Turkeys Turning the Tables (1893)

AUTHOR: Howells, William Dean

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Howells's short story questions the ethics of meat consumption by means of the trope of reversal: turkeys decide to eat humans for Christmas. The story uses a frame narrative in which a father tells his daughter a “Thanksgiving” story “on Christmas morning” (25). The embedded narrative that follows presents an account of a family Thanksgiving dinner, including the traditional Thanksgiving turkey, “a gobbler … that was nearly as big as a giraffe” (28). “It took the premium at the county fair,” the father continues, “and when it was dressed it weighed fifteen pounds – well, maybe twenty – and it was so heavy that the grandmothers and the aunties couldn't put it on the table, and they had to get one of the papas to do it” (28). Much of the ensuing evening conversation revolves around the massive turkey, so much so that “the mammas and aunties began ... to say they did believe they should dream about that turkey; and when the papas kissed the grandmother good-night, they said, Well, they must have his mate for Christmas” (30). Soon “everybody was fast asleep and dreaming” (30), except the little girl who is subsequently haunted by visions of the ghost of the Thanksgiving turkey, who blames the family for killing and eating it:

It had a red pasteboard placard round its neck, with First Premium printed on it, and so she knew that it was the ghost of the very turkey they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up its tail, and dropped its wings, and strutted just the way the grandfather said it used to do. It seemed to be in a wide pasture, like that back of the house, and the children had to cross it to get home, and they were all afraid of the turkey that kept gobbling at them and threatening them, because they had eaten him up (33).

Indeed, in the dream-vision the turkey, together with the “hen-turkeys and turkey chicks” announces that “they were going to turn the tables now” (34, 37). Preparing to eat the little girl, “[h]e said that human beings had been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of America, and it was time for the turkeys to begin paying them back, if they were ever going to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as big as he was, and he had no doubt they would enjoy her” (37). The little girl pleads with the turkeys, trying to convince them that “there was a great difference between eating people and just eating turkeys” on the grounds that “[p]eople have got souls, and turkeys haven't,” just as “people have got reason … and turkeys have only got instinct” (38, 39).

At this point, the little girl of the frame tale seems to recognize that the girl in the embedded narrative cannot offer a convincing argument for carnism, exclaiming: “What could she say?” (38). Still, she thinks that the turkeys should be “ashamed” of their carnist behavior (38). In this way the story ironically acknowledges the shamefulness of human carnism. The point is made explicit soon after, when

one little brat of a spiteful little chick piped out, “I speak for a drumstick, ma!” and then they all began: “I want a wing, ma!” and “I'm going to have the wish-bone!” and “I shall have just as much stuffing as ever I please, shan't I, ma?” till the other little girl was perfectly disgusted with them; she thought they oughtn't to say it before her, anyway; but she had hardly thought this before they all screamed out, "They used to say it before us," and then she didn't know what to say, because she knew how people talked before animals (41).

The turkey subsequently reveals to the little girl that “every one of [her] friends has been eaten up long ago” (42), but she is spared because she promises that “if they would let her go … people should never eat turkeys any more” (43). Indeed, she announces that she will “never, never, never eat another piece of turkey either at Thanksgiving or at Christmas” (45).