Pride of Baghdad

Product Information

March 20, 2018, marked the 15th anniversary since the Bush/Cheney administration proclaimed the U.S. would be greeted as liberators of Iraq. More farcical words could not have been said (perhaps Ronald Reagan’s 1985 dedication of the Space Shuttle Columbia to the Taliban is a close rival: “these gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's Founding Fathers”). No one faults Cheney for being a failed Nostradamus, but it’s clear he knew better than to invade Iraq. In his own words, during a 1994 C-SPAN interview, Cheney was asked why the US did not take Baghdad during the first Gulf War: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. In 2003, the Iraq war was triggered because of Hussein's violent suppression on the people, who have their own political views, but also his possession of the large amount of illegal weapons. The novel not only presents the consequence of dictatorship, but also satirizes the interference of U. S. army because the public opinion says that the reason of U. S. involving the war is impure since no evidence has been found to prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The main purpose of U. S. army invading is the oil resources in Iraq; however, by coincidence, Hussein is on the reign, which causes the U. Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: The book implies lions commit rape, can't swim, and that males never hunt. None of this is true. The premise of the escape is padded with anthropomorphized conversation between the lions (bringing obvious Orwell parallels), exploring the nature of captivity. There’s argument between the lions over whether it is better to be held captive by benevolent keepers, and fed regularly, or live free with the possibility of going hungry. One thoughtful commentator pointed out that the rape scene never actually comes to the attention of the protagonist, meaning it couldn't be an attempt to build his character. So I guess it's just extraneous to the plot? I'll beg off debating which is worse.

Zill doesn’t have strong opinions about whether freedom or captivity would be better. Ultimately, his concern is the well-being of his pride regardless of what happens. He represents pragmatic Iraqis trying to adapt to the chaos while protecting their families.Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people,my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. Despite being mighty predators, the lions are free in a world that was never meant for them. They are motivated by a quest for food, yet their attempts to eat are continually thwarted as the result of rational and human decision making. They choose not to eat the turtle out of pity and question eating a man’s corpse because of their previous relationship with humans. In the historic events that inspired the story, the lions were starving and desperate, which justify the soldiers’ actions, however in the story, the lions’ conscious decisions not to eat mark them as sympathetic and humanized characters.

Time Abyss: The sea turtle, being old enough to remember the first Gulf War is this to the lions due to their shorter lifespans. Leong, Tim. Interview with Brian K. Vaughan. Comic Foundry, July 6, 2006. Available at http://comicfoundry.com/?p=1522. Not Worth Killing: After Fajer is crushed by the stampeding horses, he begs the lions to put him out of his misery. Noor wants to, but Zill says it is better to leave him as he is to die in agony since he deserves it. They take their leave to let him die slowly and painfully. A brightly colored tragedy, Pride of Baghdad is as unblinking as the perils faced every day in the real Iraq."-- USA TODAY

GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE

Positive Content: Characters rescue and aid one another in times of peril. The four lions, despite their differences, work together towards a common goal. A lion chooses not to kill potential prey. Zill had never seen such big birds before Review Late-Arrival Spoiler: If you know the story is based on a real life newspaper article, then you most likely know how it ends.

Vaughn himself has said in interviews that he never intended certain species to represent political groups so neatly, so it’s a futile exercise to try and map current affairs onto the creatures. That’s not to say that there’s no political commentary in the book – it’s decidedly anti-war – but this is first and foremost the story of a family attempting to find safety. If the lions represent anyone at all, then it is more likely to be those in Iraq displaced or killed by a war they never asked for. Pride of Baghdad earned praise from several notable comic reviewers and crossed into the world of mainstream entertainment. The literary tradition of talking animals expressing human sentiments echoes the work of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1946) and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), as well as the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman ( Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 1986) and Grant Morrison ( We3, 2004). While many aspects of the story can be read as a parable, the author has clarified that it is not a simple allegory in which each character represents something specific in twenty-first-century Iraq. The anthropomorphic depiction of the lions, in both language and reasoning, complicates their narrative role because it clashes with lions’ natural motivations and instincts. Almost a decade after its initial release, Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s Pride of Baghdad is still heartbreaking. The graphic novel recounts the fall of Baghdad during the 2003 American invasion as seen through the eyes of a pride of lions that fled the Baghdad Zoo. Violence: Several animals are harmed and killed in the graphic novel, whether by bullets or bombs. Animals bite and scratch each other. Humans and animal corpses are displayed. Someone is trampled after falling.

It’s easy to start to draw comparisons, in a novel you come to with political expectations, between the zoo keepers and the previous Iraqi regime or US occupation, but it’s not that simple. Vaughn hasn’t followed Orwell’s lead here, and the interaction between the lions and the various species they meet are not supposed to be an allegory for the nations involved in the war.