Animals feature prominently throughout Feito’s novel, functioning as a motif that represents Winifred’s misanthropic view of humanity and thus The Normalization of Systemic Violence. Winifred sees very little difference between humans and animals, which stems from the worldview inculcated in her as she grew up: “When I was a child, Mother taught me to pet animals and smaller children gently by repeating this over and over. Good boy. Good girl. As I stroked their pelts, their arms, their heads. Calibrating my strength, the potential violence in my hands” (22). Winifred takes a predatory stance towards all the people she encounters throughout the novel, including her charges, Andrew and Drusilla; her employer and father, Mr. Pounds; and towards Sue Lamb, whose last name fittingly emphasizes the predator-prey dynamic that Winifred enacts with her.

Animals help Winifred to channel her cruelty. In one of the first incidents where Winifred’s true self emerges before the Pounds children, Winifred kills a dying roe deer during a morning walk. Winifred justifies the incident by telling the children that it was the merciful thing to do for an animal in pain. When Andrew protests that this was not the case for the deer, Winifred asserts that all creatures live in pain. Conversely, other characters use animals to channel their own cruelty towards Winifred. As a punishment for breaking a house rule against dogs indoors, Mrs. Pounds forces Winifred to spend a night in the dog kennel.

Winifred also sees animals as tools to achieve acts of vindication. While contemplating her attraction to Sue Lamb, Winifred recalls a childhood incident where she had convinced herself that she had befriended a crow that had fallen dead from a tree. Winifred uses the same dead crow to poison lunch at the school, viewing the crow as her sole accomplice in the act. Similarly, when Mr. Pounds shows disproportionate favor for Andrew over Drusilla, Winifred takes it out on Andrew by luring him into the stables and provoking the horse to seriously injure the boy. In this way, Winifred satisfies the “Darkness” that brews inside her.