The Animal Protagonists

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The Animal Protagonists
In the African stories we have read, they focus on animals as the protagonist. The narrators or the authors had a purpose for the use of animals as protagonists in their stories. A protagonist is the main character in a story. The events of the story revolve around him or her in his/her presence. Most if not all of the happenings in the story connect to the protagonist. There may be one or even two protagonists in a story. Protagonists are out to achieve a goal. However, there may be obstacles hindering them from attaining their goals. If these obstacles are human or animals in the story they refer to as antagonists. Different authors and narrators may decide to use either human or animal protagonists in order to bring out the meaning of the story clearly and to deliver the message effectively. Therefore, herein are the reasons why authors and narrators use animal protagonists and the evaluation of the cases if the authors had used human characters in the stories that we have read in class.
Animals can be used as well as represented in several ways in the mythology. However, the most common use of animals is as narrative devices or as protagonists. In some cases, animals are given some supernatural powers and positions such as that of human thoughts and in other stories they are just perceived and play the role of animals. For example in the story how tortoise overcame elephant and hippopotamus, the animals are merely animals but have been given the power to reason and speak like human (Overton, 585). Elsewhere, animals are employed as symbolism like the case of the cock that caused a fight between two towns (Overton, 574).
One of the reasons why authors use animal protagonists is in order to explain some of the natural myths and the existence of nature. Refereeing to the example mentioned above, the author or the teller of the story intended to explain the myth of the existence of tortoises in the water and others on the land and why the tortoises that live in the water are literally bigger than the tortoises living on land (Overton, 585). Therefore, in such a case it would not be applicable to use human characters to explain the existence of tortoises in water and on land.
The other reason for the use of animals as the main characters in story telling is in order to balance gender and tribal affiliations. This is to say that the narrator intended to have a neutral perspective in relation to gender. He or she did not want to use either male or female characters hence the option of animal protagonists. Depending on the nature of the audience the narrator may decide to use animal characters in order to avoid harming or causing misunderstandings as well as the misinterpretation of the story and its message.
In addition, narrators would use animal characters as symbolism. For example, in the story of the cock that caused a fight between two towns, the narrator empl...