The Garden of the Stubborn Cats is a funny and interesting short story about animals and their protectiveness over their land. A man who is on his break for food follows a cat because he has nothing better to do and leads him to a restaurant. The man sees a tank full of good looking fish and steals one, only for the cat to take it away. The man, outraged, chases after the cat and it leads him to a lush garden full of animals. The fish is taken away by the woman that owns the land through a window. There are other people there feeding the cats as well, and they say that the woman apparently refuses to sell the land. The man enters the woman's home, trying to get his fish back, and the woman exclaims that she has tried to sell the land but the animals refuse to let her sign the contracts. Later on, the woman dies, and many companies try to build on her land. However, the animals still stay in the area, refusing to leave because it is the only place without structures being built. Nothing is able to be done because the animals disrupt everything.
The main theme of this short story is how nature powers over humans. In the story, the animals refuse to allow the old lady to sign the contract, allowing them to keep the land and live. The animals also destroyed building equipment and messed with the constructions, never allowing them to complete the building project and screwing up their lives. The animals in this story symbolize the natural world that man has given up for new technology and buildings. They represent the last piece of nature in a world where there are only tall buildings and structures. Things like parks and landscapes don't exist anymore in this environment where everything is replaced with cars and roads.
The type of writing that is used in this story is magical realism. The author uses a detailed description of each new setting and person, and also uses long sentences in the writing. Every new thing introduced in the story is written critically with vivid description. He uses personifications throughout the story, describing the cats as stubborn and giving them certain human-like qualities that animals usually don’t have. The tone throughout this story is lighthearted and humorous, contrasting the pretty serious theme. The story also has some fable sort of style, because the animals are the main part of the theme in the story. The author of this story, Italo Calvino, writes using a lot of description, and we can easily see that in this story.
Some of the major symbols in this story are the cats. They represent nature in all its glory. Nature never backs down, fighting for its life, just like how the cats never gave up on trying to keep their land safe. That land was their only life, because without it, they would have nowhere comfortable to live. In the story’s world, everything was taken over by buildings, and places where animals could actually survive in nature were scarce, if not completely impossible to find. Marcovaldo is also a symbol in this story, representing humans, and how they take from nature, building on it’s land and destroying the beautiful plants and trees. Some of the people in the story that go to feed the cats say that the old woman is greedy, for keeping the land all to herself, because it would make a great buildings, Others think that she treats the animals terribly, but no one knows the true story of why she hates the cats except for Marcovaldo.
The Garden of the Stubborn Cats is a truly incredible story, highlighting the fact that nature will always win over people. In this story, we learn that not all people are what they seem, because the people that feed the cats judge the old lady even though they don’t know what she’s been through.
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