Throughout the novel, “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” Ms. Duszejko reads and deciphers people’s astrological signs. By believing her graphs to be true, she puts people into categories before even having a conversation with them. This ultimately affects how everyone in the story is viewed because we cannot fully put our trust in her knowing she believes in something that’s not proven. Despite her belief in astrology she also has some very particular knowledge of science, and as we know science creates the rules that define our existence. Ms. Duszejko obviously knows how science works but thinks of it differently than most.

When talking about Dizzy being more quick witted than her she says, “I have a Theory that salt is very good for the transmission of nerve impulses across the synapses.” She references a very difficult topic that people only in biology courses would know about, meaning plenty of time was put in to learn about something that was just a theory to her. Her “theory” is correct in that it helps nerves send signals across gaps between cells causing them to activate quicker, but why is it just a theory to her. Whenever it comes to astrology she never second guesses herself and always has the right answers for everyone but herself. By switching the roles of science and fiction Ms. Duszejko cannot compare her emotions to anyone else because what she believes to be true is only true to her. For her astrology is like the ‘main science’ of how the world works and everyone elses ‘main science’ is like fiction/astronomy to her. This flipped mindset is exactly what separates her from the rest, as she often sees things as “black and white”(good or bad) and makes a quick decision accordingly. From this, Ms. Duszejko lives in the pretense while everyone around her walks past neglecting her needs; just as she neglects everyone else’s before she even meets them.

Throughout the novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk, there are mentions of the main protagonist, Janina, having dreams relating to spirituality and communicating through them. In Janina’s mentality, she views the dreams as a representation of spirits on another plane of existence is trying to reach out to her and warn her of what’s yet to come.

In a deeper sense, we can start understanding of what the true reason of her dreams are that could have been manifested from her anxiety, uncertainness and surreal reality of her present life. She believed that humans were to be judged if something were to have happened and how the natural world is to be sacred, including animals which had a powerful impact to the novel. She sees these living, breathing creatures as a part of her and part of spirituality as it played a significant role. The novel presents a meaning and a purpose of the true reality hidden by Janina’s view of spirituality. It explores the proper nature of humanity and the importance of the uprising destructive impact that had occurred through the story. This ties into her vivid and surreal dreams as a message towards the readers that there are multiple differing ways to find their own version of true meaning of life, even if it is through spirituality or other forms of beliefs.

Overall, the portrayal of Janina of her dreams and spirituality mentality that tied together, has been shown drastically throughout the novel and left an impression for the reader. The reader gains the ability to understand and view from Janina’s eyes of how it is like to imagine a reality through another belief, such as spirituality. As well as having the understanding of how the novel presented a message towards the audience and highlighted of how Janina’s communications through her dreams came to be based on the natural world.

Janina’s dedication to astrology is constantly referenced and reinforced throughout the story. She actively pursues people’s time and date of birth to make predictions about their lives and even when they will die. She also often looks to the sky in order to make sense of seemingly unpredictable events that occur around her. But why is she so captivated by Astrology?

The more obvious answer, in my opinion, is that it is due to her reverence for nature. She views nature as divine; therefore, the universe must yield answers about the future if one looks closely enough. However, I think this is only one of the reasons. I think another reason Janina deeply invests herself in astrology is because she is desperate for control and order. I think that, because Janina has been dismissed and disrespected so often, as seen throughout the book, she needs to believe that there is some natural order in the world that does not stand for it. After all the interactions, such as ones with the police or with hunters, where she is powerless to make change, she turned to astrology to find some “logic” behind everything that transpires.

I also feel like the unrelenting feeling of powerlessness that led her to astrology also led her to her breaking point, after which she proceeded to go on a killing spree. The systems of society had kept repeatedly ignoring her until she decided to make herself heard by venting her anger on the murderers of her dogs. I feel like there was this underlying connection between a lot of Janina’s dubious decisions (like keeping pieces of hunted animals she finds) and this unhealthy deprivation of power she experienced from a societal standpoint.

Due to the fact that I am completing this blogging assignment very late, I have been able to reflect on the novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead in a way I wasn’t able to during the unit in class. Overall I found the book very compelling to read, mainly attributed to the writing style of Olga Tokarczuk.

