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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Only the Animals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Interconnectedness of Humans and Animals
Animals and War
Human Cruelty
Kindness and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
The camel notices that just beyond the campfire is the goanna (a type of lizard) that’s been following the camel’s group for days. The camel’s owner, Mister Mitchell, is asleep, with the queen’s bones next to him. But the poet that joined them in Hungerford, Henry Lawson, is awake, listening to the goanna scuttle through the leaves. It’s the night after Christmas and the men have all gorged themselves on rich food and too much rum.
The story opens with a somewhat sinister scene: a lizard that seems predatory, a man sleeping beside bones, and men who have drank too much alcohol. The overeating in particular could indicate that these men are prone to overindulgence, decadence, and selfishness. It’s also significant that the camel is the narrator and that he’s observing the people around him. This suggests that the story will focus on the relationship between people and animals and center the animals’ perspective.
Active
Themes
Lawson says that he told Mitchell to put the bones back, but Mitchell is stubborn and has been ever since he was a boy—the two men grew up together. The camel knows that Lawson talks to himself whenever he’s dehydrated or drunk, which he almost always is these days. Lawson continues, saying that like the ghost of Christmas past, the goanna will take Mitchell to hell for “it.” The camel can tell that Lawson is scared of the goanna. The camel is scared of it too, since it’s more like a crocodile than a lizard.
This passage depicts both Henry Lawson and Mitchell as somewhat unhinged—Lawson because he’s nearly always drunk and babbling, and Mitchell because he’s seemingly obsessed with these bones that he’s carrying. The passage again carries a sense of foreboding, as Lawson is convinced that Mitchell shouldn’t be holding onto the bones, and that doing so will incite some sort of retribution f from the lizard (it’s still unclear at this point what the connection is between the lizard and the bones, but this moment implies that the lizard has been stalking the group because Mitchell took the bones when he shouldn’t have). It’s also significant that both Lawson and the camel are scared of the goanna. The camel already seems like a much more levelheaded than either of his human companions—so this adds more weight to his fear of the lizard.
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Lawson says that his mother used to read Dickens and Poe to him when he was little, and the camel wonders if Lawson is talking to himself or addressing the camel. Nobody has spoken to the camel in a casual, conversational way since his handler, Zeriph, died years ago. The camel thinks back to where Mister Mitchell last filled the waterbags, in Hungerford. It’s the strangest place he’s seen since coming to Australia. It sits right on the border between Queensland and New South Wales, with a rabbit-proof fence running down the main street. After sampling some beer on the Queensland side, Lawson joked that they should’ve called the town “Hungerthirst” and noted that there were rabbits on both sides of the fence.
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Lawson continues to ramble. He says he grew up in Pipeclay, where his and Mitchell’s fathers were some of the last men to work in the goldfields. Most of the holes were collapsed, and huts were haunted—Lawson saw his first ghost there. The camel wants to say that he sees ghosts, too—the ghosts of the other camels who were shipped with him to Australia from Tenerife. He was the only camel to survive the journey. He also sees the ghost of a bachelor camel he killed. Zeriph felt terrible for the other camel’s handler, who grieved like one might for a child rather than an animal.
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Lawson says that Ben Hall’s ghost haunted their schoolhouse. Hall was a bushranger (thief) whom troopers murdered, and Lawson grew up thinking of him as a hero. Humorously, Lawson’s little brother could never decide if he wanted to be a bushranger or a trooper—the only choices for boys from the bush. Slowly, Lawson lies back and points at the moon. He says that in Sunday School, he was told that pointing at the moon is “wicked.” He was also told that “our blacks are the lowest race on earth.” There was a painting of Aboriginal people hung in the schoolroom, but Lawson thought “they looked more like you, like camels, peculiar creatures that shouldn’t exist, than like the black men we know.” The camel thinks that despite the differences between humans and camels, he does exist. He feels homesick.
