What Nobel Prize-winning poet Anne Carson and the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi reveal about language, perception, and the limits of human understanding.
A giraffe, a musk ox, and a dog named Bob.
At first glance, they hardly seem like the subjects of a philosophical inquiry. Yet in Between Us And, Canadian poet Anne Carson transforms these ordinary examples into a fascinating question about the way humans understand the world: does giving something a name mean we truly understand it?
Carson, who was awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, is celebrated for her unconventional approach to writing and her willingness to challenge literary boundaries. Her poem Between Us And, from Red Doc>, is a wonderful example of how she can turn an apparently trivial observation into something unexpectedly profound.
What makes the poem particularly interesting to me, however, is how closely its central question resonates with the ideas of an ancient Chinese philosopher who lived more than two thousand years earlier: Zhuangzi (莊子).
In particular, Carson's exploration of naming and classification recalls a fascinating passage from Zhuangzi's Discussion on Making All Things Equal (《齊物論》). Although the two writers belong to entirely different literary and philosophical traditions, reading them together reveals something intriguing about the relationship between language and reality.
And it all begins with a giraffe.
What's in a Name? Apparently, a Camel and a Leopard.
Carson opens her poem with the observation that between humans and animals lies a kind of namelessness. It's a curious statement, considering how enthusiastically humans have named virtually every creature we've encountered.
Her first example is the giraffe, which the ancient Romans called camelopardalis. The name reflects the animal's apparent resemblance to two more familiar creatures: the camel and the leopard. Faced with an unfamiliar animal, the Romans attempted to make sense of it by combining characteristics they already recognised.
There's something wonderfully amusing about this. Imagine encountering a giraffe for the first time, studying its extraordinarily long neck and spotted coat, and concluding that it must somehow be a combination of two animals you already know.
But beneath the humour lies an important observation about human understanding. When we encounter something unfamiliar, we instinctively try to interpret it through existing categories. We make comparisons, identify similarities, and search for familiar concepts that might help explain what we're seeing.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, comparison is fundamental to how we learn. The difficulty arises when we mistake the comparison for a complete explanation.
A giraffe may resemble a camel and a leopard, but it is neither. Its name tells us something about how the Romans perceived the animal, yet it cannot fully capture the creature itself.
Carson develops this idea through another example: the musk ox, which, despite its name, is more closely related to goats and sheep than to true oxen. Here, the problem becomes even more apparent. A name intended to help us identify an animal can actually encourage a misleading understanding of it.
Of course, the musk ox remains exactly what it is, regardless of what humans decide to call it. What changes is the way we perceive and categorise the animal.
This raises a subtle but important distinction: knowing what something is called is not necessarily the same as knowing what it is.
And this is where Carson's poem begins to remind me of Zhuangzi.
What an Ancient Chinese Philosopher Knew About Naming Things
In 《齊物論》, one of the most philosophically provocative chapters of the Zhuangzi, we encounter the following observation:
“道行之而成，物謂之而然。”
One possible translation is:
A path is formed by walking it; things become so through being called so.
The statement invites us to reconsider the relationship between language and reality. We tend to assume that the world exists in clearly defined categories and that language simply provides names for them. Yet Zhuangzi suggests that our descriptions and judgments play an important role in establishing how things are recognised and understood.
Consider how this relates to Carson's musk ox.
The animal was not transformed into an ox when humans gave it that name. Nevertheless, the label encourages us to understand it through the category of oxen. Once the name becomes familiar, we may accept the association without examining whether it accurately reflects the animal's biological relationships.
In this sense, language does more than communicate our understanding of the world. It can also shape that understanding.
Zhuangzi's argument, however, goes further than the observation that names can sometimes be misleading. Throughout 《齊物論》, he questions the distinctions and judgments through which humans organise their experience, particularly our tendency to treat one perspective as though it possesses unquestionable authority.
What appears obvious from one position may look quite different from another. Categories that seem natural or self-evident may depend, at least partly, on the standpoint from which we view them.
Carson's concerns are more specifically directed towards human attempts to name animals, whereas Zhuangzi is exploring broader philosophical questions about distinctions, judgment, and perspective. Nevertheless, both encourage us to examine the assumptions hidden within apparently straightforward acts of description.
And Zhuangzi illustrates this problem through a story that is every bit as amusing as Carson's giraffe.
Three Chestnuts in the Morning, Four at Night
In 《齊物論》, Zhuangzi recounts the story of a keeper who offers his monkeys three chestnuts in the morning and four in the evening. The monkeys are furious, so the keeper changes the arrangement: four chestnuts in the morning and three at night.
Suddenly, the monkeys are delighted.
The total number of chestnuts hasn't changed. They still receive seven. Yet the monkeys' reaction changes completely because the arrangement has been presented differently.
This is the famous story of 朝三暮四, an expression that has acquired a somewhat different meaning in modern Chinese but originally appears in a philosophical discussion about distinctions and judgments.
What makes the story so interesting is that the monkeys aren't reacting to a change in the total quantity of food. They are responding to the particular arrangement offered to them. The distinction between three in the morning and four at night, and four in the morning and three at night, matters greatly to them, even though the total remains identical.
