sid’s acceptance of Diego’s assistance means the threat of predation
persists, and so another stage of the hero’s journey is met: “the
crossing of the first threshold.”
In terms of the three-part monomyth, this stage marks the
progression into the “initiation” stage, which Campbell labels “the
road of trials” (81) and Vogler calls “tests, allies, enemies” (135). For
it is this stage of the journey where unknown elements are
encountered, yielding physically and psychologically unfamiliar
territory. The resistance to adapt to the new environment is evident
in the dialogue between the characters.
SID (to DIEGO). Aww, the big, bad, tigey-wigey gets
left behind.
DIEGO (to SID). You won’t always have [Manny]
around to protect you. And when that day comes,
I suggest you watch your back, ‘cos I’ll be
chewing on it.
MANNY (to DEIGO). Oh, look who it is. Don’t you
have some poor, defenceless animal to
disembowel?
10 As Brian Luke has pointed out regarding animal stories, the threat that builds for
the protagonists is often the avoidance of slaughter, as in The Sheep-Pig (1983),
Chicken Run (2000) and Charlotte’s Web (1952).

37. 36
For a time the relations between the characters remain so negative
that when Diego meets Soto clandestinely for a progress update,
Diego adjusts his original plan to include an ambush to also kill
Manny. Diego’s role as mentor takes a further turn towards
shapeshifter antagonism.
While on “the road of trials,” Diego starts to change. The three
animals and human have overcome tests and learnt about each other,
even played together, and Diego starts to soften towards Roshan,
Sid, and his prey, Manny. In “The Hero’s Journey of
SelfTransformation” (2009), psychotherapists David Hartman and
Diane Zimberoff describe this period as an opening up “to new
perspectives, more positive, optimistic, and expansive ones” that are
required in the development of the “newly evolving self” (18). As
Diego develops these new aspects, he and the others enter the
“approach to the inmost cave,”11 coming in the form of an avalanche
that forces them to take shelter in an underground glacier pass. The
impending danger is negotiated, but the group comes across a
human mural depicting life in the Ice Age. A mammoth hunt
features in one of the scenes, which animates to tell the story of how
Manny’s family was killed.12 Sid points out tactlessly that the
mammoths look just like Manny, at which Diego remonstrates with
11 This is an approach to another dangerous unknown where “[Heroes] pass into
an intermediate region between the border and the very centre of the Hero’s
Journey” (Vogler 143).
12 According to the personhood schema, it is possible to read these drawings as
inviting the audience to identify with the prey animal, depicting the humans as an
incomprehensible pack that spears and bludgeons Manny’s partner and his
screaming mammoth infant.

38. 37
Sid. This is followed by a non-verbal scene where Diego is visibly
grieved over the loss of Manny’s family – much to the sabre-tooth’s
own surprise. Diego’s realisation of his changing sympathies in this
scene echoes and literalises Campbell’s idea that to attain a higher
level of outward existence, one must first travel inward (77).
Diego is further shocked at himself during Vogler’s “ordeal”13 stage
when Manny saves the sabre-tooth from falling off a cliff. The
mammoth appears to sacrifice himself in doing so but is saved at the
last moment by the upward thrust of a geyser. “Why did you do
that?” Diego asks. “You could have died trying to save me.” Manny
responds, “That’s what you do in a herd. You look out for each
other.” The crisis here serves as “a watershed, a continental divide in
the hero’s journey” (159). Although Manny faced the physical ordeal,
Diego is clearly undergoing a crisis of character as he is torn between
looking out for his new “herd” rather than his old “pack.” For
Vogler, the role of allies like Manny in the hero’s journey is to
function psychologically as metaphors for the unused or
unacknowledged parts of the Self that, when united, build towards a
greater level of maturity and understanding (75). Diego is evidently
beginning to acknowledge how valuable his friends are.
The passing of the “ordeal” stage is followed by the “reward,”
a moment to reflect on the triumph of all that has come before (175).
This moment is represented by the group sitting down around a
campfire for the night, according to Vogler, a common motif in
13 In narrative terms, this is the midpoint of the story, where “the hero stands in the
deepest chamber of the Inmost Cave, facing the greatest challenge and the most
fearsome opponent yet” (Vogler 155). For Diego that opponent is himself.

39. 38
heroes’ journeys. “Many stories,” Vogler writes, “seem to have
campfire-type scenes in this region, where the hero and companions
gather around a fire ... to review the recent events” (176). It is also,
perhaps, another test for Diego, towards whom Roshan takes his first
baby steps. Diego is visibly guilty and distressed by this, proving
Vogler’s point that “In these quiet moments of reflection or intimacy
we get to know the characters better” (177).
The morning after, when the group takes “the road back” to
the ordinary world – where Roshan will be returned to his tribe and
the three animals can go their separate ways – the narrative enters
Act Three, or the “return” stage (Campbell 29). “In psychological
terms,” Vogler argues, “this stage represents the resolve of the hero
to return to the Ordinary World and implement the lessons learned
in the Special World” (189). The following, penultimate stage is the
“resurrection” stage, which constitutes the narrative climax. With the
impending ambush he had earlier set in place, Diego is faced with a
dilemma: does he give in to his predatory nature and kill and eat his
friends? Or does he “retain the learning from the Supreme Ordeal of
Act Two ... and bring the knowledge home as applied wisdom”
(199)? This stage marks a final test, whereby the hero might slip and
revert to their old ways, and indeed, Diego hesitates before leading
Manny, Sid and Roshan into the jaws of death. But he decides to act
selflessly and warn his new herd about the plans he made with his
old pack.
MANNY. What do you mean ‘ambush’? You set us up?
DIEGO. It was my job! I was supposed to get the baby,
but then...
MANNY. You brought us home for dinner!

