Behemoth - Tazza

“What Tazza, talk?” Deryn stifled a laugh. “He’s no message lizard. He’s a natural beastie, a thylacine from Tasmania. Dr. Barlow has him as a traveling companion though, as you can see, he’s mostly my responsibility. Anyway, I’ve got a message from…” (57).


In this passage, Deryn goes to Count Volger to discuss with him about Alec’s secret information. Initially, Volger doubts Deryn’s credibility, believing in the possibility that she could be a spy, since the message lizards themselves could pick up messages and eavesdrop on their conversations. He then begins to believe that Tazza, the pet thylacine that Dr. Barlow has, can also be an eavesdropper, having the ability to pick up what their conversation is about.

I find it a bit weird that the Darwinists would even refer to their natural creatures as “beasties”; the word “beastie” doesn’t have a very good connotation to it. It makes me think of a vicious animal waiting for the right moment to tear someone apart. That aside, the thylacine reminds me of something like a pet dog, in terms of modern parallels. It keeps people company, and it seems to be Dr. Barlow’s most trusted friend, similar to the saying that says that dogs are man’s best friends.

Westerfield seems to be making a point in this passage about the cliché saying, “Never judge a book by its cover.” Count Volger suspects that even a natural creature such as Tazza could have abilities like that of the other Darwinist creations, despite its friendly appearance. Of course, Deryn denies Tazza’s speculated capabilities, but Westerfield draws upon the credibility of Volger to make the audience believe and wonder what exactly Tazza is besides being told that he is a “thylacine from Tasmania”. Even though he has went behind the Alek’s back in the past, his readers can’t deny the fact that he does possess a great amount of knowledge on par with Dr. Barlow, and maybe he could be onto something with Tazza being potentially a stealthy creature or a creature with an unknown purpose, like the eggs that Dr. Barlow is hatching.

The scenario presented in this passage does make us reflect on how in the present-day, animals can be trained to literally do almost everything. We have cats being able to play the piano, dogs that can sniff out drugs or become rescuers, and so on. Soon, maybe we can develop our own Darwinist creations, albeit, not on the scale of those in the book, but still, breeding our animals and training them to do human activities are just steps to making our own creations.