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Edgar Espana
Kara Lybarger-Monson
English MO1B
February 29, 2012

Questioning Ones Power

In T.C. Boyle’s novel When the Killings Done, Dave LaJoy the so-called animal lover and animal rights activist, who by the way hates humans, faces-off with Alma Boyd Takesue, the real animal lover that is trying to restore “Eden” to the way it was before being infested by rats and feral pigs. Both Alma and Dave are interested in animal rights but have different ways in doing so, Alma even though she’d rather not kill anything has to eliminate animals from Eden because she is dedicated to preserving the species unique to Eden’s environment and Dave, on the other hand, is on a determined mission to “save animals” even though the way he goes about it is very destructive. They both will do whatever it takes to preserve the animal’s rights even if that means lives are lost. Throughout the story, we find out that both Alma and Dave question their motives on how they are fighting for the animals rights. Like despite all the power Alma has, she doesn’t really know what to do with it and we also find out Dave questions his motive of controlling because he lacks the power Alma has. Because of each characters’ internal conflict, the actual power of each character is shown: Dave questions his motives of controlling because he lacks the power to do so and ironically, Alma questions her actions even though she has complete control. Alma is very dedicated to what she does such as she will be remembered as the animal killer. She will do what has to be done in order to preserve the endangered species that are unique to the Channel Islands. But through all that dedication Alma has a lot of self-doubt because she has so much power over these animals but even with all that power she doesn’t know what to do with it. We see her dedication when Alicia, Alma’s assistant questions