40. 39
SID. That’s it, you’re out of the herd!
Diego implores them to trust him one last time; it is their only
chance. Using the knowledge that they have garnered from each
other on the “road of trials,” the group confounds the ambush, but
only so far as a climactic battle between Soto and Diego. This
confrontation forms Vogler’s “resurrection” stage, where the hero
must die to be reborn anew (198). The resurrected hero must retain
the best aspects of their old self and combine them with the lessons
learned along the “road of trials.” Vogler asks: “Will [the hero]
choose in accordance with his old, flawed ways, or will the choice
reflect the new person he’s become?” (201) Soto lines Manny up for a
coup de grace, in front of which Diego throws himself and, in doing
so, sacrifices his life. “Something must be surrendered,” Vogler
states, “Something must be shared for the good of the group” (209).
When Sid momentarily distracts Soto, Manny hurls the sabre-tooth
into an ice wall. A set of jagged icicles resembling sabre-teeth breaks
off and kills Soto, and the threat is finally overcome. Sid, Roshan and
Manny then say their emotional farewells to Diego, who seems on
the verge of death. The last to speak is Manny, who says to Diego of
his sacrifice, “You didn’t have to do that.” Before Diego passes out,
he echoes Manny’s earlier wisdom: “That’s what you do in a herd.”
Diego fulfils the archetypal hero function in this resurrection stage,
which is “an opportunity to show [that the hero] has absorbed, or
incorporated, every lesson from every character” (209). The
final stage of Vogler’s 12 is the “return with the elixir.” Outwardly,
this is the goal of returning Roshan safely to his tribe.
But Diego miraculously reappears, presumably only injured by Soto.
It then becomes apparent that the true elixir was the group’s

41. 40
friendship and cooperation, which allowed Roshan’s safe
deliverance. Diego now rejoins Manny and Sid to begin a set of new
adventures. Vogler calls this “the elixir of responsibility,” where the
hero “[gives] up their loner status for a place of leadership or service
within a group” (222). Diego has achieved this through suppressing
his predatory instincts and rejecting members of his own carnivorous
species. “The hero’s center,” Vogler shows, “has moved from the ego
to the Self and [now] expands to include the group” (222). Diego
becomes the hero of Ice Age by suppressing his predatory instincts.
At no point in the film has he been depicted eating the flesh of
another animal, while he figuratively rejects carnivorism through his
literal rejection of the sabre-tooth pack. In doing so, Diego fulfils the
suppressed-predator hero archetype and the hero’s journey.

42. 41
Conclusion
Hunger’s heroes
Man is a wolf to Man, which ... is not very kind to the
wolf.
Serge Bouchard, Quinze lieux
communs, 1993
Simba and Diego, the leonine heroes of The Lion King and Ice Age
respectively, have been manipulated so that they can talk, sing and
dance. But they also function and fulfil the criteria of the Jungian
hero archetype upon Campbell’s hero’s journey through the
suppression of their predatory instincts. As heroes, Simba and Diego
interact with ally/mentor archetypes who take the form of prey
animals in The Lion King and Ice Age. As I have shown, these ally
characters function as positive aspects of the Jungian Self, the
attainment of which has been argued as the symbolic goal of the
hero’s journey. In animal narratives, such as my primary texts, the
represented goal is often the preservation of a social group of prey
animals. In The Lion King, narrative devices have been used to either
portray a dietary alternative to the prey characters, or, as in Ice Age,
predation upon large prey animals has been omitted entirely from
depiction. The suppression of Simba’s and Diego’s predatory
instincts and behaviours through these methods demonstrates the

43. 42
contention of this thesis. If predator animals are depicted as
archetypal heroes in fiction, specifically when co-existing peacefully
with prey animal characters, the predator hero’s natural instincts
must be suppressed so that they can fulfil the hero’s journey.
Part Two
Creative element – 40%
The wolf
There are two.
Two of them out there in the paddock. One stands behind the
other, his paws behind his back. He dry soaps them and runs his
tongue over his lips. He has no spit.
The other wolf walks among them. When he pauses his
speech, and this not often, his teeth enmesh in a gnashing grin.
‘I will teach you,’ he says, ‘not only how to make the green
stuff...’ the flock sound their interest. ‘...but how to make it work for
you.’ The chorus of accord grows. ‘So that you NEVER have to bow
down again.’
They stamp their feet in approval. Their bleating turns into a
howl of excitement. The thunder rises.
‘How do you do that?’ he is asked from behind.