The whole story is narrated by the main character Janina who lives in a remote mountain village in Poland. Janina is passionate about astrology and nature, and she believes that animals have souls and should be treated with respect. Only having one point of view throughout the whole novel creates an interesting plot. Janina is able to tell readers exactly what she wants them to know and leave details out that may not make her character look good. That is why throughout the whole book Janina portrays herself as being pure and innocent, it isn’t until the last couple of chapters when it is revealed that Janina is actually the villain. Tokarcuk’s writing style creates tension and suspense that echoes within the pages of the book.

In addition, Tokarczuk uses random capitalization to bring the reader’s attention to different words and or situations. I thought it was a very creative way to emphasize and foreshadow events in the novel. From the beginning, capitalized words had extra meaning to the story. For example, the word Ailments is improperly capitalized on page one. In turn, foreshadowing Janina’s ailments which become a motif throughout the book. and play a big role in the plot along with understanding Janina as a character.

Overall the way Tokarczuk write her book made me appriiate the story more!

Ecofeminism began in the 1970s with the rise of movements such as the Chipko Andolan movement, where a group of women led a forest conservation campaign to stop the rapid deforestation that was happening in India. In Kenya, the Greenbelt Movement was an indigenous grassroots organization that empowered women through the planting of trees.

This philosophical/political movement started as a way to fight against patriarchy and capitalism, combining ideas from feminist and environmental movements. Both women and nature can both be considered irrational, which is opposite to men, who are often viewed as more logical. This leads to the social norm that men should be in control. Specifically in the lens of ecofeminism, this means that capitalism places value on productivity, even when it comes at the cost of destruction to the environment or the exploitation of women. Many environmental issues are caused by traits considered more masculine, such as aggression (hunting). Ecofeminism emphasizes the importance of appreciating what the Earth gives to humans and recognizing all living things as valuable. However, ecofeminism lost popularity in the 80s and 90s as people started critiquing the movement for being essentialist and reinforcing the idea that women can only be mothers and caregivers.

In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Janina exemplifies ecofeminism through fighting back against hunters, who are usually men, and the people in authority positions who allow animals to be killed. As an old woman who cares about animals in a way that is not the social norm in Polish society, she is often not taken seriously, with men dismissing her as crazy. Janina goes as far as to kill the men who are responsible for causing harm to animals, and in larger part, nature. Although her actions are not always justified and Janina’s resistance is much more violent than the typically peaceful ecofeminism movements of the 70s, the foundation is the same. 

One example of this is when Janina attempts to stop a hunting group. She confronts the men, yelling at them that they have “no right to shoot living creatures.” One of them tries to calm her down, “‘It’s all right, please go home. We’re just shooting pheasants,’ Mustachio reassured me, as if he didn’t understand my protest. The other man added in a sugary tone: ‘Don’t argue with her, she’s crazy” (63). In this instance, they are holding power over both Janina, therefore women in general, and the pheasants, more widely nature. Janina embodies ecofeminist principles here, standing up for herself and nature together. This theme is continued throughout the book, as it seems no one sees the value in animal life as much as Janina does. She constantly uses beautiful language to describe the animals and capitalizes their names, demonstrating how she sees them on the same level, if not better than humans. On the other hand, she often uses straightforward, sometimes ugly language to describe the men she is fighting against. 

The reason she commits murder is not explicitly stated in the book, leaving the reader to wonder why she took such extreme actions. Perhaps she believes that she is getting revenge for the animals, who cannot do so on their own. Maybe she thinks she has been chosen to be their savior. What can universally be taken away from the book, however, is a new perspective on how the oppression of women and of nature are interconnected. It can be useful to view all forms of marginalization in this way, as in intersectionality. Changing one power dynamic can help change another.

We all know that Janina loves animals. Time and time again, Janina demonstrates her undying commitment to the animals around her in her staunch opposition to any form of hunting. The central principle of Janina’s beliefs is that “animals’ ‘ and “people” should just be considered as equals. She claims that her motivations are primarily driven by this fact. This is where I think the issues begin, because here, Janina is grossly oversimplifying nature and the science that goes with it. Essentially trying to equate animals with humans, while perhaps coming from a morally good standpoint, is often ignorant of the biology of said animals, especially their ecological and evolutionary functions. This is my breakdown of Janina’s absolutist viewpoints, and an expansion on how “animals” and “people” ought to be treated, especially around the discussion of hunting, which ultimately drives much of Janina’s actions in the story. 

