In “The Dinosaurs”, by Italo Calvino, Qfwfq’s transformed from being someone who is ashamed and hating himself into a character with prideful arrogance.
At the beginning, “Q” was always trying not to stand out as much from the New Ones. He is a character who always hides behind the bushes and run away whenever a New One saw him. “The first time I [Q] glimpsed some living beings, I hid” (Calvino 98). He was anxious of having his identity of a dinosaur exposed to the New Ones. He tries to hide or run away whenever a New One goes near the area he is in. He may be the last dinosaur left so it’s hard for him blend in with the New Ones. Furthermore, when he inevitably encounters a New One, he, “as one does, when one doesn’t want to be observed, I[Q] kept my eyes lowered and coiled my tail, as if to hide it”(Calvino 99). He shows a bit of low self esteem because he acts as if he’s lower than the New Ones in order to not stand out. He became lower specie trying to hide all the time in order to continue living the way he is at the moment.
After hearing the rumors of the reign of terror of the dinosaurs, Q began to hate his kind as well as the attitude of the New Ones. He was starting to find pride without realizing it. He starts to understand the oblivious minds of the New Ones and their ways of thinking due to the fear their ancestors had to put up with, “I [Q] realized I had never thought about how we [dinosaurs] appeared to others. … the more I learned how we had made others tremble, the more I trembled myself” (Calvino 100). He thought that the dinosaurs endured the most hardships to survive but he starts to get a clear image of what a “dinosaur” is to the New Ones. Once he got a sense, he trembles since he is able to understand the terror. The more he hears rumors of the dinosaurs from the New Ones, the clearer his mind is. His indecisive personality caused him to go back and forth between the New Ones and the dinosaurs, but the rumors helped him choose his kind.
Q realization of the New Ones’ foolishness caused him to be proud of his kind. After the rhinoceroses incident, the New Ones began to make a mockery of the dinosaurs. Q thinks that the extinction of dinosaurs were a good thing, “Now I recognized the greatness of spirit that had made us choose to disappear rather than live in a world no longer suited to us”(Calvino 107). He believed that the dinosaur being extinct wasn’t forced on them, but they were willing to go extinct. He got his sense of pride after the incident because he thinks that the dinosaur still dominate the world with fear but the New Ones are foolishly trying to get rid of it. He continued thinking that it was a grand thing after he saw a skeleton of another dinosaur, “If ever a species had had a rich, full evolution, a long and happy reign, the species was ours. Our extinction had been a grandiose epilogue, worthy of our past”(Calvino 109). He believe that the extinction was meant to be and that there were no regrets since the dinosaurs lived a happy reign of giving terror to others. He didn’t think that the dinosaurs need pity from the New Ones who are oblivious of the happy times that dinosaurs had.