44. 43
The grin doesn’t leave his maw. ‘As long as you got a set of
balls. And I ain’t talking about any balls, I mean a set of fucking
balls, it’s easy.’
‘How?’
He finally turns. He runs his tongue around his jaw. The
fleshy muscle rises and falls over the canines like the fortunes of a
stock.
‘I’ll show you.’
And I do show him. I show him it’s not who you know but
what you know, which nobody fucking knows. Now, you gotta
know that these dumb shits right here need only bow their heads for
one moment to see what’s right in front of them. They’re standing on
it. Enough to keep em fat and content and happy for the rest of their
pathetic, meaningless lives. But no. They all want their food at head
height, plated and placed right in front of em so they don’t gotta
move a single inch. Not a one. And it’s that tidal drive, that blood
that slugs its way through their veins coating each and every
decision they make, turning em all into slimy, lazy, miserable
assholes, that puts meat on my table. But for that to happen, first I
gotta dangle the carrot.

45. 44
Watch.
‘So, let’s say...let’s say there’s an influx of immigrants, and the
government floats a contract to build a bunch of new suburbs out
west. Housing developments, cracks appearing in the first six
months, you know the type. And let’s say you want a ticket on the
ship about to leave this dock. Where do you invest your money?’ The
wolf lowers his eyes to the row in front of him. ‘You, sir.’
‘Ahh, property developers?’
‘Wrong. They’re all private, can’t invest. Run by criminals
most of em anyway. What about you?’
‘Building materials?’
‘On the right track, but not quite. You? Any idea?’
‘Ahhh…umm…’
‘Right, well, here’s another question: what separates us from
the rest of the animal kingdom?’
‘The soul.’ ‘Language.’ ‘Free will.’
The wolf bows his head like a Franciscan. He shakes it slowly,
then lifts it. His lips move before speech passes them, and each there
anticipates the word to come.
‘Shit.’

46. 45
Confused faces, huhs and cross checking with neighbours. ‘I’ll say
it again: shit. It’s where we shit that separates us and elevates us.’ He
lets that weight drop. ‘Running water, ladies and gentlemen.
Running water to carry our waste far, far from our sight and, more
importantly, our snouts.
‘Now, this housing development’s gonna need water. Cos
where do they house the immigrants? Why, on the cheapest, most
undesirable landhold, that’s where. On dirt that’ll be dust after the
caterpillars have churned it up. On flat, barren, worthless land that’d
need the hand of God himself to turn to seed. Or,’ the wolf steadies,
‘running water.
‘Do the developers do a rain dance for this water? No. Do they
pipe it in from some other source? No, who wants to give anything
to the immos. I’ll be damned if some dumb wetback’s gonna make
me suffer. But what they will do is this: pay the dam-builders to
flood a valley somewhere upstream and send God’s finest gushing
down to wash away the shit from the new development. ‘So is
this where you invest your money? In the building of the dam that is
gonna bring light and life to this poor, wretched refuse?’
Nodding. Murmurs of assent. I-guess-so’s.

47. 46
‘Wrong. You invest it with us. And you tell your clients to
invest it with us, with Godly and Son, because we know the
authority being set up to run the dam, to deal out the water, as
needed, when needed. An authority that sets the price, the supply
and demand all at once.
‘And this is how my company operates, ladies and gentlemen. This
is how we think.’ The wolf taps his head. ‘And by placing your trust
with Godly and Son, that’s how you’ll get your first sniff of success.’
Before these idiots start cheering again, let me tell you
something: I wasn’t lying about that development. They really are
housing all these strays in a dustbowl out west. Jesus, I wasn’t even
lying about the dam and the water. But here’s the genius: at the end
of today, everyone will have the chance to invest in that water
authority. The thing is: I already own 80 per cent of the stock in that
company (not on the books, of course). So once they dump their
lifeblood into what is a sure thing and drive the value of the water
authority up – well then, my friend, that’s when stocks become
steaks.
The frenzied flock form file as one by one they line up to sign
away their savings. The wolf has erected small boxes through which

48. 47
the sheep pass so they cannot see exactly what their fellows are
laying down. Once the pen falls, they emerge. And the next enters.
From a hillock they survey their clients.
‘How many do you count, Bill?’ the wolf asks.
Bill fixes his gaze upon them. ‘Twenty? No, thirty?’
‘It’s not enough. Look at them. Dun, oily fur. Socks of mud.
And shit dried to the string of their asses.’ The wolf bares his teeth. ‘I
swear to god, it’s not enough.’
Bill’s prickles at the snarl. But for the clouds, the wolf’s teeth
are the only true white Bill sees. ‘Not enough for what? Jesus Christ,
if I took home half of what we make today, I got enough to put my
kids through college for a year.’
‘No, Bill. It ain’t enough.’
Bill’s jaw goes slack. He watches the last of the sheep exiting
the boxes. They begin to coalesce.
‘We can’t take more than this ourselves anyway.’ The wolf
shakes his coat, a full body convulsion that starts at his snout and
ends at his tail. He paws at the ground.
‘If we’re going out on our own, if we want mammoth margins,
the first thing we need is a pack.’

