Fifteen Dogs

“This was Atticus’s favourite dream, a recurring joy that always ended with him happily bringing a struggling creature back to his beloved master. His master would take the thing, strike it against a rock, then move his hand along Atticus’s back and speak his name. This night, as Atticus bit down at the neck of one of the creatures, it occurred to him that the creature must feel pain. That thought—vivid and unprecedented—woke him from sleep.”

When Atticus first receives self-consciousness, his immediate reaction is to experience empathy for his prey despite wanting to please the master he loved. The satisfaction he feels by pleasing his master becomes tainted by his realization that what brings him pleasure causes pain for other mortal creatures. Atticus rejects self-consciousness not because he does not feel but because he feels too much.

"As Bella and Athena lay beside each other on the verge of sleep, Athena said

--'These males fight for any reason.'

--'It has nothing to do with us,' said Bella."

Bella and Athena do not involve themselves in the males’ skirmishes for social position. Athena is too small to defend herself, and Bella, who is a larger dog, prefers to nurture her bond with Athena than fight with the males. Bella’s statement above is an ironic nod to women’s roles in epic poetry: Though far removed from the fighting, they are the victims of its outcomes. When Atticus decides to purge the pack, Athena and Bella become his victims.

‘“Black dog,’ said Atticus, ‘can there be a feeling greater than belonging?’ ‘No,’ said Majnoun. ‘And yet,’ said Atticus, ‘I am sometimes afraid that I will not know the feeling again, that I will never again know what it is to be a dog among dogs. This thinking of yours, black dog, it is an endless, dead field. Since the change, I have been alone with thoughts I do not want.’ ‘I understand,’ said Majnoun. ‘It is the same for me. But we must bear it because we cannot escape the things within.’ ‘I do not agree,’ said Atticus. ‘To be with others is to be free from yourself. There is no other path. We must go back to the old ways.’ ‘If we can find them,’ said Majnoun.”

This early conversation between Atticus and Majnoun expresses their opposing responses to self-consciousness. Both experience it as a loss, not a gift, because it has alienated them from dog kind. Atticus alludes to the inner turmoil caused by his experience of empathy, but he speaks only in vague terms. Without knowing the nature of Atticus’s thoughts, Majnoun replies in general terms, with the stoic maxim of accepting reality. Their language has become more complex but less clear, alienating them not only from other dogs but also from each other.

“Though Majnoun was neither smarter nor quicker than she was, Nira gave him credit for a wisdom she supposed must come from this unique vantage on the world. But it did not always occur to her that Majnoun’s vantage also limited his ability to imagine or understand her concerns.”

After shocking Nira with his ability to speak English, Majnoun stops speaking, communicating only with gestures. Nira reads wisdom into these gestures, when in actuality they are creating space for her to affirm her own beliefs. She consequently is shocked to discover that Majnoun holds different views from her about God, religion, and government—all abstractions that Majnoun’s initial silence enabled her to read as agreement.

“What he could not communicate was his need to find his former pack or the remnants of it. For reasons he did not himself understand, it was unbearable to think that he might be the last of his kind. The feeling was beyond loneliness. It was desolation.”

Despite his increasing knowledge of human language, Majnoun cannot express his paradoxical feelings of fear and longing, yet they reflect the dog instincts that he has retained. As pack animals, dogs understand who they are and what their roles are in relation to others of their kind. Self-consciousness has made Majnoun aware of this need and provoked the existential anxiety that Zeus warns Hermes and Apollo the dogs will feel. Despite his fear that the pack might hurt him, Majnoun continues to long for them.

“Still, thought Benjy, might does what might will do, whether it was humans beating you for pissing or Atticus insisting that dogs should not speak. It was best to let those in power do what they wished while finding some advantage in it for oneself.”

