“…the suppleness of a panther”

“…the ferocity of a tiger”

“…giving tongue” or “dogging trails” “like wolves”

“…like a blood-mad wolf”

“…leap among them and die as a wounded lion”

“…with the tenacity of a dying wolf”

The fiction of Robert E. Howard is loaded with such totemic allusions to animal powers, which is one of the author’s keys in capturing the spirit of the reader. He does not get bogged down in body mechanics and positioning of fighting men often, but communicates as a primitive would, the actions of his heroes on the animal scale. Likewise, his supernatural horrors are often described by way of animal characteristics, such as the “ophidian” crawler in Red Nails

His greatest fictional creation, Conan, is the character whose action is most often described in animal terms, such as these passages from Beyond the Black River:

“He dived like a hunting wolf into the leafy wall.”

Concerning Conan’s relationship with the civilized world, “A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of circumstance caused him to run with the watch-dogs…”

The use of wolves and dogs in the Conan stories is often a way of comparing barbarians to civilized men, with the appellation “dog” Conan’s most consistent insult to lesser men.

Using animal imagery lends itself to describing the supernatural, as our base primate fears are rooted in the fear of snakes, canines and felines.

“…flitting like a phantom between the trees” [Interspersing such spectral language in between totemic inferences lends the tales a haunting quality.]

Likewise, supernatural enemies are described in animal terms, “…sinister as the pad of a leopard’s foot.”

The leopard, as the individual killer par excellence in the animal kingdom, gets top billing among totemic attributes for imparting menace in both heroes and villains. In this Howard taps into the natural fear of man’s most ancient enemy, the great cat who specializes in hunting primates.

“As silently as a great panther Conan slid…”

Concerning a band of woodsmen led by Conan, “They were wolves, but he was a tiger.”

The tiger, rather than the lion, is the animal most often used to describe Conan, even though his black enemies name him “Amra” meaning “The Lion.”

In Howard’s brand of fiction what the other characters call Conan is less important than how he is described to the reader by the narrator, lending an intimacy that is important in achieving suspension of disbelief in a fantastic setting when the vehicle for its exploration is a man of outrageous abilities.

The overall effect of Howard’s use of totemic imagery in relating the character and actions of his protagonists is to place them in the realm of the monstrous, beings equally as dangerous as the horrors that prowl his nightmare worlds, but different, for they live by a code that serves as a link to the human reader and the ordinary human companion that is often placed beside them in these fantastic stories.