First off, I feel like it should be defined what an “animal” is. An animal is any member of the kingdom animalia which consists of 1-2 MILLION species. The animal kingdom is broken down into 31-35 phylums (the taxonomical categorization below kingdom), one of which is the chordates, better known as vertebrates. The vertebrates are what comes to many peoples’ minds (like Janina’s) when they think of animals. They include the fish, reptiles (which include birds), amphibians, and mammals, among others, including us, of course. These life forms, while very diverse, only actually make up about 5% of all animal species. The rest is made up of other phylums like arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans), Cnidarians (corals, jellyfish), Mollusks (snails, squid), and many more. The point of these technicalities is to point out that the animal kingdom is very diverse. Vertebrates evolved over 500 million years ago, and so our last common ancestor with 90% of the animal kingdom was alive over half a billion years ago. This is significant because it signifies just how different many animals are from one another. If we want to think about “animals”, we should first recognize just how much of a blanket statement “animals” is. Every species, forget individuals within a species, is uniquely tuned to a different natural environment and evolutionary path which has shaped their individual characteristics. For example, the cnidarians, which include jellyfish and corals, or the poriferans, which are the sponges, are so distantly related to us that they do not have a central nervous system (brain), and as far as modern science can tell us, cannot feel pain. Something we need to understand is that critical thinking, consciousness, pain, sadness, etc. are not universal things. These things are only the results of our evolution, which has favored such traits. They are not necessary to reproduce, and so they do not necessarily exist in all or even most life forms. Trying to imagine or characterize what an “animal” feels or wants is so incredibly beyond our abilities due to evolution. Evolution, not divine power of any form is directly responsible for our senses, feelings, and emotions, better phrased as our perception of reality. Nothing is sacred to evolution, and no one trait is guaranteed to be consistent throughout different species of life.

This is why anthropomorphizing, or characterizing animals through a human lens, can be problematic. Simply put, the physiology and evolution of the vast majority of animals is so different from our own, that it is ignorant to assume that as a human, you can somehow understand them. As an example, many people feed ducks bread at parks. I have no doubt that basically everyone who does this has good intentions; people see wild birds and assume they must be hungry, so they give them some bread, something that humans understand can be used to alleviate hunger. In reality, feeding wild birds bread is almost always harmful and can lead to serious issues for said birds. White bread has little nutrition for birds, and it often just leaves them feeling full, preventing them from consuming important proteins and fats from natural food sources. (this is why actual bird mixes or seeds are better, because they better replicate the actual protein/fat rich diet that birds need to survive in the wild). People feed birds bread out of kindness, but unfortunately, it shows a general lack of awareness of wild animals and their environments; they have applied their human standards of livelihood to another species. Animals don’t just pop into existence to be a part of your life or share your human perceptions, they are complex organisms that are the result of the same incredibly varied evolutionary process that produced people. However, Janina tends to only focus on the animals in her life (she also clearly values her dogs over other animals despite claiming to view them equally), and repeatedly anthropomorphizes them to the point that she feels she can literally speak with them.

The issue with Janina is that she feels she is somehow special and can magically understand the animals or even act as their messenger. Worse, she justifies her views in astrology and flatly says that she doesn’t believe evolution is real. While she seems to be non-religious, Janina’s views on the existence of animals is closer to a traditional, religious perspective than an evolutionary, science-based one. She sees animals as sacred entities that exist to bring her tranquility or inspiration, and is clearly very biased towards the vertebrates, or just the ones who appear fuzzy and cuddly, a.k.a the ones that are the most “human” and deserving of care. This is very clear in how she cares for her dogs’ deaths more than the other animals in Bigfoot’s photo, or how she hasn’t even considered the natural history of insects (representatives of ~70% of earth’s animals) until Boris shows up. It’s also unclear if Janina has really thought or worried about the animals that live outside of her area. Most importantly though, just like in some traditional religious views, Janina doesn’t believe in or consider how animals are part of a broader evolutionary and ecological biology. 