49. 48
And that’s the truth. We want bigger margins? We wanna fry
bigger fish? We gotta first be willing to share what’s on the table. We
gotta open our arms and our hearts and wholly so at that. A little
distribution, a lot of acquisition.
And so I draw to me men of exceptional qualities. You might
call them lone wolves. How did they get that way? What twist in the
skeins of their fate drove them into exile? I dunno, you ask em.
But let me tell you this: a wolf who survives his years in the
wilderness will be strong, and large and ruthless. He needs to be. His
strength alone must account for the strength of the absent pack.
Unfortunately for him, if he ever wanted to rejoin a pack
they’d just as soon as kill and eat him as piss on him. Though they
might do that after. But listen: give them to me young, hungry and
stupid, and in no time I’ll make em rich.
Bill lowers his voice. ‘That one with the streak in his hair, he’s
an ex-barrister.’
‘Ex?’
‘Debarred for throwing a case.’
‘Why’d he throw it?’
‘He wanted to fuck the prosecutor.’

50. 49
The wolf cocks his head. The ex-barrister scratches an ear,
then his balls.
‘What about that one?’
‘Who, the one with the scars?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Apparently his pack was having a lean stretch on the range,
and he ate his mate’s newborn.’
The wolf raises his eyebrows. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He looks around.
‘And the one down the back?’
‘Him? Oh, I found him outside, going through our trash.’ The
wolf stares at Bill.
‘What? You said eleven.’
He shakes his head. ‘Nice, Bill.’ He stands. ‘Alright! Listen up!
Thank you, welcome. Thank you for coming. I hope you’ve
introduced yourselves to each other, no? Yes? And you’ve all met my
business associate, Bill Allen. Well, I’d like to introduce myself to
you. My name is Kane Loopis. And I’d like to make you rich.’
Applause. Whistles.
‘Do you need a reason why? Do you need a speech? Fuck no.
Everyone wants to be rich. But I got you here, didn’t I? I brought you
all here, so I’m gonna make a speech anyway.’

51. 50
Laughter.
‘I’m sure you know em: a family of schmucks who works and
gets by, works hard to make one windfall at a time. Chasing a
fleeting dream over hill and valley, desert and snow. And even if
they do catch that dream, it’s feed the pups, feed the bitch, pick the
bones dry and move on to the next one. And hungry. Always
hungry. But what’s left for us, huh? What’s left for the breadwinner?
Who recognises the contributions we’ve made?’
Silence.
‘Gentlemen.’ He makes a fist and holds it up. ‘You have all
suffered and come to me, and I thank you for it. Because my wealth
is your wealth, your strength is my strength.’ He pauses, and holds
the fist to his chest. ‘Our strength.’
The trash-rummager scratches a flea.
I look around at all these faces. All of them hungry. All of
them future leaders. Some of em intelligent.
That one with the streak in his hair, the horny lawyer? That’s
Mal Munny. Like Bill said, poor guy was debarred for having an
appetite. But I like that. Means he’s easy to feed.
The one with the scars what ate his step-kid? Not actually a
bad guy if you talk to him. Soft-spoken, dresses ok, breath smells like

52. 51
antiseptic or something, I don’t know. Be honest he does creep me
out a little. Name’s Monty Lock.
And that hobo-looking guy down the back? He don’t say
much, so we just call him Mike.
There’s also Peachy, Jim Frum, Frankie Hayman, Frankie
Hobbs, Watley Smails and his brother Gus Bulgaris (I don’t get it
either), and last but not least Milt Danton.
I tell you, though, any of those other guys Bill invited who’re
probably all now in bed will be shitting themselves they weren’t
here. One day newspapers and magazines’ll be filled with stories
about tonight. Cos tonight 13 princes were born.
‘Gentlemen, I don’t care about your background. I don’t care
about your education. I don’t care whether your daddy fucked your
aunt and beat your mother and you come from a broken home. I will
break you in. I will show you how to live deeply and suck the
marrow out of life.’
‘Robin Williams.’
‘What?’
Mal nods. ‘Robin Williams wrote that.’
‘What are you talking about?’

53. 52
‘That was a film, dumbass,’ Smails says.
Mal. ‘Yeah, yeah, right. He wrote it for the film.’
Smails is speechless before he’s not. ‘What do you mean “he
wrote it for the film”?’
Frankie (Hayman). ‘Oh, yeah. I seen that film. The one where
they stand on the desks.’
Frankie (Hobbs). ‘Yeah, with the “Oh, captain, my captain.”’
Frankie (Hayman). ‘Yeah.’
Mal. ‘Nah, nah. He wrote “suck the marrow.”’ A
pause.
Smails. ‘What are you, fucking retarded?’
‘It was the poet, you dumb fuck!’ ‘Don’t you fucking read? It
was Shakespeare.’ ‘Yeah, you retard.’
I let em snap at each other. It’s good, gets their blood up.
Makes em strong. They’re gonna need that strength for what’s to
come.
But for now, let me tell you about 10/10.
You ever been somewhere like, I dunno, a cousin’s wedding
in the country, and here’s you who got the scent of a female in your
nostrils. You got the Hoover dam backed up in your pants, and you
wanna know whether that bitch at the bar is worth your liquid

