Customer Reviews

A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History

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The book explores many of the questions of hunting and anti-hunting. It spends a surprising amount of time considering the question of whether human evolution was driven by hunting (perhaps because that has been one of the justifications for the continuation of hunting traditions), as well as a review of the emergence of anti-hunting themes and the animal rights movement. It makes an obvious error in the interpretation of Leupold's statement in the assignment of rights in the discussion of Leupold's land ethic. The point of the book is to develop arguments against many of the current justifications for hunting, and for the emergence of the notion of animal rights. It does not do a very good job of describing the current hunting ethic in the US, nor does it describe the rather complex gradiations in that population.

True to its subtitle, biological anthropologist Matt Cartmill's book A View to a Death in the Morning is as much about human opinions of nature as it is about attitudes towards hunting. In an effort to better understand why the hunting hypothesis of human origins has frequently been accepted despite relatively scant evidence to support it, Cartmill traces changes in the way Western societies have conceptualized hunting and explores how hunting informs the human-animal boundary. He reveals that this relationship between humans and hunting often mirrors our relationships with nature and with other humans.

To understand hunting in the modern world, argues Cartmill, one must understand it on a symbolic level. Even the word "hunting" has specific cultural meanings, and because it by definition involves "wildness," it often "marks the edge of the human world" (36). The book opens and closes with discussions of the modern ideas about hunting, including the early failure and later success of the hunting hypothesis and a detailed analysis of the anti-hunting message in Bambi. Through this and the history of hunting that comprises the middle, Cartmill argues that the way we see hunting is influenced by class and political tensions, our relationship with nature, and beliefs about the nature and potential of humans. He maintains that in today's world, although we persist in policing the animal-human boundary, it is becoming more difficult to view animals as "a series of means to human ends" (223).

Cartmill argues that there was a transition from an earlier conception of nature as demonic and disobedient to a more modern understanding of nature as holy and idyllic. Ancient Greece associated hunting with warfare (an idea which persists even today). But as hunting increasingly became a privilege of the elite in the Middle Ages, two different class-based attitudes towards hunting emerged, with lower peasant masses associating hunting with rebellion and freedom and the aristocracy seeing it as a display of manners and status. With the Enlightenment, the natural world became seen as a machine under the increasing control of humans. This was given more support with the advent of Darwin's evolutionary theory, which justified the dominion of (wealthy white) men, masters of both savages and big game. This view of hunting, he argues, is closely linked with imperialism and white supremacy.

The book also traces many of the modern anti-hunting movements. Humanist doubts about the power of humans over nature interacted with class tensions to create early anti-hunting rhetoric in late medieval Europe. Seventeenth-century philosophical and religious thinkers saw animal suffering as an immoral consequence of hunting; two hundred years later, European humane societies sought political action against this suffering, though sometimes not without a class bias. But perhaps the most enduring tradition, argues Cartmill, has been Romanticism, who saw nature as a sacred place unsullied by human contact and hunters as enemies of the animal kingdom, and in which lay the roots of a broad cultural critique of progress and European supremacy as well as late twentieth-century political movements.

Cartmill's book is comprehensive and well-organized. He addresses equally well broad changes and detailed case studies, showing the many ways in which hunting has served as a symbol. He echoes many themes that Coates introduced, such as the nature-is-evil/nature-is-holy ideological change. One aspect I felt was lacking was an analysis of the importance of gender, particularly how hunting has been a critical component of defining and proving masculinity; although he occasionally brings up gender, it is usually regards to nature as feminine (i.e., hunting equals rape), rather than an analysis of hunting and hunters. But this is a minor critique. Overall, the book is a comprehensive and compelling exploration of the complexities of the institution of hunting.

The first several chapters of this book are an intellectual tour de force of absolutely wonderful writing about science, literature, and culture. For anyone interested in hunting, pro or con, this is a must-read. The last chapter, however, takes an amazingly demagogic and unreasoned turn. Cartmill reinscribes most of the same paradigms that he so brilliantly critiques in the chapters leading up to the final one. Seeing two poachers dressing a fawn by the side of a road, he treats them as representative examples of hunters; without so much as a nod at the distinction between poaching and hunting, he goes on to say that this incident is what motivates his personal anti-hunting sentiments. But most hunters would be similarly disgusted with the acts of the two men--there are law enforcement programs making it easy to turn in poachers and hunters themselves are the ones who usually do so. Also, Cartmill quotes a "Buck Peterson" book on deer hunting as though it were a serious discussion of hunting ethics, when it is in fact a joke book (one that most real hunters would, again, find in very bad taste). The pure emotion that drives both sides of this argument is apparently capable of blinding even a first-class intellect such as Cartmill's.

Cartmill's "A View to a Death in the Morning" is a scholarly mix of anthropology, history, sociology, and biology -- all focused on the hydra-headed question of "Must man prey on and kill animals?" This is one of those subjects that each reader will address from his own biases and experiences, a fact acknowledged by the author when he tells us that "the motives of hunting are vague and visceral; nonhunters find them hard to understand." Clearly, this author's perspective puts him in the SPCA/PETA corner. As his thesis unfolds, this increasingly becomes the inescapable place to be when rationally critiquing the bloodlust that drives modern man to this activity ("sport" doesn't honestly apply, given the odds-on outcomes of the hunt.)

Hunters will hurl this title into the fire fairly quickly unless they have a capacity to maintain composure in the face of a reasoned, well-defended argument; likewise, those anti-hunters will find cogent proofs and a compendium of socio-cultural allusions, anecdotes, and references to bolster their perspective. From the Bible to Bambi, it's all here -- except for the curious omissions of the bison's decimation, Melville's philosophical focus in "Moby Dick," commentary on Faulkner's "The Bear," and Hemingway's fiction and nonfiction generally. In this last regard, Cartmill is cagily self-serving since he states that "hunters have trouble articulating and defending their motives."

Bottom line: Are we natural-born "killer apes" who've only recently become afflicted by the "Bambi Syndrome"?

It's a shame because for students and others writing papers on the subject and needing both sides, there are few good anti-hunting books. This one is well-written, but the anthropology is outdated, the science non-existent, and primarily consists of cherry-picked anecdotes. It's clear that his emotions prevent him from taking a nuanced view that writers like Richard K. Nelson are able to take.

As history anecdotes go, there are some useful ones, but most of the arguments he takes down are straw men in the modern hunting debate. Ironically, some of the best anti-hunting material is absent: the devastation of market-hunting the US and wildlife control policies gone wrong, for example. Quoting the Bible/famous authors is nice, but makes for a thin book.

This is a very good work which describes in detail the history and symbolism of hunting, and the changing views on nature. The author gives a detailed and objective account, yet in the last chapter takes a view against hunting. The book is illustrated with pictures and many excerpts from poetry.

While I agree with what the other reviewers have said, I want to add three points: 1) Carmtmill does not come across as heavy-handed or doctrinaire in his criticisms of hunting. Since the debate on this issue can be quite shrill, his measured tone is a relief. 2) His scholarship is of a very high quality. All of his claims are thoroughly documented. Since one of his chapters concerns the topic of my dissertation, I can say that he presents complicated matters clearly and without any distortions. 3) His writing style is simply excellent. I have seldom read a serious, academic book that had such an engaging style - I read it in one sitting! I would give this 4 1/2 stars if I could.