Catalina Ramirez

Timothy K. Dalton

Narrative Medicine 10113

October 12, 2023

Cattle and Butterfly: The Metaphorical Cross Section of Healthcare and Nature

Metaphors are a portal through which the mind can see the world and understand the complexities of life. Without realizing the use of metaphors is prevalent in daily life and has become almost natural to hear. Metaphors can be an attempt to convey a feeling, criticize society, or understand an idea further, drawing clear connections between tangible creation and abstract thought. In the metaphor “We are cattle, waiting, perhaps, to be sent to slaughter” within Eula Biss’ work On Immunity and the lyrical metaphor “happiness is a butterfly” in Lana Del Rey’s song “Happiness is a butterfly” both serve a definitive purpose as clarifying metaphors using the characteristics of collectivism and individuality to demonstrate the connection between humanity and nature. 

Metaphors serve as powerful literary devices, and by examining the metaphor “We are cattle, waiting, perhaps to be sent to slaughter” present in On Immunity by Eula Biss, one can gain a deeper understanding of how this metaphor clarifies her address of the importance of perceptions and the language used in metaphors employed in relation to healthcare. Biss makes her point by equating humanity as a whole group to cattle, bringing to light how the term “herd immunity” implies that humans are like livestock and animals, where slaughter refers to the deterioration of the human mind when there is not autonomous thought. Humans are highly complex creatures and the most intelligent life form on earth while cattle rely on external caretakers to live and do not have an independent mind nor the ability to make independent decisions. Thus, this connection of humanity to domesticated mammals that cannot think for themselves implies the foolishness of humanity. Biss believes that the term herd immunity has a negative connotation related to a herd or herd-like mentality, even stating that humans are on a “stampede towards stupidity” for not questioning the terminology related to vaccination (Biss 2014). She criticizes the medical world and how the term “herd immunity” conveys that an entire group adopts a similar mindset almost like they are brainwashed. This metaphor plays with the narrative of the natural order, where there is autonomy, bloodshed, and chaos if humans really did follow a herd mentality blindly like cattle and Eula Biss fights this description of immunization. 

In addition, in Lana Del Rey’s song ‘Happiness is a butterfly,’ the metaphor of ‘happiness is a butterfly’ invites a profound exploration of the nature of happiness by clarifying that it is fleeting and elusive, unlike cattle which are unmoving and rigid in stance. Lana Del Rey is creating a direct comparison between happiness and a butterfly. Happiness is widely considered a positive and pleasant emotion, while butterflies are creatures with adorned wings that fly and feed off of sweet flower nectar. Lana elaborates on this metaphorical connection more in the following lyrics “Try to catch it like every night / it escapes from my hands into moonlight” (Lana Del Rey 2019). The relationship is clear, stating that happiness is as fleeting and beautiful as a butterfly is. Furthermore, these two lyrics mean she sings the same song over and over and her days are mere repetitions of the previous day. She is looking for happiness and then losing it day and night, making it a never ending quest. Her message conveys the elusive nature of happiness and that no matter how much one makes an attempt to grasp it, it is not something someone can force- whereas cattle can be coerced into action,- but it is the tranquility of nature that brings upon its gift.  In using a creature that is perceived as beautiful to demonstrate how happiness is vanishing or seems to fly away, Lana is romanticizing her pain and heartbreak of not being able to achieve or attain happiness. Similarly, people try to romanticize illness by always pushing a positive narrative on illness or positive outcome rather than being realistic and accepting that illness is a dark part of life. Nature is perceived as a beautiful phenomena, and butterflies are seen as pretty and delicate, making happiness a pretty and fleeting thing. 

Though both Biss’ and Del Rey’s metaphors convey the connection made between humanity and human desires to the world of nature, they do so by focusing on different traits found within each metaphor with respect to cattle and butterfly respectively. For instance, in Biss’ work On Immunity, it is the bovine qualities that make a clear line to the collectivism of cattle where the structured and rigid nature of their lifestyle in a sea of several others of their kind is predetermined. Cattle have no choice but to follow others. They survive by staying in a group and mirror the actions of those around them to be able to eat and be cared for typically by a farmhand. The life of cattle can be described as plain and there is an ugliness found in living a plain life that does not have an influence by the individual, where every step is calculated and dictated by someone and it is stifling. The metaphorical comparison is alluding to the use of the medical term “herd immunity” where people lose the right to independent reason through deduction as a result of personal experience and knowledge as opposed to given information that must be followed. There is no freedom in being told what to believe and it is constraining and suffocating to be lost among carbon copies of predetermined fates. Furthermore, the phrase perhaps signifies that this mundane routine action is a real possibility and that it needs to be immediately stopped before we are “slaughtered” and lose our ability and willingness to have independent thought. This is in relation to the way treatment for patients is very routine where patients are almost told what to feel and when and they are given a timeline of how long they have to live, and it strips patients of their motivation to do everything possible to reach health again since their end has already been resolved. This is in contrast to the way the metaphor in Lana Del Rey’s song is laid out. In “Happiness is a butterfly” it is the trait of beauty found within a butterfly that helps highlight its unique nature, and makes a connection to its singularity and individuality. It is a butterfly’s delicate individuality that creates a comparison to happiness and how each of us are on our own personal journey to achieve or gain happiness. Not all of us will have it often or the same way as happiness as was established before is fleeting, but nevertheless there is self-determination in the process of defining personal happiness and attaining it. It is this individuality in the journey to happiness that is comparable to a person suffering from an illness that determines healing in their own way when struggling through or after a particular disease. There is the unique experience of the individual and it is health that seems fleeting, where everyone wants it in their own way and has personal experience that helps to solidify its meaning and importance to them. Not everyone wants to achieve conventional happiness, just as not everyone desires to be physically healed and individuals are able to be at peace and are mentally freed with the knowledge that they are comfortable in their situation and they made the choice for themselves. While there is ugliness found in collectivism and lack of self-determination, there is beauty in individuality and the ability to enkindle a unique path. The point in both metaphors is not to state that health is something that everyone should revel in and revere, but that the process to find health or to accept illness is a self-determined path that should not be dictated by others. 

In both Eula Biss’ work ‘On Immunity’ and Lana Del Rey’s song ‘Happiness is a butterfly,’ the metaphors ‘We are cattle, waiting, perhaps, to be sent to slaughter’ and ‘happiness is a butterfly,’ respectively, distinctly clarify the human experience by drawing parallels with the tangible aspects of nature. Though both use nature as the means of conveying their message, each uses nature to describe and imply different outcomes. For instance, Biss focuses on the horror or being compared to cattle, implying that we are brainless and would follow any command blindly and the death of human intellectual independence to evoke a reevaluation of medical terminology, while Del Rey’s focal point is how quickly happiness leaves, that it is a beautiful as a butterfly, yet never stays permanently, using the beauty of a butterfly to romanticize pain of not continually experiencing happiness. In both cases, these metaphors contemplate the concepts of collectivism and individuality that are found in human existence and the natural world, ultimately emphasizing the power of metaphor as a lens through which we can better understand and connect with our own lives. 

Citations: 

Biss, Eula. On Immunity: An Innoculation, Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 2016, pp. 1–26.

Lana Del Rey – Topic. “Happiness Is a Butterfly.” YouTube, 29 Aug. 2019, 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbcXvlEa7Wk.