Language through Names and Naming in Animal People“For his species, we are not really people. We have no names” (Sinha 9). In the second chapter of Animal's People, its protagonist Animal talks about eyes, eyes that fill the darkness, that appear no matter which direction he looks, and that search for things to see. He says the eyes come every time he begins to speak, they look quietly and wait patiently, then settle like flies on the images that arise from everything he says. “In this crowd of eyes, I try to recognize yours. I was waiting for you to appear, for you to know yourself among all the others, that's how Kakadu Jarnalis said in his letter that this would be the case. He said, “Animal, you have to imagine that you are talking to just one person. Little by little, this person will seem real to you. Imagine them as friends. You have to trust them and open your heart to them, this person will not judge you badly no matter what you say. You read my words, you are that person. I don't have a name for you so I'll call you Eyes. My job is to speak, yours is to listen. So now listen” (ibid. 13-14). Animal asserts his position as narrator of the novel by addressing his readership as Eyes, drawing on Jarnalis' instructions on how to tell his story. Jarnalis told him to imagine a presence, an undefined person who will soon feel like a friend with whom he can be honest and tell his story. Animal reverses the metaphor: he says that the eyes became real and began to haunt him until from the indefinite crowd emerged a single pair of them, Eyes, the reader himself. The reader quickly realizes that he will not be a passive consumer of the story nor an omniscient presence observing developments from a bird's eye view, but rather eyes fixed on Animal, unable to watch......at middle of paper... ...the lines blur when Animal receives a letter informing him that he can have surgery to correct his spine and make him walk straight. Animal's narrative voice ends the novel ambiguously, faced with a difficult decision he must make regarding the operation. : “If I were an honest human, I would be one among millions, not even in good health. Stay on all fours, I am the one and only Animal” (ibid. 366). The decision appears to remain open, leaving room for Eyes' interpretation and imagination. However, despite the narrator's unreliable tricks, the novel's ending allows the reader to gain the upper hand. When Animal sees Ma Franci in one of the final acts and she tells him that they will meet in heaven, his assertion comes as a direct response to Farouq's assertion that "[h]aven is for the humans, not for animals” (ibid. 208). : “I know that one day I will meet her there” (ibid.. 365).