Zhuangzi is not simply telling us that the monkeys are foolish. The story belongs to a broader discussion of how attachment to particular distinctions can obscure what different situations have in common.
And this is where the connection with Carson becomes especially illuminating.
In Between Us And, human beings encounter animals and understand them through names that emphasise selected characteristics. The Romans perceive the giraffe through its resemblance to other creatures, while the name musk ox encourages an association that doesn't accurately reflect its closest biological relationships.
Zhuangzi's monkeys, meanwhile, become preoccupied with one particular arrangement of their chestnuts, overlooking the unchanged total.
The situations aren't identical. Carson is concerned with naming and classification, whereas Zhuangzi's story explores differences in judgment and response. Yet both reveal how easily our attention can become fixed on a particular representation of reality.
We become so accustomed to the way something is described that we may forget to examine the thing itself.
This is hardly a problem confined to ancient philosophy or animal names. Consider how differently people might respond to a product advertised as “90% fat-free” rather than “10% fat”. Both descriptions communicate the same proportion, but the framing can influence our impressions.
Language is remarkably powerful precisely because it doesn't merely transmit information. It directs our attention, shapes our expectations, and influences the significance we attach to what we encounter.
The words we choose matter. But so do the assumptions we bring to them.
Spot, Beauty, and Bob: What Animal Names Reveal About Us
Returning to Carson's poem, we find that her observations become even more revealing when she moves from naming animal species to naming individual animals.
She offers three wonderfully ordinary examples: Spot, Beauty, and Bob.
Each represents a different way in which humans impose their own perspectives upon animals.
Spot identifies an animal through a visible characteristic. Beauty assigns it an abstract quality that humans admire. Bob gives it a name that could just as easily belong to another person.
The sequence is both amusing and surprisingly revealing. Carson moves from physical description to an abstract ideal and finally to a distinctly human identity, suggesting that our attempts to name animals are often shaped by our own habits of thinking.
What makes these examples particularly effective is that they are so familiar. Most of us wouldn't think twice about naming a dog Spot or Bob. Yet Carson makes us reconsider something we usually regard as completely unremarkable.
When we name an animal Beauty, whose understanding of beauty are we expressing? When we call an animal Bob, are we recognising its individuality or making it seem more like ourselves?
These questions bring us back to the concerns of 《齊物論》. Zhuangzi challenges our tendency to regard distinctions arising from our particular perspectives as universally authoritative. Carson, meanwhile, reveals how human assumptions can become embedded in the names we give other living beings.
Neither writer is suggesting that names are entirely useless. Without names, communicating about the world would become extraordinarily difficult. But both invite us to recognise that the categories through which we understand reality are not always as neutral, complete, or self-evident as they appear.
Perhaps this is what makes Carson's opening reference to the namelessness between humans and animals so intriguing. Despite all the names we've invented, there remains something about another creature's existence that our language cannot fully capture.
We can describe an animal's appearance, classify its species, and give it a familiar name. Yet none of these things necessarily tells us what it is like to experience the world as that animal.
The distance between our descriptions and the creature itself remains.
Perhaps Understanding Begins Where Our Labels End
What I find most fascinating about reading Anne Carson alongside Zhuangzi is that both make us question something we normally do without thinking: our confidence in the categories through which we understand the world.
Carson reveals the limitations of naming through a series of deceptively simple examples. Zhuangzi goes further, challenging the judgments and distinctions that shape our experience of reality.
Yet neither writer needs to abandon language to expose its limitations. Instead, both use language in inventive and sometimes humorous ways to make us more conscious of how it works.
There's also a rather satisfying irony in comparing these two writers. In attempting to understand Carson's poem, we've turned to Zhuangzi, using one familiar set of ideas to illuminate another. In a sense, we're doing something similar to what the Romans did when they understood the giraffe through its resemblance to a camel and a leopard.
But perhaps the lesson isn't that comparisons are inherently misleading. After all, comparisons can open up new ways of thinking and reveal connections we might otherwise overlook.
The important thing is to remember that a comparison is a beginning, not a complete explanation. Carson's poem may illuminate Zhuangzi's philosophical concerns, and Zhuangzi may deepen our appreciation of Carson's poem, but neither can be reduced entirely to the other.
The same is true of the names we give the world around us.
A giraffe may remind us of a camel and a leopard, but it remains something more than either comparison. A musk ox may carry the name of an ox, but its biological identity isn't determined by that label.
Perhaps genuine understanding begins when we recognise that the world is always more complicated than the words we use to describe it.
And that's what I love about literature. A seemingly simple poem about animal names can suddenly open up questions about language, perception, philosophy, and the assumptions we didn't even realise we were making.
At Between the Lines, we believe that reading isn't simply about understanding what the words on a page mean. It's about noticing the ideas they invite us to question, the perspectives they challenge, and the unexpected connections they make possible.
Because sometimes, the most interesting discoveries begin when we realise that the meanings we've taken for granted deserve a second look.
And sometimes, all it takes is a giraffe, seven chestnuts, and a dog named Bob.
Further Reading
Anne Carson, Between Us And — Poetry Foundation
Zhuangzi, 《莊子·齊物論》— Chinese Text Project
Discover more literary insights and close-reading resources at Between the Lines.