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Today I would like to share the work of British writer Hugh Loftin, "Dr. Doolittle's Voyage".
Lovetin was originally a civil engineer and had no intention of becoming a writer. He was born in England, but fell in love with an American girl. So they made their home in New York, where Lovetin continued his career as an engineer.
Time flew by, and their children were born one by one, but with the outbreak of world war I, Lovetin had to say goodbye to his wife and children and go to the front. The cruelty of the war was far greater than the engineer could have imagined.
He witnessed the gunfire and the destruction of human life in an instant. He loved animals, but on the battlefield he saw wounded horses again and again, shot as a liability. All of this made him extremely sad, and he was glad that his wife and children did not have to experience it all for themselves. He wrote letters from the battlefield to the children who missed day and night, but learned something.
The reality was so cruel, he began to imagine a powerful strange man, omniscient, omnipotent, he could heal the wounded warhorses on the battlefield, he could rely on the clever hand of benevolence, and soothe all the wounds. He named the strange man Dr. Doolittle. Doolittle's English is "Dolittle", which translates to Chinese he is a "busy person".
Dr. Doolittle, who bears the title of "nothing to do", is an accomplished doctor and naturalist. Bow out day to night for animal welfare and naturalistic research. The contrast made Lovetin overjoyed, and he felt that his children would surely fall in love with the strange doctor too.
From then on, Lovethin's letters did not talk about war, but only about Dr. Doolittle's adventures. In 1919 Loftin was seriously wounded on the battlefield. However, being injured on the battlefield was also a stroke of luck that allowed him to naturally return home and reunite with his family. To his surprise, the children eagerly told him about their love for Dr. Doolittle. His wife encouraged him to say why not publish Dr. Doolittle's story.
In 1920, the first installment of the "Dr. Doolittle Series", The Adventures of Dr. Doolittle in Africa, was published. Immediately so popular that it was considered a "work of genius", both fanciful and humorous, and a true example of children's books. Two years later, Hugh Loftin published the second book in the series, Dr. Doolittle's Voyages, which we share today.
"Dr. Doolittle's Voyage" won the prestigious Newbury Children's Literature Gold Medal in the United States the following year. Lovein's work was out of control, and he published eight books of Dr. Doolittle's story at a rate of one book a year. In the eighth book, published in 1928, the omnipotent hero had ascended to the moon, 41 years before American astronaut Armstrong.
Lovethyn felt that even if he was a strong and learned doctor such as Dr. Doolittle, the moon could be regarded as the peak of his life, and he wanted to end the creation of the "Dr. Doolittle Series". However, the young reader did not agree, and "urged" all day long, unable to resist the enthusiasm of the children, Lovetin wrote "The Return of Dr. Doolittle" five years later.
The "Dr. Doolittle" series, which has written a total of 12 books, has become a classic in the history of children's literature in the world. In Dr. Doolittle's story, Loftin creates a naturalistic world full of exotic flowers and plants, exotic animals and animals. Entering this world, we are like opening a treasure trove carefully built by Dr. Doolittle, which contains a huge and wonderful collection that satisfies anyone's curiosity.
Dr. Doolittle's great adventures in the study of naturalism have a magic that children cannot resist. Because the original intention of these legendary stories is to make children forget about war and cruelty. Therefore, Doolittle's adventures, although ups and downs, have nothing to do with barbarism and violence. At the first sign of the moment, Doolittle and his animal companions can always use wisdom and kindness to overcome dangers, and build bridges of understanding and friendship between humans of different races and different species.
Dr. Doolittle's Voyage is a pinnacle of imagination and creativity in the Doolittle Series. We were impressed by the cute animals, the floating spider monkey island, and the magnificent glass snails. It was as if they were following Dr. Doolittle and them, in the middle of the vast ocean, in the mysterious rainforest.
Although many of the wonderful flora and fauna and geographical landscapes that appear in this book are fictional. But it can make a child's curiosity burn. I yearn for the world of naturalism. Some children may ask, we have heard of biology, geology, but what is naturalism? Why did Lovein portray Dr. Doolittle as a naturalist?
The term naturalism comes from the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, published in the Naturalist in 77 AD. The book covers multiple fields such as astronomy, geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, and more. It set an example for later naturalistic research.
In fact, naturalism covers parts of the disciplines of astronomy, geology, geography, biology, meteorology, anthropology, ecology, natural literature, animal behavior, and conservation biology in the current sense.
Many of the great figures we are familiar with, such as Aristotle, leonardo da Vinci, Buffon, Darwin, Fabre, Rousseau, Goethe, and Thoreau, can be called naturalists. In the West, naturalism is a very old discipline, but with the Renaissance, naturalism gradually became popular.
There are many reasons for the rise of naturalism, such as the development of navigation, the West ushered in geographical discoveries, and new species appeared in front of the eyes of adventurers. They need to be recorded and studied, for example, the Renaissance promoted the development of printing, the printing and publication of research works became easier, which also accelerated the spread of naturalist monographs and knowledge, and the Renaissance triggered the translation of ancient Greek and Roman scholars.
Many records of geography, plants, and medicine have been found in ancient writings. Therefore, the study of ancient works and the identification of real species became the cultural fashion of the Renaissance. Naturalism has been given unprecedented attention.
