Pet Reflection 1

 Joshua Singh

Dr. Ellis

EN 376

One of the first things I noticed in Pet is at the onset, imagery of society is changed. Angels and monsters become the subject of the narrator’s voice. The author, Akwaeke Emezi, also opens with themes of remembrance and memory. It appears that the society presented is a futuristic one that has lost its touch with its roots; the perspectives of those the narration follows is one that did not live before the revolution. That being said, what they know of the past is through stories, pictures, images of the past that are older generations’ interpretations. Jam says, So pictures could be wrong–wait, no. She’d seen too much of her mother’s work to think that simply. Pictures could be flat-out lies” (Emezi 14). This echoes the idea that older generations’ presentations of the past do not always reflect objective reality.

At the end of chapter one, Jam reminisces on Aloe’s words: “It’s not the same when the monsters are gone. You’;re only remembering shadows of them, stories that seem to be limited to the pages or screens you read them from. Flat and dull. So, yes, people forget but forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back” (Emezi 20). Again, the idea that the past cannot be lost is echoed. Pet also seems to echo this in the sense that it speaks to Jam in her mother’s voice (Emezi 36). 

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