Critical Analysis of Am I Blue? – Alice Walker

Introduction

Am I Blue is written by Alice Walker in 1986. It’s a beautiful and poignant story revolves around animal rights. It portrays emotions of a horse beautifully. It shows how human get changes with time but not animals.

Themes

1. Animal Rights – The main important theme of the story is animal rights. Blue, the horse is a symbol of atrocities against animals and their emotional trauma. It is often done by humans that animals are used for selfish aims and often ignored as living beings. Blue finds a female horse partner Brown. Brown gets conceived but taken away by her owner as the purpose has been served. This gave great pain to the blue and a sense of hatred for humans.
2. Consistency in Animal Emotions – The story also shows that animals remain constant in their bonding. Humans get change over the time in pursuit of selfish targets of life. They even utilise animals for personal gains.
3. Apathy towards animal emotions – It is often seen in the human behaviour that they don’t give heed to animal emotions. In the story, Blue the horse, is utilised to pregnant a brown female horse. After she conceives, she is taken away from the Blue by her owner without giving consideration to the feelings of Blue who has developed an intimate relationship with that brown female horse. This separation hurts blue deeply and he lost interest in the life and started to hate humans. Before this incident he used to come to the writer for apples which he stopped later on.
4. Interconnected of living beings – All the living beings are interconnected to each other in one way or the other. Animals and human both have equal sense of emotions. The pain and happiness is felt by both equally. The writer saw both the happiness, when blue got brown,  and the pain when she was taken away, in the eyes of Blue. Hence it’s essential that the dominating species such as humans need to give due consideration to their actions before committing them. Human actions affect other living beings in one way or the other. All livings beings are physically through nature and mentally through emotions are interconnected.

Significance of the Title

The title of the story is very apt and symbolic. The color blue is symbol of sadness and depression. Hence the title represents sadness of horse Blue. His name signify the sadness among animals regarding complete neglection of their feelings. The title questions in satirical manner. It’s a question from animals for human beings that do they look sad? Can humans feel their sadness? Can they understand their emotions? This title makes readers think about fellow living beings.

Language

The language of the story is easy and evocative. It does not have jargons. It connects well with readers and takes them to the oppressive world of humans.

Color Symbolism

There are many color symbols in the story such as color blue in the title and name blue of the horse is a symbol of sadness which the story represents well. The color white represents freedom and peace which is missing in the actions of human beings. The Story gives a hint at the very end that blue a white horse standing alone in five acre lands in lush green meadows is a symbol of freedom which he wasn’t. His rights were snatched by humans. His freedom got curbed. The female brown horse which brought warmth and comfort in the life of Blue was taken away from him. Color brown is symbol of warmth and comfort.

Conclusion

The story is beautifully written by Alice Walker which makes the readers think about common existence of all living beings. Humans should understand feelings of animals, their rights and be empathetic towards them.

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