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Lawson says that once, a Black man’s ghost came to one of his mother’s séances. The first hour of the séance had been boring, but then, a spirit asked to speak to Mitchell’s father, who was there inquire about where he could find gold. Through the medium, the spirit asked Mitchell’s father if he knew of Hospital Creek. His face went pale, and he said yes—he used to work at a stockyard there. When the medium then described seeing fire and bodies, Mitchell’s father angrily told the medium to keep her mouth shut “like the rest of us.” Back in the present, Lawson throws his empty bottle toward the goanna and says that not long after this séance, Mitchell’s father struck gold.
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Themes
The camel tries to remember if Mitchell dug up the queen’s bones near a creek. It was hard for the camel to tell, since Mitchell dug up the bones during the dry season, when creeks are all empty. Plus, that was when the goanna had first appeared, so the camel was distracted. Upset, the camel spits some cud into the fire. Zeriph nearly trained this habit out of him, but the camel can’t help it when he’s upset. Lawson finds it funny. Lawson digs out his notebook and reads his account of the last time he encountered spitting. He’d asked a shepherd in Hungerford whether he preferred New South Wales or Queensland. The shepherd had spat from one side of the fence to the other, and then climbed through the fence to repeat the process in reverse.
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The camel knows that Lawson isn’t here just to drink rum or renew his childhood friendship with Mitchell. Rather, Lawson’s companions are perfect fodder for a writer: the son of a rich man, Mitchell is “a madman collector on a camel,” who’s transporting the stolen bones of an old Aboriginal queen, while a goanna stalks along behind. The camel has heard Lawson say that he often includes animals in his stories to make the human characters look worse.
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The camel thinks back to the start of their journey. Though camels aren’t unusual in Australia (they’re being used to build a railroad), Mitchell stood out and attracted attention for riding a camel like “a fancy horse.” The first day of their journey, Mitchell bought the camel in Bourke and burnt his bare feet because he didn’t want to wear boots. This behavior made the camel fear that Mitchell would get them lost, so the camel bit a hole in a flour bag he was carrying to leave a trail. When the flour ran out, the camel cursed himself for not running away after Zeriph died. These days, herds of wild camels run through Australia’s interior, destroying the very fences, railroads, and water pumps they helped build.
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The goanna scuttles nearer to the fire and freezes. Lawson notes that goannas eat meat—and supposedly kill kangaroos, drag off sheep, and eat sleeping men’s eyes. The camel looks to Mister Mitchell, who is sleeping with the bones. He’s curled up, just like the queen’s bones had been in her grave. Lawson mutters that Mitchell’s father was fixated on “those bones,” but clarifies that these aren’t the bones from the massacre at Hospital Creek. This queen lived many years ago. Mitchell believes that if he has her bones, the ghosts of Hospital Creek will leave him alone. The goanna hisses.
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Lawson sings softly, and then interrupts himself. He can’t imagine dying of thirst. He reads the camel the last written words of a stockman who died of thirst: “My ey Dassels. My tong burn. I can see no More God Help.” Lawson sighs that he has to use this in his own writing—death in the bush is a great theme. The camel decides that in the morning, he’s going to run away. He can’t understand why men like Lawson and Mitchell do such terrible things. The camel doesn’t think he’s blameless, but he can’t be blamed for things that Mitchell and Lawson do.
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As Lawson rambles on, Mitchell suddenly leaps to his feet and shouts at the goanna. He says that his father warned him about the goanna and said to kill it. The goanna, he says, is the one who’s actually haunting him. Lawson tells Mitchell to ignore the animals, which are their “spectators.” But Mitchell resolutely loads his muzzle, and Lawson, who wants to see what will happen, doesn’t try again to stop him. He aims at the goanna, which bolts toward the camel.
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The goanna is dead—and the camel can feel his cheek against the sand. He remembers how, years before, Zeriph loosened the ropes that held a grand piano on his back. Zeriph had been proud that the camel had carried a luxury item, but both he and the camel hated that the ropes had hurt him just so that humans could entertain each other. The camel tries to turn his head and thinks he sees that the goanna turned itself into a woman. It’s actually Lawson, laughing. The camel warns Lawson that he’s not the only one who can tell a story about death in the bush.
