a valid comparison? Why/Why not? We have closed our hearts to animals, Costello concludes, and our minds follow our hearts (or more strictly speaking, our sympathies). Philosophy (according to Costello) is impotent in its ability to push society in the right direction because it fails to engage with everyone's sympathies. Ironically, the burden rests on something other than the rational dimensions, to which philosophy so often refers. Our sympathetic imagination, to which poetry and fiction appeal more than philosophy, should extend to other animals. As readers, it is our duty to be continually vigilant about the methods by which fiction and discourse structure our vision so as to omit the acts of evil in which we find ourselves unconsciously engaged. Following the theories presented by Costello (through Coetzee) and the comparison made between the slaughter of animals and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, may I agree and say that such comparison valid? Can we first conclude that Costello protests too much? Based on my understanding of the text, it would be plausible to suggest that Costello is self-aware. Costello anticipates his most hostile critiques, recognizing "how comments like this polarize people and how low points only make things worse" (Coetzee 22). The conversation she is referring to is a correlation between the way her people treat animals and the way the Third Reich treated Jews. “By treating other human beings – beings created in the image of God, like beasts” (she said of the Nazis). “They become beasts themselves” (Coetzee 21). She then continues: "we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty and murder that rivals anything the Third Reich...... middle of paper...... and pleasure? Costello highlights her difficulties accepting that she is one of the few people who has difficulty understanding this. Therefore, the main thrust of Costello's argument is epistemological rather than political or even moral. The challenge Costello presents to his audience is to consider for a moment that what we enjoy at the table is actually an act of murder. Are the actions that human beings consider ethically moral actually violence that we inflict, to the detriment of the lives of others? In this environment, the result is not only an invisible holocaust, but one that, in many ways, presents itself as the holocaust that saw more than 6 million Jews murdered. In such a context, the production of thought, of human culture itself, cannot be anything other than the continuous production of omissions, deceptions and epistemological unconsciousness...