54. 53
legacy (never mind it’s 2am and you’re not too sure you wanna be
waking up next to a cave troll on the Sabbath). That’s where 10/10
comes in.
You size up the quarry, consider her tits to toes, and punch in
what your gut tells you she’d get outta 10. Then, using a cuttingedge,
scientifically proven algorithm, 10/10 calculates what she scores
based on not only on whether she stretches your snake, but also on
your proximity to the city and how many other girls there are to
choose from.
So, this soft 6 you got glancing at you all doe-eyed from the
bar. Bit of meat on her, flushed cheeks from the wine. The fact that
you’re out in the sticks and there’s only a handful of eligible females
at this party, well, 10/10 gives her an 8.
Supply and demand, turning steaks into stocks.
Plus, a country 8’s not a bad night’s work.
‘Listen up, you motherfuckers. Hey, hey hey hey! Shut up!
That’s enough.’
‘Sorry, Kane.’ ‘Sorry.’
‘Just shut the fuck up and listen, ok?’ The wolf puffs his chest.
‘I am teaching you literally how to make money. To make it,

55. 54
motherfuckers. Or as good as. So I need you to listen. Hey, stop
scratching over there, just fucking listen! You all know who Johnny
Cowes is?’
Bill draws on his cigarette and nods. ‘Big fuckin fat guy.’ He
blows smoke. ‘Owns some phone app company.’
‘Badda-bing. Johnny Cowes owns Double Dutch Telco. You
any of you used that phone app 10/10?’
‘What’s an app?’ ‘I don’t got a phone.’
The wolf breathes out. ‘Jesus.’
‘I know it, Kane.’ Jim Frum. ‘Calculates the class of the broad
you wanna bang based on how far from the city you are.’
‘Bang. Huge app. Huge fucking app. Teens love it, college
students love it, even the Indians. The Koreans too, they love this
shit. Johnny Cowes is so hot right now you could sell his toenails on
the black market to the Chinese and they’d swap their kids’ kidneys
for it.’
‘Why don’t they just buy the toenails?’
‘It’s a fucking figure of speech, Peachy.’
‘Yeah, I know, but what happens to the kids?’
‘Fucking Christ, forget it. Anyway. Double Dutch is updating
the app, working on adding some feature everyone’s losing their
minds over. BUT. From what I’ve heard, the update is almost

56. 55
finished, and they’ve announced their release date for November this
year. Anybody wanna take a stab why?’
The pack look at one another.
Milt Danton raises a hand.
‘Put your fucking hand down.’ Bulgaris shakes his head. ‘You
look like a downer in kindy.’
‘What? He asked a question.’
The wolf nods. ‘It’s alright, Milt.’
‘You asshole, Gus.’ He turns to the wolf. ‘Well, why does any
business make any decision. Whatever it is is gonna make em more
money.’
Fuck me. Is that hope I smell?
First there’s silence. Then a low growl grows.
‘What are you, a fucking scientist?’ ‘You should be a
weatherman or something.’ ‘Fucking show off.’ ‘What the fuck is
wrong with you, Milt?’
‘Fellas. Fellas! Enough!’ They pfft and cross their arms. Milt
Danton looks to the wolf for help. And the wolf gives it. ‘He’s right
actually.’
‘Huh?’ ‘What?’

57. 56
‘Milt’s right. They wanna announce the date to coincide with
the company going public. It’s gonna drive their stocks so sky high
they’ll be in the motherfucking stratosphere.’
‘But what’s this got to do with us, Kane?’
The wolf grins. ‘Everything, Frankie (Hobbs). It’s got
everything to do with us. Godly and Son is gonna underwrite
Double Dutch Telco. And we’re gonna take a big wet bite out of
Johnny Cowes’s ass.’
I speak too soon here. The one thing we lack is legitimacy. Not
legality, that is a completely different beast, my friend, but
legitimacy. If we’re gonna play with the big boys and compete
seriously for this contract, we gotta start trading the good stuff. The
porterhouses, the tenderloins, the kobe beef.
Bottom line is, as bottom feeders, which I have no illusion we
currently are, we only gotta appear to be doing the right thing. I think
some Italian guy said that.
Maybe Shakespeare.
13 has become 136.

58. 57
Their days start at 8.30am with the sales meeting. The wolf
takes them through the stock they’ll be selling and the script they’ll
be using to sell it.
‘Hi, Chris. I’m with Godly and Son and I have something
exciting to share with you.’
‘Jessica, you haven’t heard of Godly and Son because for the
past 10 years we have been dealing strictly with international
investors.’
‘Tom, give me one good reason why you don’t want to make
money.’
‘Jenny, the only regret you’ll have after today is that you
didn’t buy more stock.’
‘Dick, if there’s one thing I know in this world it’s information
technology, and Paradyne Tech is the next Apple.’
When 9am rolls around, the phones are dialling.
They call it ‘pump and dump.’ This is how it works.
I, we, the original 13 princes, buy stocks (off the books) from
these shit-eating, start-up companies for next to nothing. Those
stocks are called ‘chop stocks.’ We buy these chops cheap, and then

