One theme represented in these short-stories that fascinated me was the idea that there is a clear and important distinction between the lives of humans and their animal counterparts. And that the different experiences are profound, so much so that it defines what it means to be human. This difference poses a difficult question: who is freer, humans or animals? While humans have criss-crossed the world with roads, trains and planes, discovered the secret laws of our universe, and literally broken through the boundary of the cosmos, humans overwhelmingly feel trapped and overwhelmed by the society that they have created. That is in sharp contrast to a bear walking through the woods, able to urinate wherever it wants (satisfy its primal urges) and be able to sleep soundly, not plagued by existential dread or the thought of billions of its kind needlessly suffering around the world. The animal’s only worry while sleeping is if it will eat that night, or be eaten.

In the short story Among Animals and Plants by Andrey Platonov, the main character Fyodorov describes when he would watch sleeping dogs, cats, and chickens: “They had chewed with their mouths and pronounced blissful sounds, sometimes half-opening eyes blind with sleep and then closing them again, stirring a little, wrapping themselves in their own bodies’ warmth and moaning from the sweetness of their own existence.” These animals aren’t burdened by their own existence the same way in which humans are. Of course, their lives are often less secure and predictable, but they have no conception of good or bad, of being embarrassed or heartbroken. Their lives are governed by the far simpler impulses of hunger, self-protection, and sexual desire.

Because of this blissful ignorance, and lack of self-reflection, Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal argues that animals don’t fear death in the same way humans do. In Wolves, Annibal argues that “‘Well, but what does it matter that we’re sinful?’ ‘Well, then, we need to repent.’ ‘Well, so?’ ‘Well, now that only God knows. Even death isn’t fearful for an animal, see, because, like I explained to you, an animal has no sin. Man’s the only one has to worry about death.’” She is arguing that because animals don’t have any conception of sin, they are liberated from the shadow of death that hangs over humans their whole life.

This is not to say that the stories are always arguing that the added complexity of human life is a negative. I was struck while reading the same story, Wolves by Annibal, the description of the invalid mother, who describes the beauty of society while telling her daughter about her connection to the broader world in spite of her disease: “I can go all over Russia, over the whole earth, through mountains and villages and cities, into the monasteries and wild forests . . . And sons and daughters-all God’s children on the earth, and you, my loved ones, are also in my heart. For there’s an endless amount of room in the human heart, and there’s more of love’s flame than is needed to set earth on fire, but that fire of love does no harm, like the burning bush, the fire did no harm, but burned, and has not burned out.” No matter the difficulty of human life, there is a profound beauty in the human heart’s capacity to love and to connect with other human’s hearts. A privilege that is (probably) found in only one species on Earth.