SUMMARY AND COMMENTS
The plot is very simple: a 56-year-old father,
remarried to a woman half his age, takes their baby daughter to the park in her
pram; there, a fierce dog attacks another child, and he runs to the baby’s
defence and fights the dog with a violence so extreme that in the end he kills
it. Then he takes his child back home.
But the story has more issues than this terrible
incident.
The protagonist is a self-made man who has made a lot
of money, has had a family of three grown up and independent children, a
divorce and some love affairs. Then, in his fifties, he got married to a young
woman and had a child with her: a daughter whom he loves devotedly. It seems
that, once he finished bringing up a family, he stars a new life, a new family and
feels young again.
But perhaps the most important theme of the story is the man’s character. We can see that he has been someone who was able to control everything: money, love…, and that taking things in control was his worthiest feature. But now, when he has fulfilled his life (money, family, children) and he’s starting a new one, it looks like as he had lost this control, so he isn’t able to master his life any more: he can’t help adoring, doting on his child with a passion so intense that he even can’t refrain his fury when he kicks the dangerous dog. In the past, he thought he would be happy mastering money and feelings, but now he discovers that this breaking free of his emotions can make him happier.
QUESTIONS
What is for you the relation between money and
happiness?
What do you think of giving allowances to your
children? And what about the “social salary”, I mean, about the idea of the
right to have a salary because you are a person, not because you work?
Do you think it’s a good definition of growing up,
“gaining more and more control”?
Do you have a pet? Are you in favour to have a pet
when you have small children? Is it a good idea walking the dog in a children’s
park?
Do you think that it has to be forbidden to have
potentially dangerous dogs?
Is it a good idea to consider your pet as a member of
your family? Do you have a dog? What is its position in your household?
“People had dogs in order to have the illusion of
mastery and control”. What is your opinion about this?
The scene in which the narrator kicks the dog to save
a small child is a bit distressing. Why? Too much violence? But wasn’t he
saving a baby from a fatal attack?
The narrator was all the time talking about control.
Why do you think he lost control in the park? Was there any other motive besides
from trying to save a child from a dog?
What do you imagine Julia’s reaction to the news is
going to be?
VOCABULARY
utterance, feather-bedded, estranged, inveigled, entrancing,
bumps, swerves, put her feet up, crocuses, dab, chunks, notch, graph, dire, threshold,
toppled, full-tilt, heave, breed, headsets, bellowing, contraptions, stab, teeter,
mauling, writhed, far-fetched, paean, grapevine