59. 58
pump up the value by selling more of the same stock to other
investors for increasing prices.
Mind you, these companies need embellishing. One of them
has just taken out a patent on a time-machine. A time-machine, for
fuck’s sake. But the microbial obscurity of these companies means it’s
easy to sell people on em. They got nothing to check the facts against.
And because the companies aren’t listed, when we do sell
these stocks we get 50% of the sale.
Once the value of our stock is high enough, we dump the
stocks we own. That does mean, of course, that the value of everyone
else’s stocks plummets.
Another way of saying: we swallow everyone up and shit em
right back out.
Is it legal? No.
Does it make us filthy rich? You bet your ass it does.
It’s 8.55am.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. Today, we have a Godly mandate.’ A
pause. ‘To make money.’ They cheer. ‘By close of business today, our
market capital must, no, it will tick over the agreed upon level with

60. 59
Double Dutch. Once it does, it triggers the clause in our contract that
we win the tender to underwrite them when they go public.
‘Now, I want you to listen, and listen closely. This instinct is in
our blood. It was writ there in earliest times. You only need to twitch
your noses and perk your ears to the sound of the money that will
soon be filling your pockets. Can you hear it?’
There is silence.
‘It’s there. The ticking of counters.’ He raises his hand. ‘Of
numbers, climbing higher and higher.’ And then he drops it to point
at them. ‘Those numbers are yours, a blank fucking check! And I
want you to write on it and cash that motherfucker in!’
They are frenzied. He is foaming at the mouth, his face
contorted in a rictus of furious joy. The pack starts cheering his
name.
‘Wolfy. Wolfy. Wolfy.’
He holds up a hand. ‘But in order for you to do that, I need
you. All of you. My killers. My highly trained killers. Who will not
hang up the phone until their client either buys.’ Spit flies. ‘Or
fucking dies!’
So this is the story, right.

61. 60
Not so long ago I was just like you. Well, maybe I still am.
Except I’m rich and you’re not.
At 22 I was working in a call centre, writing phone script for
teenagers and divorced office clerks selling subscriptions to
Chihuahua Connection. I was doing important work.
Winter months you’d see a lunch hour of sunlight a day.
Committees convened to discuss big issues like staple calibre,
orphaned coffee mugs and the merits of single vs. double-sided
printing. This was my apprenticeship at the coalface and I’m
goddamned proud of it.
It was the kind of job that makes a gun barrel look sweeter
than a lollipop. So I thank god I met Rusty Madigan.
The hound smelt me out at a sales expo. I’d just finished
watching a presentation for a scheme on mincing money for the
bookkeepers when I heard a growl in my ear.
‘You wanna make that stuff for real?’
‘Excuse me?’
I turn around and see this shaggy looking guy in a suit.
Shaggy, I say, but with a glint in his eye like he knew what was what.
‘Name’s Rusty Madigan. And that makes you Kane.’
‘Do I know you?’

62. 61
‘Your name’s on that dumbass sticker you’re wearing.’
‘Oh.’ I peel it off and the sticker marks my jacket like I was
shat on by a bird.
‘Wool.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Those stickers don’t stick to wool. If you were wearing a
woollen suit instead of cheap polyester, you wouldn’t have that shit
on you.’
‘Oh, right.’
Madigan looks at me square. ‘You want to wear woollen suits
don’t you? Come with me.’
Now, at that point, I admit, I hesitated. I didn’t know who the
fuck this guy was, and I had a job to do, drafting sales strategies and
researching methods for increasing the reach of Chihuahua Connection
so that Chihuahua owners can detect early warning signs of
hydrocephalus.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘my boss wants me to get these notes—’
‘And what if your boss wanted you to screw his wife?’
‘I...I don’t—’
He drops his hands on my shoulders. ‘Kane. Just because he
might get off to that shit, and just because you might too, doesn’t

63. 62
mean it’s a good idea. In fact, a better idea would be blackmailing the
fucker with a sexual harassment suit. That or jerking off in the
bathroom. Either way, you’re the one that benefits.’
Although I don’t see how shooting a load into a skidmarked
toilet is gonna benefit me, somehow I like the tune he’s whistling.
Madigan sits me down at his booth. ‘How much you make
last year?’
I answer carefully. ‘I earned my crust.’
‘Fuck your crust. I earnt enough last year to live like a pig in
shit for the rest of my life.’
The question dribbles from my mouth. ‘So what are you doing
here?’
Madigan grins, showing every one of his teeth. He leans
forward. ‘Way I see it it’s the only game worth playing. Look at these
people. Look around. Can’t you smell the blood in the water?
Doesn’t it jack you up?’
I look around. At the people talking and smiling. ‘To be
honest, all I see is a bunch of salespeople, just sharing ideas.’
He looks stung in the face by a bee. ‘Sharing ideas?’
‘Yeah, you know. Helping each other out,’ I bristle. ‘What’s
wrong with that?’