I should be clear that I think a lot of Janina’s thinking comes from the right place. While I believe it is difficult to insert human judgment into the most intimate areas of animal life, humans today have an obligation to stewardship and environmental responsibility. Poaching is absolutely reprehensible and immoral, as well as any extensive exploitation of natural resources. I’ll clarify here that by “poaching”, in this case, I mean any hunting that is not used within reasonable purpose (food, resources, or regulation). For the sake of this blog post, I’ll lump illegal hunting and unethical/wasteful (but legal) trophy-type hunting in the same term of poaching. Hunting has been behind the severe decline or outright extinction of many species and can be an incredibly destructive force. I think it is understandable how in a hunter/poacher-dominated society, Janina becomes so outraged. In fact, many of the hunters in Janina’s area are in fact poachers who deserve to be charged as criminals. However, Janina is an absolutist who equates animals as the same as humans, and she doesn’t distinguish between hunting and poaching. In addition, Janina doesn’t clarify how, if all animals are equal, it is justifiable that a wild animal kills another animal for food. In my opinion, humans using our evolutionary “advantages” (grasping hands and a large brain) to construct tools (blinds, guns, etc) to hunt for food is not fundamentally different from a tiger using its evolutionary “advantages” (camouflage, powerful bite, claws) to hunt for food. Humans aren’t even the only animals that use tools to hunt (sea otters, chimpanzees, among others I’m sure). This perspective requires the understanding of our own evolution (something Janina doesn’t believe in), as omnivorous apes who “traded” a lot of our physical adaptations for a larger brain (which, before modern times, was only possible to maintain due to at least some meat in the diet). We did and continue to be active parts of the world’s ecology, and our ancestors created tools to compete with other predators that had more physical “advantages”. Today, if a hunter uses those same “advantages” to hunt, I don’t think that’s objectively flawed, as long as it is done with a real purpose and with real responsibility in mind.

Hunting can be done sustainably, and while the ethics can be debated, I think people like Janina don’t realize the impact it can have for “good” things. For example, a recent Cornell Lab of Ornithology study found that wild bird populations in North America have declined by almost 3 billion birds since 1970. Nearly every single bird family has seen losses, some of them very significant and a major cause of concern for many reasons. One of the only groups that have not seen declines, and has actually increased, (some from endangered statuses) is the waterfowl; the swans, geese, and ducks. Now every species’ conservation ecology is different, but by and large, these birds rely on marsh and wetland habitats across the United States, especially in the Midwest and great plains. One of the biggest reasons that this family has seen population gains is the conservation work of hunters in groups such as Ducks Unlimited, a hunter-conservation group that sponsors and funds many projects associated with the management, conservation, and restoration of waterfowl habitats, as well as the hunters that pay for hunting permits and taxes on hunting gear that go towards conservation. Some of our most important migratory checkpoints for birds, our National Wildlife Refuges, were established at least partially for certain amounts of hunting (within scientifically researched and regulated guidelines). Wildlife refuges don’t just benefit game birds, either. Hunters want to be able to visit pristine, native habitats and be able to harvest pristine, native birds year after year, so they routinely put money towards permits, duck stamps, and habitat restoration that keeps these habitats and their inhabitants in pristine form. For better or for worse, hunters are some of the most active investors in these areas, and without the economic contributions that hunters make, many areas would probably not have the same level of funding and infrastructure for protecting North America’s migrating and breeding waterfowl populations. In addition to having brought back many “game species”, some from local extirpation, these refuges play a critical role in the conservation of our species whether it be plant, animal, or fungus, and resources as well as the health of the greater ecosystem and earth as a whole (not to mention they’re wonderful places to visit and serve as a haven for outdoor recreationists well beyond hunters).

 I think it is a common misconception that all hunters are ignorant of nature and just want to shoot things. Of course, there are offenders, and as I said above, poaching/immoral hunting is completely and utterly immoral; hunting should be taken seriously and with serious responsibility, and there are definitely further discussions to be had at where we draw the exact line between “ethical” and “unethical” hunting. If you want to go out and shoot something, it must be done responsibly, i.e. respecting limits, no lead bullets, no hunting out of season, respecting science-based guidelines, etc (additionally, offenses/exploitations of natural resources should be dealt with seriously). In the 21st century, it is a privilege, not an intrinsic right to be able to utilize your natural resources, and you MUST do so in a responsible way.

