Animal Empathy in William S. Burroughs' The Cat Inside

William Burroughs (1914 – 1997) was a core member of the Beat Generation, a postwar literary movement that developed in the United States. A prolific and inventive writer, Burroughs made a significant contribution to American letters. Scholars and critics have commonly described his work as a reaction to Cold War fears and mid-century economic and moral homogeneity. Such a connection between his work and social tensions is not surprising. Indeed, much of his early published pieces did chronicle doom in the form of bureaucrats, police machinery, drug addiction, or organized religion. However, viewing his work as a reflection of the Cold War has limited recent reception of his work, and unjustly places it in the past. Can a green rereading of Burroughs' "The Cat Inside" show that the onetime urban addict was really ecologically conscious? This paper will examine how human and animal suffering is represented in the work. The interactions between humans and animals will also be investigated in the text. What can a green rereading of Burroughs tell us about his continued relevance in a time of environmental crisis