64. 63
Madigan’s eyes don’t move from me. ‘Everything, poco. When
you put a lamb chop on the table, reckon the lamb was thinking of
helping you out when they slit its throat? Heavens, no. But there’s a
natural order in this universe, and if you wanna live in it, you gotta
consume. If you wanna consume, you gotta compete. And that
means someone’s gotta lose.’ He looks around. ‘See that fresh piece
over there? That one, the one checking us out.’
‘What about her?’
‘I think I’m in there. But that’s not the point. The point is: you
gotta put meat on the table.’
I’m back the next year but with my own stall. Synergy
Holdings. Fuck Chihuahua Connection. I hate Chihuhuas anyway.
Little rats.
‘Scuse me, miss. Are you interested in making money?’ ‘Sir,
how would you like to retire early?’ ‘Hi there. My name’s Kane
Loopis and I can make you rich.’
But they just keep walking past.
It’s after 3pm, the crowds are thinning and the wind is spilling
from the sails when this big guy sees me slouched in my chair and
walks over.
‘How’s your day out been?’
I look up into his genial face. I wanna tell him to fuck off, but,

65. 64
Christ, he’s the first person to approach me.
‘Bout as lively as a funeral.’
He laughs, not unkindly. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve
been to some pretty good funerals. What are you called?’
I show him one of the pens I got made. ‘Synergy Holdings.’
He whistles. ‘Wow.’ Nods thoughtfully. ‘Generic.’
‘Hey, asshole, I don’t need this.’
He laughs again. ‘Maybe you do. When was the last time you
gave your money to a stranger?’
‘I never have. I don’t do the investing. Be honest with you, and
I will be at this point, I’m not dumb enough to give my money to a
stranger.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘Listen, pal,’ I lower my voice to a growl. ‘You’re about this
fucking close.’
‘What did you have for dinner last night?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What did you have for dinner?’
‘Fuck, I dunno. Chicken. Yeah, fried chicken.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t pigeon? Or duck, or goose, or
swan?’

66. 65
I’m getting tired of this weirdo. ‘Because, you moron, the store
was called Jessop’s Fried Chicken.’
He smiles again. And my face falls. Son of a bitch.
‘It’s all about branding, friend. It’s all about the story you tell
people. And I suggest you change yours. Here.’ He pulls out a card
from his suit. Wool. ‘Start with your name. People want something
they can trust. They want to believe in something. They want to be
told what to do by someone.’
He turns to leave. I look down at the card. Double Dutch
Media. John Cowes. Director.
Of course, it’s Double Dutch Telecom these days.
‘Who the fuck is he?’
‘What?’
‘What’s with the big guy?’
‘Who, Aegis?’
Aegis crosses his arms. ‘I represent Mr Cowes’ interests.’
‘His interests?’ Kane sniffs. ‘His interests, you say? His
interests are right here. Godly and Son are underwriting Dutch, or
didn’t you get the memo?’
‘Kane.’ Cowes smiles. ‘Aegis is an old and loyal friend of
mine.’

67. 66
‘What does that make me? Chopped liver?’
Johnny Cowes has changed since that expo. I don’t know if it’s
the pups his missus popped out or something, or his success has got
to him, but he seems mellow now, soft spoken. Bags under his eyes
but smiling. And he’s fat. God, is he fat.
Between us, with that big loaf sitting there, we work out the
nitty gritty. Every now and then Cowes turns to the great prick who
leans over and nods, or shakes his head. My teeth are grinding in
mine.
We edge closer and closer to a deal that Cowes thinks is good
enough. A big dopey look on his face like he just got sucked off. I
start to relax. Looks like this Aegis asshole isn’t as smart as he thinks
he is.
I smile, and maybe that’s my mistake. He sees me.
Cowes and the other partners leave the office, and as I walk
out with Aegis, he grabs my arm and speaks so I can smell his dog’s
breath even with my head turned.
‘Listen to me now. Listen,’ he says. ‘I know where you came
from, you pond scum. I know what you’ve done to get here too. You
don’t think I did my research on you? I know how many people

68. 67
you’ve screwed getting here, how many businesses have gone under
thanks to you. But if you try to pull any of that bullshit on Cowes, it
will be the end of you.’
I snarl at him. ‘Hands off the suit, asshole.’
‘I know people who can put you in the cage for a very long
time.’
‘Now you listen, shit-for-brains.’
Cowes notices. He turns from the other partners. ‘Kane.’
‘No.’ I shut the door to the office. Cowes’ shoulders slump
through the glass. I point at Cowes. ‘That man there is a very old and
dear friend of mine. It was his advice that got me to where I am now,
which is making more in a day than you earn in a year, you piece of
shit thug. So don’t you come into my office, barking at me, telling me
what to do. You are home on my range, little fish. And don’t you
forget it.’
His nostrils flare. His eyes harden. And he smiles at me.
‘You may be old friends with Cowes, but I am old friends with
the people who make the laws that can lock you up for life. Our
interests go beyond your expensive suits. Don’t fuck with us.’
Aegis pulls on the door and walks out.
‘Aegis. Kane,’ Cowes starts.

69. 68
‘It’s alright,’ Aegis says. ‘Loopis knows where we stand. When
the music stops we’ll all have a seat. Him included, if he plays the
game right.’
Now it’s my turn to smile. The contracts we sign stipulate that
once Double Dutch goes public, the calls go outbound from our
offices. As a matter of law, they have to be randomly generated. But
we have software installed though that rings randomly to our own
clients.
Now, those particular clients are our front traders, who buy
the shares for the 13 of us. They will connect first to our traders,
who’ll buy Double Dutch stock at the cheapest prices.
Only then do we sell to the rest of the bleeding schmucks.
But, as ever, when the share prices rise, we dump em. Pump
and dump, my friend. Just this time, the chopping block is
automated. The scale is increased. The fish we’re frying? Fucking
whales.
Could we have done it legally and profited? Yeah, of course
we could’ve.
But we wouldn’t have made as much.
‘What about Aegis, Kane?’

