ipl-logo

A Dog Has Died Analysis

745 Words3 Pages

A Dog Has Died is a poem by Pablo Neruda that can relate to any pet owners who have lost their dog. The poem is about losing love. It tells about how the author misses his dog after it died and when they buried it. He looks back on all of the good memories they had and realizes how much he will miss him. In the poem, he speaks as if he has lost the love of his life, his companion, and his best friend. He believes that the dog made him appreciate the little things in life and now that he is gone, he is left alone in the world. The dog gives the owner a sense of hope and optimism until it reaches the end of its life. The author no longer has the same happiness and excitement that he used to have. He lost the one thing that he shared …show more content…

Death was not explained as a thing of horror and grieving, but as a simple part of life that everyone must experience.
The repetition of the consonance sound device, -ed, emphasizes that the dog has passed. As in the lines: “He never rubbed up against my knee like other dogs obsessed with sex” (A Dog Has Died. Lines 24-25) It is a direct reference to the theme loss of love. He is showing that the dog is gone and that the author is looking back on the memories they shared when the dog was alive. He is mourning the loss of love he is having to face now that his best friend is gone.
Pablo Neruda uses a simile of comparing the love he has for his dog to the love of a porcupine. He writes “His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine,” which is a direct comparison to porcupine love (A Dog Has Died. Line 17). The love of a porcupine is like the bond he made with his dog in that he believes that love physically hurts. It physically hurts in porcupine love but it emotionally hurts with human love because humans have the ability to get attached. When something or someone close to us dies, there is a physical hurt and emotional pain caused by this

Show More
Related
1521 Words | 7 Pages

By doing this, it makes his final statements all the more effective and thought-provoking since the audience is subconsciously making the connection between how dogs should be treated as food and how other animals are currently being treated as food. Yet, he hides this connection under the guise of a harmless argument for the consumption of dogs, making his final argument a realization, of sorts, for the reader. The sudden shift of focus from

Read More
859 Words | 4 Pages

A blot of blood and tangled, burst intestines, kicked slowly in the road” (Steinbeck 130). The death of the dog represents the struggles about to attack the Joads. The murder of a good, curious, innocent animal foreshadows that things are about to begin that aren’t fair and aren’t deserved, but still must happen to contribute to the grim determination of the characters. The second element of foreshadowing was when “Grampa” died. It’s a similar situation to the dog, but Grandpa Joad is obviously not as innocent nor carefree as the dog.

Read More
1071 Words | 5 Pages

Generally speaking, humans cannot be entirely prepared for dying or the death of a close person in their life. Some people say that facing death gives a person both opportunity to grow mentally and the strength to carry on in life; however, it can be too much to handle alone. Help can be needed not only from relatives and peers, but also from the experts. Strong grieving is more than usual, but life must eventually carry on. Death can be both interesting and frightening at the same time because nobody knows what happens afterwards.

Read More
1205 Words | 5 Pages

As the dog lost its serviceability, it lived on with age and suffered, thus had to be put down in order to prevent it from suffering any longer. Contrary to this, Lennie was one of the most useful members of the farm. His strength making it easy to do certain things, his mentality however, was something else, like that of an ignorant, innocent child. Even when a girl screamed, Lennie became “scared all he can think to do is jus’ hold on.” (Steinbeck, 41) Unbeknownst to Lennie and George, his natural innocence and ignorance, will whittle down his usefulness until nothing's left.

Read More
1130 Words | 5 Pages

Some people think that the dog was better off dead, “'Why’n’t you get Candy to shoot his old dog and give him one of the pups to raise up? I can smell that dog a mile away. Got no teeth, damn near blind, can’t eat'" (Steinbeck 18). Readers often refer to this quote to assume that the dog was suffering and should be killed off for its own good. Many people perceived the situation differently because it is a dog not a child, not a woman, not a man.

Read More
753 Words | 4 Pages

Candy's dog eventually gets shot for no reason, other than the fact that the others do not like him. The dog was hated by the other men living on the farm. The sense of feeling that others do not like you is one of the main contributes to lonliness in the world today. Steinbeck attempts to allow readers to recognize this, and change their actions and words towards others to prevent this lonely state in

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

The dead dog became the major symbol of house’s alienation. The system let the injured and exhausted animal in, but did not do anything to try to improve its condition. It returned to habitual schedule that was a more important link to the past than the family’s pet. “The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died” (Bradbury 2).

Read More
2169 Words | 9 Pages

Candy losing his dog affected him poorly to the point where he even wished they had shot him. Candy feels almost worthless after losing his dog because his dog is his only natural companion. Besides That dog, Candy has no companion leaving him lonely and grieving for his lost companion. The joy Candy once felt was

Read More
559 Words | 3 Pages

The only thing that has been with Candy through everything is his dog, he lost his hand, his youth and now his beloved dog. Candy is left with nothing but himself, and because he doesn’t say much to anyone he has few

Read More
419 Words | 2 Pages

Body Paragraph I Candy is the loneliest person because he loses his only friend which was his dog.” Look , Candy. This ol’ dog jus’ suffers hisself all the time. If you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head-” he leaned over and pointed, “- right there, why he’d never know what hit him”. Candy’s dog was the only thing he had left to keep him occupied he had no other friends or family.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

This quote demonstrates how the family died. They were doing their regular activities and in a split second their lives perished. This quote also demonstrates how a family of five were together for a few minutes and then violently split up. Another example of the theme of death is the dog. For example, “The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores...its eyes turned to fire.

Read More
1774 Words | 8 Pages

The attitudes to grief over the loss of a loved one are presented in two thoroughly different ways in the two poems of ‘Funeral Blues’ and ‘Remember’. Some differences include the tone towards death as ‘Funeral Blues’ was written with a more mocking, sarcastic tone towards death and grieving the loss of a loved one, (even though it was later interpreted as a genuine expression of grief after the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” in 1994), whereas ‘Remember’ has a more sincere and heartfelt tone towards death. In addition, ‘Funeral Blues’ is entirely negative towards death not only forbidding themselves from moving on but also forbidding the world from moving on after the tragic passing of the loved one, whilst ‘Remember’ gives the griever

Read More
837 Words | 4 Pages

Mark Twain believes that dogs are superior to man because out of all animals, man is the only one that is cruel enough to inflict pain on others just for the pleasure of doing it. Twain’s short story “A Dog’s Tale”, written in 1903, displays these beliefs and is done so from a dog’s point of view. This unusual take on the story is used to help convey the theme that one shouldn’t assume the others will do the same for them. The story includes literary elements such as characterisation, structural irony and a plot and conflict. It is a story of a loyal and heroic dog which unfortunately ends in an ironic twist of fate.

Read More
1356 Words | 6 Pages

Coping with the loss of someone or something you love is one of life’s biggest challenges. Often, the pain of loss can feel overwhelming. You may experience all kinds of difficult and unexpected emotions, from shock or anger to disbelief, guilt, and profound sadness. The pain of grief can also disrupt your physical health, making it difficult to sleep, eat, or even think straight. These are normal reactions to significant loss.

Read More
1345 Words | 6 Pages

LOSS, GRIEF AND HEALING As human beings, we suffer losses of many kinds and sizes in our life time. While some of these losses are small and do not hurt much, some are big and hurt deeply. Those that are accompanied by pains that are difficult to bear include the loss of a loved one through death or divorce, cheating or unfaithfulness in a trusted relationship or loss of good health when a diagnosis of a terminal illness is made. In all these instances of loss, pain and grief are experienced and an emotional wound is created which needs healing.

Read More

More about A Dog Has Died Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document