However, the reality is that many hunters actually are very knowledgeable when it comes to nature, and many of them have a deep respect and connection to the environment. I am sure that many hunters spend a lot more time and put more money towards actual conservation than many of the people who criticize them for being “unsustainable” or “unethical”. Personally, I’ve never hunted, and I would never want to, because I do find it personally disagreeable, destructive, and even distasteful, finding it to be much more enjoyable, sustainable, and ethical to “shoot” birds through a camera. I personally will tend to instinctively lean towards the non-hunting side almost every time. I am also constantly aware of how damaging and dangerous hunting can be. I’ll be clear here that I don’t think it’s easy to characterize hunting as a good or bad thing because it is incredibly circumstantial, and in some contexts, it can be “ethical”, while in others, it is indescribably evil (of course, not all hunting in America is just waterfowl, and some hunting initiatives are more conservation-based or informed than others). That being said, hunters love their craft, and most importantly, they put a lot of money behind it. Unless harsh critics of hunters can supply the billions of dollars that they contribute to US agencies for conservation annually, I think this situation has to be read with nuance. The conservation picture is often complex and requires compromises. While you or I (or Janina) may find hunting disagreeable, there is no debating the incredible conservation work that hunters have done for North America’s waterfowl. While it may be uncomfortable, seeing hunters more eye to eye on conservation is critical for continuing to maintain conservation efforts. We can do a lot more for the greater conservation of nature and humanity if we put aside some of our most idealistic aspirations in favor of a solution that still creates objectively and overwhelmingly positive results. We may not always be able to compromise, but this is a case where it should and can be done, and Janina’s apparent lack to do so can potentially threaten the health of entire ecosystems. 

Janina’s perspective also fails to address hunting in terms of population regulation. Under her view, all animals ought to be treated as humans, and so they cannot be killed, or else you should be framed as a murderer. Once again, Janina is ignorant of actual ecological science. In many parts of the world, certain species threaten the entire stability of a particular ecosystem, and so they are culled by hunting. Now, in the vast majority of these cases, the reasons species are out of control is directly because of people. We could spend an eternity lamenting humanity and the anthropocentric, ignorant, or stupid reasons that invasives were introduced or enabled in the first place (it’s pretty bad). The reality though, is that the past is the past, and all we can do today is stop that problem from getting worse. A good example is the invasive Burmese Python in the Florida Everglades. Today, these pythons are a HUGE issue in the Everglades, and they are literally choking out many native species and threatening the health of one of our most important ecological areas. They reproduce rapidly, and prey on anything from songbirds to alligators. While they will probably never be extirpated, there are still efforts to contain them, including many hunting initiatives. Some of these snakes are made into actual products that can be used by people, too. Some people today are doing their best to try to limit the rapid damage that this species has wrought. Janina would argue that there are more ethical ways to stop a species like this, and I would agree. However, those methods are less accessible and/or more expensive than hunting, and for better or for worse, the government can more easily recruit masses of volunteers with shotguns than masses of biological scientists that can more “ethically” remove the snakes via other methods, like rolling out a whole plan to sterilize the entire snake population, for example (which is also probably insanely difficult and also arguably unethical). People shouldn’t be encouraged to stand by as pythons continue to wreak havoc, hoping for a more “ethical” solution. I think more ethical solutions should continue to be used and pursued wherever they can be, but in the meantime, hunting shouldn’t just stop. This problem is happening right now, and it will continue to get worse and degrade the livelihoods of hundreds of wild species and local communities if people settle exclusively for lesser, more “ethical” methods. In a perfect world, yes, humans would never have made a terrible mistake in the first place, and hunting would not be necessary. Hopefully, that day is on the way. However, that is not the case right now, and we cannot put the sanctity of lives of pythons ahead of ecological balance and preventing collapse. The pythons are a good example of how we do live in an imperfect world requiring imperfect solutions; there is no “ethical” solution to a problem like this, as life will be “harmed” either way. Janina would argue that the snakes should absolutely not be killed whatsoever, but if we look at the situation from an ecologically informed perspective, we can see there is clearly a “lesser of evils” solution. In invasive species cases, imperfect solutions are better than nothing at all.