Benjy quickly realizes that Atticus’s decision-making is faulty. Atticus’s insistence that the pack live like unintelligent dogs means, in part, no longer using abstract human language. But Atticus is also asking the dogs to do what they are no longer capable of. Because he is too small to challenge Atticus the only way he will accept, through violence, Benjy recognizes that his only option is compliance or annihilation. His observation that “might does what might will do” is a near verbatim quite from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War when the Athenian empire annihilated a smaller country that insisted on remaining neutral.

“If he had, previously, wondered why he and Dougie had been kept around, he now had a very good idea: the others needed him, weak and lowly though he was, to maintain their echelon. This thought, which he shared with no one, instilled in him a sense of his own power.”

After returning to the pack, Benjy realizes power can only exist alongside its opposite. His role in the pack was to provide the contrast and balance that affirmed the powerful in their roles. This creates a paradox: Realizing that he is essential makes Benjy feel powerful, and he accordingly expects a degree of respect. However, the dogs above him in the chain have lost touch with their instincts and are not capable of realizing that they have gone too far exerting their power. This leaves Benjy feeling that the only way out of the pack is to eliminate them. 

“Contrary to Benjy’s impressions, Atticus was thoughtful, sensitive and, to an extent, altruistic. He was a committed leader, capable of—or prone to—instinctive decisions. More: he could put aside thought in the service of forceful action. But in quiet moments his sensitivity sometimes led him to reconsider his own behaviour. In other words, Atticus had a conscience, and it was this that led him to what some would call faith.”

Benjy fails to understand Atticus’s motivation. Though ultimately impossible, Atticus’s desire to return to dog behavior stems not from brutality but from the conflict that empathy provokes in him. Atticus’s god figure, an “ideal” dog, reflects what he seeks: guidance on how to return to his true dog nature. The shrine he builds, and the offerings he makes, mirror ritual behaviors in Homeric epic. As with the heroes in epic, Zeus favors Atticus because he makes the proper sacrifices, which later leads Zeus to intervene on Atticus’s behalf.

“Of the fifteen who’d been changed by Apollo, Benjy was the dog who had best made peace with the new way of thinking. Essentially selfish, he used his intelligence almost uniquely to serve his own wants, needs, desires, and whims. He was not often troubled by pointless speculation.”

Unlike Atticus, conscience doesn’t trouble Benjy. He does not apply human intelligence to reflect on his own actions but to assess risks and rewards. He remains closest to his dog nature, which is why he is comfortable performing tricks for humans. He knows it pleases them, and pleasing them leads to rewards. By using dog ways to understand humans, he misinterprets the power dynamic, which contributes to his death.

“Benjy’s greatest wish was for a place where the echelon was clear to all, where the powerful cared for the weak and the weak gave their respect without being coerced. He longed for balance, order, right and pleasure. It was this place that Benjy glimpsed as he died, and the glimpse brought him solace. Were it meaningful to speak of death as a state of being, one could say that Benjy died into hope itself.”

To the end of his life, Benjy continues to think in dog terms, which means determining his place in the hierarchy and acting accordingly. His last wish reconsiders the earlier characterization of him as selfish, an abstraction that has a negative value in human terms but may in dog terms simply mean being concerned with one’s survival in a pack setting. The narrative continually challenges readers to recognize ranges of meaning within abstractions.

“How complex and vicious humans were! And how suddenly strange to understand the depths of their feelings. Whereas previously, he had thought them stunted, clumsy and unwilling to grasp the obvious, Majnoun now realized humans were almost as deep as dogs, though in their own particular way.”

After Hermes gifts Majnoun the ability to detect nuance in human speech, Majnoun overhears a couple arguing in the park and picks up on a double meaning in the woman’s words. This double meaning fascinates Majnoun, who makes a study of human language. The moment also reveals that while Majnoun trusts humans, he does not believe their use of symbolic language makes them superior, which aligns him with Apollo.

“The two of them had evolved a lovely, wordless communication in which silence, the turn of a head or a hesitant nod were all meaningful. Now she had to deal with those things as well as words and, in the beginning, she found Majnoun more arduous to comprehend, though her understanding was deeper.”

