In Literature
The short story Romulus (1883) by the Danish author Karl Gjellerup features cruelty to a noble race horse. The story was inspired by a contemporary case where the Royal Chamberlain was accused of animal cruelty.
The play Equus from 1973 elaborates the psychology of a young horse mutilator. It also was inspired by a then-contemporary series of horse blindings. Based on the play, the film Equus was produced in 1977.
In Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Raskolnikov has a dream about a mare being whipped and eventually bludgeoned to death with an iron bar by a drunken man, while a large crowd encourages and helps him.
Read more about this topic: Horse-ripping
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“This is not “writing” at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)