Discussion (300 words)

In the novel “How the Dead Dream” by Lydia Millet the narrator tells us that the lives of zoo animals “were simple monotony. They slept to use up time; this was how their days were spent, the last sons and daughters” (165). What is the parallel Millet is constructing between the monotony of animals lives and that of, for instance, T.’s mother or Casey? What does T. come to understand about the ways that extinction aligns animal and human experience?