In conclusion, Janina’s beliefs are arguably quite noble. However, they are horribly misplaced and ignorant of science. Janina’s beliefs have the potential to be incredibly destructive because in her ignorance of evolution and ecology or belief in the human sacredness of wild animals, she represents the person to oppose imperfect solutions to greater ecological problems. She also shows why an education in proper biological science is important, because without a nuanced and complex understanding of life on earth, people like Janina will resort to understanding nature through an EXCLUSIVELY spiritual/emotional lens. I personally understand the desire to want to love wild animals like friends, and this is fine as long as it is not practiced to Janina’s absolutism. We have to be able to see past an individual animal life towards the greater health of a sustainable world. On a scientific level, if you really care about animals and nature, you have to be prepared to make difficult compromises. The fact that you may see imperfect solutions as difficult and painful but perhaps necessary shouldn’t torture you to Janina’s violent extent, but re-affirm to you that you do genuinely care about the natural world and striving towards creating a more ethical one.

If we should take away anything from Janina’s views on animals, it ought to be that we should definitely not treat animals as “equals” to people, whether it be because of the umbrella term that “animals” is, or the nuances of hunting. We should only be treating other humans as humans. As humans, we have been rightly trained to strive to treat other HUMANS equally, regardless of race, gender, orientation, etc. However, it is a mistake to try to apply this egalitarianism to wild animals, other entirely different SPECIES, separated by millions of years of evolution and countless aspects of physiology and ecology. This doesn’t mean we should view animals as lesser or greater than humans, either. Hunting an animal within ethical boundaries doesn’t have to mean that you see them as “lesser”. Hunting and consumption of animals is a part of many peoples’ heritages and in some cases, may be the best source of certain nutrients (I think the bigger and more objective issue with meat consumption today is the environmental/climate change impact, as we discussed in class). Hunting, if done for an actual purpose (food or resources), or if informed by science, does not mean that we detract from an animal’s inherent value. On a mature level, it reflects our awareness of a living, ecologically connected world (which we’re a part of) that is bigger than one individual. On Janina’s level, it reflects everything wrong and fundamentally evil about existence and is an excuse for brutal violence. How we treat wild animals is a sort of fluid gray space that doesn’t necessarily have concrete borders. It’s ok to acknowledge that we don’t know everything about animals and that we can’t hope to understand all of them, much less create some universal guideline towards their treatment. It’s ok to be uncertain and constantly be asking questions too. What we can say is that we should not simply treat them how we would treat other humans. We can also say that while every animal is different, they do deserve a certain level of deep respect, and that responsible, informed hunting does not HAVE to objectively violate that respect, (although it certainly can), however twisted it may or may not seem at times. Striving to better actively understand the complex relationships between humans and other animals and the nature of hunting (or the lack of it) through a nuanced lens should hopefully make us better and happier stewards than Janina. 

Throughout Drive the Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Astrology is present in Janina’s mind. She studies the characteristics stars and planets give to people and uses her findings to explain how some people are the way they are. She also believes that she can tell a person’s time and reason of death based on astrology. Janina is a spiritual person, although her practices are unconventional. When she is revealed to have murdered three men, I started to question her beliefs. She accurately predicted that Big Foot died because of an animal, and she did not interfere in that instance. I wonder if she had preconceived notions about the other three men based on astrology and assumed that it was her job to make her predictions come true. The fact that the men die in the ways Janina predicts makes the reader question whether her predictions were true or not. If you take it one way, you could say that the entire thing was determined by fate and it was predetermined for Janina specifically to kill them. If you take it the other, it makes Janina’s beliefs seem flawed and illogical; she would have seemed to force her prediction to come true, and without her interference they wouldn’t have come true. I think Janina assuredly believes in fatalism (the belief that every event on earth and all outcomes are predetermined by the universe or a higher power,) and this makes me question her beliefs about karma. I do not think Janina believes in karma, and because of this she is driven to take it into her own hands for these men to get what she thinks they deserve. This is in line with Übermensch, the idea of someone who believes themself to be above any moral or belief system and enacts their own idea of divine judgement. Many of her values and morals are contradictory and she doesn’t subscribe to any religion, which makes me think that she views herself as an Übermensch. She mentions her feelings of being a “vessel” for nature itself to enact judgement, which is a perfect example of this idea. I also wonder if she is partially motivated to inflict such violence because she “knows” when she is going to die. She supposedly knows her time and cause of death using her birthdate and astrological theorems. Does she commit these crimes because she knows she won’t die?