Hermes’s gift of nuance prompts Majnoun to begin speaking again, which requires him and Nira to reinvent their shared language. This passage speaks to the paradox of abstract language: It is both more difficult to understand but, when decoded, enables a deeper degree of understanding and connection.

“Perfect understanding between beings is no guarantor of happiness. To perfectly understand another’s madness, for instance, is to be mad oneself. The veil that separates earthly beings is, at times, a tragic barrier, but it is also, at times, a great kindness. In fact, the only beings to achieve ‘perfect mutual understanding’ are the gods. For the gods any emotion or state of mind—madness, anger, bitterness, etc.—is pleasurable, so understanding is neither here nor there.”

Nira and Majnoun’s new language collapses the barriers between them, to the extent that she stops thinking of him as a dog, and he considers her a part of his identity. Hermes intends his gift to ensure Majnoun’s happiness, but he is thinking like a god, not a mortal. Majnoun and Nira do not have eternity to spend together. The understanding they achieve amplifies Majnoun’s sorrow after Nira’s death. Hermes’s gift has the opposite effect of what he intended.

“In the end, it surprised Majnoun to discover that works of art—Tokyo Story, Mansfield Park, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, and so on—were not understandable in the way people were. These works were, it seemed, created to evade understanding while inviting it. He came to love this aspect of the human, which was, of course, an aspect of Nira.”

Understanding nuance makes Majnoun curious about works of the imagination, and Nira begins sharing her favorite books, films, music, and art with him. He realizes that art relies on ambiguity for its impact by promising but not delivering meaning. Majnoun contrasts the complexity of human art with what he sees as the transparency of human nature, but like Nira, he fails to account for their differences of perspective—mind vs. senses. While he is capable of loving human qualities, he neither privileges nor fully understands them. 

“By degrees, the distance between Nira and Majnoun narrowed until each could anticipate what the other wanted. Nira could tell when exactly Majnoun wished to eat or go for a walk. Majnoun knew when it was time to leave Nira alone, when it was time to comfort her, when it was time to sit quietly by her side. By degrees, they had less use for words or English.”

Human language typically enables a more complex and nuanced form of communication, but the narrative challenges this formulation throughout. As the characters’ experiences continually show, language can create as many problems as it solves. 

“The dogs in the area left him alone as well. Not out of fear, not because he was unnatural, but because the purity of his attention commanded respect. No dog could have doubted or misunderstood Majnoun’s resolve or the depths of his longing. They all knew what it was like to wait and, every once in a while, one would join Majnoun, silently sitting at a slight remove, sharing his task as a mark of respect.”

Majnoun’s experience here corresponds with Prince’s experience at the end of his life. Both Majnoun here and Prince in Chapter Five recover the ability to commune with dog kind when they return to a primal state of grief and vulnerability, respectively. Other dogs recognize that Majnoun is in pain and replace their animosity toward him with sympathy. In the moment of the other’s suffering, power dynamics lose importance.

“What was he, really? Where did he fit in the world? Was he waiting for Nira because it was in his nature to wait, or was his dedication unique and noble? Most days, he felt only that waiting was right. Every once in a while, however, he imagined waiting was only the expression of an instinct, something he had to do. This thought, whenever it occurred, saddened him, mere instinct being unworthy of Nira, who was not his master but, rather, a being who completed him, made him more than he would otherwise have been.”

Though he initially mourned his loss of dog instincts, Majnoun feels troubled now by it. It causes him to question his own motivations and to fear they are lacking. The bond he developed with Nira transcended anything his canine experience could account for; returning to dog instincts would feel reductive.

‘“What is it like to be a god?’ ‘I am very sorry,’ said Hermes, ‘but the only language in which I can truly express this is one that mortals cannot learn.’”

When Hermes visits Majnoun to convince him to give up his vigil, Majnoun realizes that Hermes is curious about human experience. Majnoun believes that communication can bridge the boundaries of distinct frames of reference. He experienced it with Nira, but it was possible only because of the god’s gifts. Here, Hermes articulates that even he cannot make a mortal understand the experience of an immortal. Majnoun’s experience with Nira was atypical.

