The Eyes of Dog and Man Collided: Animals in Ota Pavel’s The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer

This paper analyses the representation of animals and their relationship to humans in the collection of short stories The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer by writer and journalist Ota Pavel. The paper follows previous theoretical reflections on Pavel’s memoir prose, which focuses mainly on the theme of the Jewish experience during the Second World War and highlights the tension between the highly idealised time of childhood and tragic historical events. This text aims to show how this extraordinary experience shapes the perception and representation of animals. Although the various levels of the narrative structure are contrasting, they work symbiotically in shaping the relationship between humans and animals: the strong idealisation of childhood constructs an image of the past as a time when man’s place was within the natural sphere, while at the same time, the main characters find themselves cast out of the community as a result of anti-Jewish measures, which has the consequence of transforming their relationship with animals to the preindustrial one.