The apes give the humans no rights. They give them no chances. Although the humans can walk upright and speak their language, they still look down upon them. With the apes being physically stronger than them, they could do nothing but sit back and take the punishment. I believe it is safe to say that humans were not treated like humans. The situation felt very familiar. The Europeans believed themselves to be the superior race, and they enslaved the natives of America and Africa to do their work, as if they were animals.
In the scene where the cage is being drug through town, the little ape boys begin to throw stones at the humans saying that his father said it was okay. Those humans, they were locked up in cages. They were compacted together, uncomfortably in a cage. They did not receive seats, there was even one man who appeared to be very ill, or dead. These humans don't even receive protection from a little ape boy.
Another scene I would like to mention is the one where the little ape girl purchase a human little girl and takes her as a pet. The small child is separated from her mother, she is then given a collar and a cage. You can see the small child has been crying, and it appears that her cries were silent. That small girl may have understood that there was no way out of her situation. The apes had no care in the world about taking the small child from her mother. The only thing mentioned was, "Make sure you get rid of her before puberty." Harsh.
The final scene I would like to mention includes the house humans: the bald man and the Asian lady. The were so well behaved compared to the new house humans. They knew when to bow and when serve. They even stayed quiet in their cage at night. They accepted their fate.
All of those scenes show how inhumanely the humans are treated. We may sit back in awe and shock, but in our very on country, humans have been placed side by side in vehicles, their children had been sold away and some humans decided against even fighting their situations anymore , they decided it was just the way of their life. Those humans had people like Ari; they had others who would risk their social status to get them equality.
The apes and the humans are equal in intelligence, the apes just became more advanced technologically before the humans could, giving the apes justification to treat the humans as barbarians just as the white man had done to the natives of the lands they colonized. Though the humans were treated as animals, their captivity resembled that of slaves more than of pets. The difference is not that big, seeing as slaves were indeed treated as animals. This treatment of course is justified by the fact that the enslaved races had less technology and were therefore “inferior.” But your point that the humans had no choice but to act indifferently to their treatment, I believe is true because they are given no chance to catch up with the apes in evolution. The chance only comes when Leo arrives with his fancy space machines to totally show those monkeys who’s boss!
ReplyDelete~Lydia Kolda