A few weeks ago my friend Joe loaned me The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr., saying "It's even weirder than Watership Down." This weekend I finally got around to reading it. First, I must confess that I've never actually read Watership Down (I've only seen the movie; that was trippy enough for me), so perhaps I didn't really know what to expect when I picked this book up.
The Book of the Dun Cow is a story about a foul-tempered rooster (pun intended) named Chauntecleer, whom we're supposed to like (I guess) because God has chosen him to be a Lord over part of the earth and the animals who live on it. Unbeknownst to Chauntecleer, God has also chosen him to be one of the Keepers of Wyrm, an enormous, evil serpent who lives in the bowels of the earth and is plotting his escape so he can wreak havoc and destruction on the universe. In fact, the purpose of the earth is to serve as Wyrm's prison, and the purpose of all the animals are to keep him trapped. Too bad they don't know it.
Their ignorance allows Wyrm to trick a neighboring Lord, an aged rooster who has lost the respect and obedience of his flock because he is too kind and lacks physical strength, into bringing Wyrm's offspring, an evil Cockatrice, into the world. Cockatrice breeds an army of basilisks and begins to kill all the animals so that Wyrm may be set free. Chauntecleer and his crew have to defeat first the basilisks, then Cockatrice, and finally Wyrm himself to restore peace on the land. End summary.
Probably what bothers me most is that book advocates for unwavering obedience to a male ruler/head of family who regularly verbally and physically abuses his subjects. We are meant to understand that he may not be perfect, but Chauntecleer is God's chosen, and his faith in God and the loneliness that comes with being a leader must excuse his abusive tendencies. Pah.
It was written in 1978, which I suppose might explain its blatant misogynistic and patriarchal tendencies. What female characters there are (mostly hens) are mostly useless, empty-headed, gossiping annoyances whose admiration for Chauntecleer seems to me misplaced and is certainly under-appreciated by the rooster himself.
The two female characters who gain any respect of the rooster or narrator are both nurturing, mothering types. One, the nurse, dies trying to protect Chauntecleer's chicks, and the other is his wife, Pertelote, whom he admires mostly for her extraordinary physical beauty and her angelic singing voice. In the end Pertelote does have an important role to play, but that role is to drag two of the main male characters out of their emotional funks, get them to admit the truth to themselves, and stir them back into action. Pertelote herself is too afraid or lacking in good judgment to commit to any useful action in the book.
And yet...and yet...despite being thoroughly turned off by the misogyny and the strong Old Testament-like moral messaging about the virtues of faith, ignorance and obedience and the evils of...well...evil, I found myself pulled along to find out what happened next. I was torn between wanting to read this as the tale of an antihero with whom I could empathize despite his many grave flaws and reading it as a predictable allegory that reinforces a traditional Christian patriarchal worldview. The characters all got on my nerves, and yet I cared about them. I knew that in the end "good" would triumph over "evil," but I still wanted to know how it happened.