“What you want to know, Majnoun, is not what love means. It means no one thing and never will. What you want to know is what Nira meant when she used the word. This is more difficult, because Nira’s word is like a long journey taken by one woman alone. She read the word in books, heard it in conversation, talked about it with friends and family, Miguel and you. No other being has encountered the word love as Nira has or used it in quite the same ways, but I can take you along Nira’s path.”

Majnoun asks Hermes to define an abstraction (love) that he and Nira had discussed but not come to a stated mutual understanding of. He wants to know what love is so that he can determine whether his vigil is instinct or love. Hermes’s answer reveals both the problem and the potential of language: Words that express abstract concepts can contain as many meanings as there are people to experience them. These words can be an efficient shorthand for a shared experience, but the precise nature of that experience can only reveal itself to the specific individual.

“Despite his tendency to introspection, Prince was something of an optimist in hard times. Having a task to perform liberated him from himself. So it was that, now, having to make his way out of the park, he ignored his blindness—or, rather, accepted it—and went on his way as deliberately as he could, unsteady on his feet, his journey distracting him from worry.”

Apollo attempts to control the outcome of his bet with Hermes by robbing Prince first of his sight, then his hearing, but it has the opposite effect. Rather than becoming depressed at what he has lost, Prince focuses on what he still has. This is a characteristic of Aristotelian virtue and humility, as well as of Apollo’s inability to understand Prince. If he had, Apollo would have realized that Prince’s accepting, selfless nature would seek and find solace. In attempting to make Prince unhappy, Apollo leads Prince to his moment of joy by giving him a negative to push against.

“Though these thoughts brought him real regret, Prince did not despair. He thought of what he had endured to reach the home he now had and he drew inspiration from what had been, in effect, a victory over blindness. It seemed to him that, frail though he was, it might not be too late, that he was perhaps fated to pass his work on to these people. That is why, in a heroic effort to preserve his language, Prince began to speak his poems to the woman. Whenever he could feel her presence or hear her voice, he would begin reciting.”

Prince’s “heroic effort” self-consciously references epic poetry, which is concerned with heroic deeds. Heroes in ancient Greece were not superhuman but fragile, mortal, and capable of making tragic errors. Their excellence lay in their bravery, exemplary speech, and persistence, all qualities Prince exhibits. Attempting to preserve his poetry through oral transmission reflects how poets passed down stories of heroic deeds before literacy.   

“At that exact moment it struck him again how beautiful his language was. Certainly, if he was the last of his pack, it was sad that no creature alive knew it. But how wonderful that he—unexceptional though he had been—had been allowed to know it as deeply as he had. He had not explored all of its depths, but he had seen them. And so it occurred to Prince that he had been given a great gift. More: it was a gift that could not be destroyed. Somewhere, within some other being, his beautiful language existed as a possibility, perhaps as a seed. It would flower again. He was certain of it and the certainty was wonderful."

The final ingredient in Prince’s happiness is humility, a form both of wisdom and proportion in ancient Greek thought. He does not long for revenge against enemies (as Atticus does), justice (as Benjy does), or reunion with a beloved (as Majnoun does). Prince’s happiness derives from his realization that his poetry was not a product of his personal excellence but a gift entrusted to him that can exist within someone else. This conception of poetry reflects the ancient Greek view that the poet was a conduit for the Muses, and poetry was an immortal gift.

“Yes, it annoyed him that he had been cruel to one of his own, that a poet should be the reason for this loss to his brother, but, really, it was a matter of pure chance who died happy and who did not.”

Apollo persists to the end that happiness is a matter of chance alone, but the dogs’ diverse characters and responses to self-consciousness implicitly challenge Apollo’s view. Prince, the only dog attained happiness when he died possessed wisdom, bravery, and a sense of proportion. Hermes intervened to save him from the pack, then Apollo intervened, hoping that Prince would die unhappy. As a deathless god, Apollo cannot perceive the complex mix of factors that differentiate one life from another.