Filled In: o gato e a projeção antropomórfica (C2)
We are told, usually by people who own one, that the cat is the only domestic animal to have negotiated the terms of its captivity. This is flattering to both parties and almost certainly false. What the cat has achieved is subtler and far more useful: it has made its indifference legible as personality. The dog transmits; the cat merely permits itself to be interpreted, and we, an interpreting species, mistake the vacancy for depth. Consider how the household describes it. He is aloof, we say, or he is judging me, or he forgives me only when hungry — attributing to a small predator an inner life exactly the size of our own anxieties. No other animal is so consistently praised for qualities it cannot possess. The proof lies in what happens when the interpretation fails. A cat sits for an hour facing a blank wall, and the room, having no story available, briefly goes uneasy; the joke about ghosts is made; the subject is changed. In that gap one glimpses the actual arrangement. It is not a companion who has agreed to live with us. It is a wild thing that has found the temperature convenient, and whose great social gift is a talent for being filled in.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
O articulista constrói sua crítica ao
- A) denunciar a domesticação como forma de cativeiro disfarçada de convivência, defendendo o retorno do animal a seu estado selvagem.
- B) expor que a suposta personalidade do gato é uma projeção humana sobre um vazio interpretativo, evidenciada no momento em que a leitura antropomórfica falha.
- C) comparar cães e gatos para concluir que apenas o primeiro estabelece com os humanos uma relação afetiva genuína e mensurável.
- D) atribuir ao gato uma inteligência estratégica capaz de manipular deliberadamente as expectativas emocionais de seus tutores.
- E) ridicularizar a superstição doméstica, sugerindo que crenças em fantasmas nascem da incapacidade de observar animais com rigor.