I waded through ‘Among Animals and Plants’ without really capturing the overarching theme, the topic that unites all of the story’s complex parts. I caught the first glimpse of a theme on page 161 when Platonov describes Fyodorov’s longing for the world beyond his village, stating that, “Out there was science, fame, higher education, the new Moscow Metropolitan railway, while here were only animals, the forest and his family…”. Throughout the story, the reader is reminded of Fyodorov’s desire to see the larger and more developed world. He expresses a hunger for breaking away from his small village life surrounded by animals and plants, wanting to break into the world of theater, science, fame, and the new Moscow Metropolitan railway that he hears about on the radio. Each time he brings up this different world, he compares it to his own – a depressing life with nothing to do but work and worry. We see his longing in the many instances he uses his imagination to better the dull and meaningless situation he’s in. On page 168 Fyodorov dreams up an entire world to identity unknown passengers on the train, delving deep into a fictional story about the woman’s bloody and tear-saturated handkerchief. On the following page, he describes his reading tactic of starting a book in the middle or end pages to avoid the monotony of the beginning, as the writer “is just thinking”. All of these instances combined, I had a grasp on the fact that Fyodorov was unhappy in his life, yearning for something more creative, exciting, and rewarding.

Scanning the story over once more, a quote on page 162 caught my eye: “Next a choir of young girls’ voices began a song about heroic socialism, about happy people, about interesting life…the sense of the music remained clear: people should live in bliss, not in need and torment”. The key word here is “heroic socialism” and once I caught on to that, I was able to understand living in “bliss” to mean existentialism and conversely, living in “need and torment” to represent the current socialist state of Russia at that time. With this, I found that overarching theme, then coloring the way I understood the metaphors I didn’t originally pick up on. For example, I was confused by the extreme anger Fyodorov felt toward ants at the beginning of the story, claiming that “They spend all their lives dragging goods into their kingdom; they exploit every solitary animal, both big and small, that they can dominate; they know nothing of the universal common interest and live only for their own greedy, concentrated well-being” (156). Fyodorov’s view of the ants is simply a reflection of what he sees in himself, and accordingly, his disapproval of socialism.

Something seemed off to me the first time I read this story – Fyodorov was clearly unhappy but I wasn’t able to pinpoint why. Taking into consideration the political climate of the time, it makes sense that Fyodorov feels unfulfilled, craving the freedom to dictate his own development in a socialist world.