Monday, April 2, 2012

The Antelope Wife: Windigo Dog

I find it interesting that a section of the book was written in a dog’s point of view.  Previously I had been wary of the changes in the story that was brought about different characters from different generations telling what happened to them.  But when I fully realized that a dog, a real dog, was telling the chapter, I was much more confident that I would be able to understand what was going on because they probably wouldn’t be able to realize minute details of the actions and people around them.  It was interesting how he spoke of not only his own, personal origins, but of the origin of the first dog and dogs’ role to humans.  The chapter was not only different because it was told by a dogs point of view but because it seemed like it was directly speaking to the reader. “You’re only going to get this knowledge from the real dog’s mouth once.”  It was only in the following chapter (9, still told by the dog) that things became strange and I got somewhat lost as a reader.  I understood the relationship and the commitment that a dog has to man, as described by Windigo Dog/Almost Soup.  On page 90 Almost Soup says that he put Cally’s life back into her, “It was then, in the hospital room, halfway asleep, that Rozin feels me put her daughter’s life inside of her again.”  I don’t question so much as the dog’s ‘ability’ to take the daughter away, having been told the close relationship a dog can have with a human, it’s just when did he actually take it?  The dog goes on to narrate nearly every bit of action that happens but then leaves out this bit where he takes the girl’s ‘life’?  Along with that, there is the sudden jump back to the sewing of beads and such.  It’s a very interesting tale, and the way it is told is what makes it that way.

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