Tuesday, March 24, 2009
What If...
I was reading The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson, and it made me wonder a little. If my dogs could talk, would I treat them the same? Would they still make me happy just from seeing their reaction as I open the front door of my house? This story made me think more than any other story from this collection, but probably only because I could find an easy way to it. I really liked this story because it found that place in my heart that my dogs will always hold (as long as they can't talk?).
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To me this story had sort of an "Anansi" feel to it, with the whole folklore and "One Dog" character.
ReplyDeleteI have always entertained the idea of what if my animal could talk, and usually the idea played out how I envision it would go, is quite enjoyable. However, I did not really like how Johnson portrayed it.
There was no attempt to describe the change or even recount how it happened. I think that would have been an appropriate addition to the story, perhaps learning how and why this Change happened would make the story seem more appealing to me in that I could at least understand why apparently all the humans viewed it as a negative thing.
This was another thing that bothered me: i did not like how universal everyone's reactions were. Apparently no one could bare to hear what their dogs had to say and kicked them out. Granted this is just folklore, but this would never actually happen, people love their pets to scary degrees in this world, and I highly doubt that if these pets started talking, they would be thrown to the curb in an instant. The overall scene of tragically abandoned dogs just didn't seem too believable.
I also highly doubt the solution posed in the story will last for long. It is extremely creepy to imagine a civil war of sorts, humans versus dogs, but this is clearly where this story was headed.
I think we would win that war clearly, but I also think it would be harder than our overconfident egos would assume. Dogs can be vicious and cunning after all...they've seen us in action for years, so they know what's in store against them