Dog's Death

Dog’s Death

ENG 125 Introduction to Literature

Instructor: Kayla Ward

May 28, 2012

STORY ELEMENTS

I have chosen to analyze the story by John Updike, “Dog’s Death.” This story centers the

family’s’ dying pet. Love and grief are the themes in this story. The family in this story loved their pet

and grieved for their loss. The death of a family pet can be one of the hardest experiences in a person’s

life. For those who mourn over the passing of their pet suffer alone because they do not want others

to see them grieving over there pet. This author must have designed from a real life experience to have

created a well-developed description of a human heartache by the death of a pet. This poem is a

narrative. The story starts in the family’s home. It describes the puppy learning to house break on the

paper spread out on the kitchen floor. God dog is mentioned throughout the story. The puppy has

received its shots and the family thinks she is being shy from this. The family teases and plays with their

pet not knowing that she was sick. The children go to school and the puppies went and hide. When she

is found under the bed curled up and twisted, the parents carry her to the vet. As they are driving, the

puppy bites the fathers hand and slips away. Tests showed that here liver had ruptured. Driving with a

tearful vision, the mother was already grieving the families’ major loss. When they have arrived back

home, they discovered where she had tried to make it to the newspaper but she had missed.

The plot of this story is the love a family has for their dying pet. It also centers on the grieving of

their loss of a pet. Dog’s Death is written in the first-person. Line 13 says “To bite my hand and died. I

stroked her warm fur and my wife called in a voice imperious with tears (Clugston, 2010). The father is

the character telling this story. I have only lost one dog in my lifetime; I empathize with the author’

sanguish...