The Hunter Quotes

Julia Leigh’s impactful novel, The Hunter, makes the distinction between reason—depicted by masculine behaviour—and nature, represented by femininity. She subtly introduces this contrast to allow readers to analyze the patriarchal society we live in today, and understand how power can be displayed. Essentially, the author describes reason as dominating nature, or in other words, masculinity dominating femininity. She emphasizes the masculine urge to dominate through her main character, M’s, desire to hunt an endangered Australian tiger, the thylacine. His passion for this hunt is unusual, but can be explained through the relationship between the hegemonic male species, and women. We find everyday examples in our society of reason dominating

There seems to be tension that builds throughout the book, perhaps sexual in nature. Author Russel Smith refers to this as a “confusedly erotic dimension” to the novel (Smith 122). This may sound strange, sexual tension between a human and a tiger, but it has nothing to do with the actual act of sex. Rather, this idea that M dominates the tiger, and that he is the only one to hunt and kill her. “This tiger” he says “the last of her kind, what does she dream of? The scent of a mate” (Leigh 45). M sexualizes her because she is the last of her kind, untouched. He is the only one to catch her and take away her femininity—in the form of her reproductive organs. When he removes her ovaries he recognizes that “an egg, can be fertilized with the sperm of a semi-compatible organism, like a lynx or a wolf” and “a sperm could be fashioned from the thylacine’s own blood. Self-impregnation” (Leigh 166). This observation is really an excuse for his own disturbing thoughts. Smith says that “in a perverse way—crossing boundaries of human and animal, natural and technological—M is the thylacine’s longed- for mate” (Smith 123). His attraction is obvious; “[the thylacine] is more than an animal to him” (Leigh 164). The question is, why does he have this attraction to this beast, and why is he so adamant about being the only one to find and kill

Just as we did with the dodo bird or the passenger pigeon, we destroy. Generally, men have a greater tendency to ignore and dominate nature, as they don’t have the same connection and empathy for it that women do. Ecofeminist Greta Gaard makes the connection between the destruction of nature and the domination of women. “She claims that while one can reject the ecofeminist claims about women’s biological affinity with nature, this does not mean rejecting the links between men’s oppression of women and men’s ecologically destructive practices” (Pease 117). We dominate nature the same way that M does. We fetishize and admire it, and then we destroy it. Pease says “if men’s relationship with nature is founded on hegemonic masculinity, then a nonoppressive relationship with nature will require a transformation of dominant ways of being a man, if not a retreat from manhood itself” (Pease 121). In many other real-world examples, reason dominates nature. Not only do we abuse our planet by taking what we need to eat—and more, but also taking what we want to study. Many cases around the world prove this idea that we need to be the only one to obtain something; collectors cars, one-of-a-kind NFTS, and extinct species. Humans, especially men, crave this ownership, just as M craves the ownership of the thylacine