QUESTION: On “The Limits of Trooghaft”, one would not read this story for pleasure, but it is credible and has a timely message. What is your opinion?
In my opinion, it is defintely true to say that one would not read “The Limits of Trooghaft” just for pleasure, but it is credible and has a timely message. It carries a deep moral meaning behind the story.
In fact, “The Limits of Trooghaft” is an interesting science-fiction story with strong message to reflect our cruelty towards the animals in our current society. When one first read the story, one might feel disgusted by the action taken by the Troogs towards the human beings. The Troogs were just like heartless creatures, who treated humans dominantly in different castes. Humans were divided into housemen, capons, hound-men and quarry-men. For instance, the author used the sentence “Young Troogs first captured some surviving children, and then tamed them as ‘housemen’”. This showed that housemen were captured to be treated as pets. However, the housemen would no longer be kept once they fell sick. Besides, capons were eaten, hound-men worked to help Troogs hunting the quarry-men and finally quarry-men could only wait for their death as Troogs found their flesh more appetising than that of capons.
On the surface interpretation, this story was indeed disgusted. However, readers might be able to realise the author’s intention when the story was interpreted in a deeper way. The author was trying to criticise the human beings for treating the animals cruelly without considering their feelings. All the behaviours that the Troogs had done were similar to what we are currently doing. We treated animals as our pets, we used them as guinea pigs for experiments and finally ate animals just like how the Troogs consumed human meat. Perhaps the author was inviting the readers to compare ourselves with the Troogs. The author wanted us to take note of our inhumanity as the Troogs. Hence, “The Limits of Trooghaft” is definitely credible and has a timely message.
In addition, the title “The Limits of Trooghaft” also led us to ponder about the limits of humans. We, the human beings, had done too much to the animals. If we continue torturing them, we might someday being like them, hurting by the others in the future. Perhaps it is the time for us to realise our own mistakes and put ourselves in the animals’ shoes. Hence, we would be able to think things from their perspectives and understand them better. We might be able to know how the animals being mistreated and how they felt.
In conclusion, it is urgent for us to take action after reading the story and understanding its timely message. From now onwards, we should try our best to decide our own future, protecting the animals and treating them well as our beloved friends.