Kij Johnson
This short story is filled to the brim with lessons, thought provoking ideas, and morals. When I first began reading it I thought it was just really strange and didn't think I would end up liking it very much. But though I did not like or enjoy the story very much, I respect the amount of thought and detail put into this short work.
I kept thinking of that show on Animal Planet, about like the animal cops, this story reminded me of how cruel people are to their pets sometimes. And it makes me wonder how all our pets would react if they could think, remember, speak. At the beginning Johnson mentions that there was this "Change" and all the domesticated animals started talking. While this story is about dogs, what if the cows and chickens had started thinking and talking. There are more cows in California than there are people, and what if they all decided they didn't want to be raised to be eaten by us anymore. I think we would find ourselves in the midst of a revolution. Cows and chickens vs. United States.
Another theme in this work is the idea of gender duplicity. In the dogs' stories, the "one dog" is usually a female unless the story involves mating, in which case it is a male. I take this to mean that these stories represent all dogs, male and female. However in 9. the "one dog's" sex changes in the first two sentences, it starts out a male dog, and then the other dogs are making fun of "her." Now this could be a typo, but if it isn't, then it's alluding to this whole gender question we have seen in other works throughout this semester.
There is also the idea of these trickster stories being the history for dogs as a race. They have begun to speak and to remember and so I think, have become a little more than just a species. They now have their own stories and the remember them. Reminds me of ancient human history that was passed down by word of mouth, and how ancient stories were told by and remembered solely by memory of the story tellers.
This is such a creative idea for a story. What if your pets started to talk? Think you would be able to keep your fish cooped up in his fishbowl still? Do you think you could live with a pet dog that could remember, think, and talk to you when you punished it?
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As you mentioned, the story includes that gender change. I had to suffer through countless Native American trickster tales in my last semester Am. Lit class, and it was a a very common thing for trickster to change genders throughout the stories. It only happens once in this cycle, so it was probably just in there as maybe a tradition kind of thing for readers familiar with the typical trickster tale.
ReplyDeleteI think talking pets would certainly make life much more interesting. It would raise the status of a "(wo)man's best friend" to a whole other level. A pet is usually pretty reliable in the sense that he/she will be there waiting for you when you get home. If pets had the ability to talk, owners would be able to bond further with them because that barrier of communication would be completely broken. But then again, with power, any kind of power, great or small, comes responsibilities. The ability to talk can be considered as a type of gain in power since talking allows one to express feelings, concerns, and desires. Everything in this life has a double-edged sword. It's not about complaining and worrying how to handle it or avoid it. What really counts is what people do with the time that is given to them. We should never be afraid to take action be active about the present.
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ReplyDeleteTo many, switching gender would be the ultimate "trick," and not necessarily a welcome one. Witness the widespread hostility expressed toward transgendered people.
ReplyDeleteIf animals could talk, would we all become vegetarians?
One way of reading this story is as a more thought-out, science-fictional response to the premise of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle stories.