Language through names and naming in animal people“For his species we are not really people. We have no names” (Sinha 9). In the second chapter of Animal's People, its protagonist Animal talks about eyes, eyes that fill the darkness, that appear wherever you look and look for things to see. He says that the eyes come every time he begins to speak, they observe in silence and wait patiently, and then settle like flies on the images that arise from everything he says. “In this crowd of eyes I try to recognize yours. I was waiting for you to appear, to recognize you from all the others, so Kakadu Jarnalis had said in his letter. He said, 'Animal, you must imagine that you are talking to only one person. Slowly that person will come to seem real to you. Imagine they are friends. You have to trust them and open your heart, that person will not misjudge you no matter what you say.' You are reading my words, you are that person. I don't have a name for you so I'll call you Eyes. My job is to talk, yours is to listen. So now listen” (ibid. 13-14). The animal asserts its position as the novel's narrator by addressing its readers as Eyes, drawing on Jarnalis' instructions on how to tell his story. Jarnalis told him to imagine a presence, an undefined person who will soon feel like a friend with whom he can be honest and tell them his story. Animal turns the metaphor on its head: he says that the eyes became real and began to haunt him until a single pair emerged from the indefinite crowd, Eyes, the reader himself. The reader soon realizes that he will not be a passive consumer of the story nor an omniscient presence observing developments from a bird's eye view, but rather eyes fixed on the Animal, unable to look... in the middle of the paper.. ...the lines fade away when Animal receives a letter informing him that he can undergo surgery to correct his spine and make him walk upright. Animal's narrator ends the novel ambiguously, confronting a difficult decision he must make regarding surgery: “If I were a righteous human being, I would be one among millions, and not even a healthy one. Stay on all fours, I am the one and only Animal” (ibid. 366). The decision appears to remain open, leaving room for Eyes' interpretation and imagination. However, despite the wiles of the unreliable narrator, the novel's ending gives the reader an advantage. When Animal sees Ma Franci in one of the last acts and she tells him that they will meet in heaven, his statement comes as a direct response to Farouq's statement that "[p]aradise is for humans, not for animals " (ibid. 208): «I know that one day I will meet her there» (ibid. 365).