Naturalists not only summarize the discussion and exploration of animals and plants by their predecessors, but also attach great importance to "description". They seek the accuracy of their descriptions of natural things, classifying, cataloging, measuring, recording, and describing the creatures of nature. However, their descriptions now seem to be less objective and neutral, more like literary works.
Therefore, it has been said that naturalism has been and is now branded with humanistic culture, and this trend did not change until the eighteenth century. Naturalism has become an independent scientific discipline, mainly composed of three disciplines: botany, zoology, and mineralogy. It departs from moral indoctrination and is replaced by a serious, objective observation record and rational interpretation.
By the nineteenth century, Western naturalism had entered a golden age. A large number of naturalists explored and described nature in a wide range, accumulating a large amount of empirical material until Darwin proposed the theory of biological evolution. Naturalism reached an important peak. At the same time, naturalism also began to be divided into disciplines, and the various natural disciplines gradually developed in depth.
Therefore, Dr. Doolittle's naturalist status is not given casually. This explains why he knows astronomy and geography. He has a deep study of animals, plants, and medicines. It is easy to cope with the difficulties of various environments. Because he was the "tide maker" of the naturalistic world who mastered the most cutting-edge knowledge of his time.
Nevertheless, we can find the limitations of the times in Dr. Doolittle. This limitation is not only intellectual and worldview, but also ideological. Dr. Doolittle's story was written during World War I and World War II, coinciding with the collapse of the Old World Order and the fact that the New World Order had not yet been established.
As a citizen of the British Empire, which once dominated the world. It is inevitable that Loftin will show a certain colonialism in his creation. In the book, living in a small English town, the white and chubby Dr. Doolittle symbolizes civilization, humanity and order.
In stark contrast to him is a series of black and indigenous figures. The most representative is one of Dr. Doolittle's human followers, the prince of the cannibal kingdom, which is also the "strange and happy country". As can be seen from the name and setting of his country, he represents a heterogeneous culture that is the opposite of civilization and order in the Western sense. He was sent to Oxford University to study, spoke a chewy and funny English, and at every turn he wanted to eat people.
It's a very symbolic character that fits most Western readers' cultural biases about indigenous Africans. In the second half of Dr. Doolittle's Voyages, Dr. Doolittle travels in a small boat to an island near South America. Like all adventure stories featuring whites, Dr. Doolittle discovered that the natives of the area were not only ignorant but also belligerent, and he conquered these "barbarians" with the knowledge, wisdom, and kindness of a "civilized man."
These people saw his knowledge and medical skills as a kind of magic. Worship him like a god, and even honor him as a king, "forcing" him to rule over himself. The doctors gave them infinite grace, changed their way of life, built roads and bridges for them, and gave lectures to cure diseases.
Sow the "seeds of civilization" on the island and worry all the time. As soon as you leave, the spark of civilization will be extinguished, even the animals that have been immersed in Western culture for a long time following Dr. Doolittle. When the indigenous people are spoken of, they are treated with contempt and ridicule, believing that they do not have the ability and wisdom to govern themselves. Doesn't this remind us of Robinson Crusoe?
In Robinson Crusoe, there is also an encounter between "civilization" and "barbarism.". The Western adventurer Robinson met and rescued a barbarian and named him "Friday". Friday thanked Robinson for his thanks, and Robinson gradually domesticated him into his ideal servant, making him fully accept his culture and values.
Robinson Crusoe established a standard master-servant image for Western literature, and also created a pair of classic binary antagonisms. Civilization and barbarism, wisdom and stupidity, Westerners and natives. However, with the collapse of the world's colonial system, this image of master and servant and the dualistic antagonism are increasingly criticized.
Even Robinson Crusoe is seen as a colonialist fable. Looking back at Dr. Doolittle's story, we will find that the shadow of colonialism also pervades this book. Throughout human history, in the process of the West's expansion into the world, every encounter between the colonists and the indigenous peoples is a repetition of the story of Robinson and Friday, Doolittle and the Natives.
In the eyes of the colonizers, all the lands that have not been contaminated by their civilization are barbaric; every place that is not illuminated by their reason is foolish; all beings who have not been universalized by their faith are soulless.
However, civilizations that are different from human beings and are conceived in different natural environments and humanistic traditions are bound to have different forms. Imagine if the world were dominated by a single set of values, a single belief, and a single standard of judgment. How rigid and boring the world is going to become.
Human society needs a rich variety of lifestyles, ways of thinking and value standards. Just like in Dr. Doolittle's world, there are flowers, plants, birds and animals from all over the world, which can be so colorful.
When we read Dr. Doolittle's story, remember that Dr. Doolittle was a great explorer, but he was also limited by his own time and culture. Today, we don't need to take a small broken boat and drift at sea for six weeks to see the outside world. We have more opportunities and ways to explore the world.
Like Dr. Doolittle, let your curiosity and adventurous spirit take you on a journey into the vastness of the world. But when you meet someone very different from you and gaze at a new landscape, remember to be humble and inclusive. Maybe you'll find that the world is even more beautiful than you think.
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Zhao Zijun, an article a day, recording work life, reading and learning. Be a seed that spreads love.
Public number: Zhao Jun. Writing is not just about recording, it is evoking some beautiful hearts that are sleeping.