70. 69
The wolf leans back. He looks at Bill, rocks his chair as though
nodding. Bill is sitting up square and alert.
‘Kane?’
Finally, he answers. ‘What about him, Bill?’
‘I was there. I was at that meeting.’
The wolf shrugs. Looks between Bill, Mike, Jim Frum and
Gus. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘He threatened you, didn’t he? He threatened us.’
‘Yeah.’ ‘Yeah, what’d he say, Kane?’ ‘Kane, you can tell us.’
Bill levels his voice. ‘Kane, if there’s something we should
know, now’s the time. This thing’s going public tomorrow.’ Bill leans
forward and taps the table. ‘You owe it to us.’
The wolf looks directly at Bill. There passes a moment where
the others in the room push back in their seats, back from something
that’s about to go off.
But the wolf smiles. ‘All the prick said was: good luck.’ Now
he leans forward. ‘Understand this, Bill. The rest of you too. I will
never let anything happen to this company. Nothing. Not while I’m
around.’
There’s silence. And the wolf keeps going.

71. 70
‘Who have you told, Bill, huh? Who have you told? He said
nothing, ok? You don’t gotta worry about nothing. I’m in charge
here, I’m in control. You trusted me right from the start and I got you
here and now you’re wearing a fucking woollen suit!’
‘Whoa!’ Gus holds his hands up. ‘Easy, Kane! He’s just sayin’
the same concerns we all got.’
‘And what are those, Gus?’
‘Kane.’ Bill lowers his chin. ‘It don’t matter how fuckin rich
we are if we do something that they can trace back. If they catch us
tomorrow, we’re done.’ He slaps the table. ‘We’re all done.’
The wolf’s eyes drop to where Bill slapped the table. Now the
others do push their chairs back.
But he sighs. ‘Bill, the only thing that’s gonna happen
tomorrow is that we’re all gonna get fuckin rich. This is what we
talked about. This is what we stood for, right from the start. You and
me, when we talked about landing a whale. Don’t deny that dream
for yourself. This is it.’
And I mean it. Double Dutch is worth a shit tonne. It’s gonna
be the biggest initial public offering of the last ten years. And Godly
and Son, me, Bill, the boys, everyone: we are gonna make a killing.

72. 71
Cowes is looking in the mirror, rubbing his cheeks.
‘You nervous, John?’
‘A little.’
‘Don’t be. You’re gonna make enough today to retire like a
king.’
‘Maybe it’s...I dunno. Maybe I just don’t wanna feel like I’m
being put out to pasture.’
The wolf comes up behind Cowes. He drops his hands on his
shoulders. ‘Nobody does, Johnny. Nobody. But we all gotta give up
the game one day and move aside for someone else. Just the way life
goes.’
Cowes smiles at the wolf’s reflection in the mirror. ‘I guess
you’re right. I’m tired anyway.’
The wolf grins back. ‘Come on. Ten minutes and we take you
public. First though, let’s get you to say a little somethin to the
troops. Get them revved up.’
They walk toward the door. The wolf holds it open.
‘Where’s your boy today? That Aegis fella?’
Cowes frowns. ‘Oh, something about his kid being sick.
Started vomiting violently on the way to school.’
‘Gee,’ the wolf says. ‘Bad timing.’ They
enter the main office.

73. 72
Cowes takes the stage.
‘Hi, in case...in case you don’t know me, I’m John Cowes.’
‘Yeah, we know who you are.’ Laughter. ‘In case you don’t
know we’re underwriting your company.’ More laughter, whistling.
‘Right. Well, this phone application, 10/10, is our biggest seller
right now, it—’
‘Helps me pick who I’m gonna bang!’ Whooping and hooting.
I watch em. Their blood is up.
‘No, no! It’s much more than that. See, it—’
Jeering now. ‘Yeah.’ Someone throws a pen. Hysterics, a few
more objects thrown. A shoe.
Cowes dodges and laughs nervously. ‘No, it uh, it really is
fascinating how it works. It uses an algorithm that has applications
in military hardware and—’
‘Ooooo.’ Whistles. ‘Fancy stuff!’ ‘It’s just an app for horny
teens!’ ‘Hahahahah!’
A real wolf pit. Just the way I liked it.

74. 73
‘Yeah, haha,’ Cowes says. ‘Right. But look, I can show you
what I...hang on.’
Sweat patches blossom on Cowes’ shirt. He pulls out a phone,
but fumbles. It drops to the floor.
‘Hahahaha!’ ‘You fucking retard!’
‘Sorry, wait just a second—’
‘You fucking spastic!’
He turns to pick it up.
I should probably help him.
Instead, I join them.
They surround him. One takes a bite of his thigh. He screams
and moves for the door. Another one darts in and tears at the flesh of
his side. A red smile drips though his shredded shirt. One darts for
his calf and tears at the muscle and tendon. Cowes shrieks and falls
over.
And they fall on him.
One takes a hand, another Cowes’ shoulder. Yet another his
leg and another his head. They rip and tug in all directions. Their