The narrator of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina, tells the story in a way that twists the minds of the readers. The use of an unreliable narrator results in many different perspectives on the story. We are introduced to Janina and immediately are put in her mind to see the old, innocent woman we think she is. The way Tokarczuk chooses to have Janina be the narrator really alters the reader’s view of the events in the story and causes us to believe Janina is innocent for most of the story.

In addition, in class, we discussed how being in Janina’s mind caused us as readers to be missing a lot of important information and resulted in us just thinking she was a crazy old lady with insane theories. Her belief that the animals killed all those people also made us think that she was just a madwoman and could not be capable of the murders.

All in all, the unreliable narrator really enhances the plot twist at the end because from the beginning of the novel Tokarczuk wrote in a way so that the readers would sympathize with her outlook on life and belief in animal rights.

In Christianity there are said to be seven deadly sins which are the actions and behaviors that God is believed to hate the most. These seven sins are the disordered and perverted side of all things good and they go as follows: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. These sins are the focal point of many famous historical works but how do they fit in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead? Maybe a lot more than you’d think.

Greed & Gluttony

In terms of their nature, greed and gluttony are very closely related, being sins of overconsumption to the point of waste and hoarding by means of violence. In the novel they remain just as close. One of Janina’s biggest triggers is the hunting of animals, especially for sport. Hunting is a dearly held tradition in the town but the hunters take it to extremes, killing animals and leaving them in the snow or simply wasting parts that could be utilized. The men in the novel end up dead because of their actions regarding this. Innerd is introduced as “that rich fellow” (129) and when referring to the money found on the Commandant’s corpse, Janina is sure that it was a bribe from Innerd (131), who coincidentally turns up dead not long after. It was not necessary to mention that Innerd was known for his wealth and that was actually the biggest indicator of his future death. On the flip side of this is Janina’s vegetarianism because for each mortal sin there is a capital virtue. 

Lust & Sloth

Lust is in the same group of sins as greed and gluttony with all of them being sins of desire and while this sin is not very important for Janina’s purpose, there are still some interesting examples throughout the novel. While it may be quite a stretch, it’s interesting that when Boros is explaining beetles and pheromones to Janina, she makes note of it and then uses the animals’ reproduction instincts to later kill someone.

Sloth is another sin that doesn’t play a vital role but it could be defined as either indifference to duties or overall laziness. This could be analyzed through Janina’s Ailments or her beliefs that humans have some sort of duty or way they need to act within nature. Again, that’s entirely up for interpretation but Janina does express disdain on numerous occasions for those not only actively killing animals but those who tolerate and even encourage it; she may see it as the shirking of duties.

Envy

Envy is one of the more complex sins and it is characterized by selfish desire and want and especially covetous feelings toward another. Envy is not so blatant in the novel but it can be seen in Janina’s feelings about animals; she feels such a deep connection with them and a desire to protect them to the point that she is nearing envy. And at a certain point she isn’t even envious, she just believes she is an animal, or at least a conduit for them. These feelings about animals play a large role in her motivation to kill.

Pride

Pride is the original and supposedly worst of the seven deadly sins. Pride is the opposite of virtuous humility and is defined by extreme selfishness and putting your own desires first. We see this often in the novel, especially in the townspeople and hunters with their disregard for nature and life other than their own. When Janina confronts a group of hunters in the woods, they attempt to justify their actions by saying they’re well within their rights to do what they want and this infuriates Janina. And while Janina has a deep connection with nature and animals, she can be quite prideful herself; she quite literally kills multiple men because she was putting her desires first.

Wrath

 Wrath is most often associated with hatred and a desire to enact revenge on another person, making it probably the most prevalent sin in the novel. Janina’s feelings of hatred and anger are explicitly mentioned dozens of times and after all, it is what drives her to kill. In the Old Testament, God is known for his wrath to be precise and most of all, provoked. God’s wrath is a response to evil, it is not portrayed as retribution, but as righteous judgment. Janina may vehemently reject traditional ideas of religion but she’s certainly a believer in divine judgment and punishment. Does Janina not act as God would, doling out punishments for the desecration of holiness? She more so is concerned with the desecration of nature and animals but the principle is eerily similar. 

I suppose the point to take from Janina’s actions is that when men behave like animals, you put them down like animals.