The Cattle Train (1911)

AUTHOR: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

KEYWORDS: animals, transportation, slaughter

SUMMARY (Deborah Madsen):

In this short poem, composed of four quatrains, the suffering of cattle being transported to the slaughterhouse is evoked in vivis detail. The poetic speaker is a witness, looking from her window at the stationary train and its cargo of living beings that are left in open-slatted railroad cars, exposed to the cold with no food or water. She remarks wryly that although they are termed "dumb brutes," the animals are loud in their various expressions of torment: the mother separated from and crying for her young, others expressing agony, still others unable to make but weak sounds with a "thirst-distended tongue" (67). The speaker imagines that these animals have been subjected to extreme suffering long before they are slaughtered, for meat that contributes to the convivial atmposphere of hte dining table: "We kill these weary creatures, sore and worn, / And eat them -- with our friends" (67).