5/14/99 # Sarah Dickenson Snyder

Critique of "DOG’S DEATH"

"Dog’s Death" by John Updike unveils the sadness that follows a tragic death of a loved pet. Updike titles the poem using alliteration and clarity. Perhaps he tells his readers or listeners right away as a prologue to prepare us for the utter tragedy of a puppy’s demise, not unlike Shakespeare chose to do in his prologue of Romeo and Juliet. where he allows us to ready ourselves for the death of the "star crossed lovers." This poem is written in first person, the speaker being a father and husband, the owner of the puppy. Updike tells the tragedy in five quatrains, using an irregular rhyme scheme, the pattern emerging in the third quatrain: GGHH IJIJ KKCD. The last two lines mirror the last lines in the first quatrain. There is definitely a meter: eleven to thirteen syllables per line. The strongest image to me is the last we are left with: the puppy trying to be a good dog even in the throes of death.
"She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car" is the first line. Immediately we are told of the dramatic irony - that the owners didn’t know what had happened to their dog. While they tried to get her to play, "blood was filling her skin and her heart was learning to lie down forever." They misread her "shy malaise" as a reaction to a shot she received. In the third quatrain where the rhyming begins, they find the dog under "the youngest’s bed" "twisted and limp" and take her to the vet. The puppy dies in the fifth quatrain: "sank..stiffened.. and disappeared" in the speaker’s arms. The last quatrain paints the poignant image of what the couple find when they return home to exacerbate their loss and deepen their love of this puppy: the puppy "had dragged herself across the floor’ even with "the shame of diarrhea" to a sheet of newspaper. Updike ends with the strength of italics: Good dog. I can hear the speaker uttering these words in pain of loss. This poem allows all of us to touch that raw and tender spot left when a dearly loved pet dies and to appreciate what these creatures will do for our praise and love. Despite the melancholy of this piece, it is one of my favorite poems because it creates such a graphic image of love for the puppy and the puppy’s love and devotion for his owners.