Abuse In Stephen Crane's A Dark Brown Dog

People cringe at the word ‘abuse’, but that has never stopped it from occurring within someone of any age group. Stephen Crane made his readers cower when he wrote the short story A Dark Brown Dog. His story introduces a dog to a child that follows in the footsteps of the child’s abusive father, but the dog refuses to leave, even from the beginning. A Dark Brown Dog takes place during the 1890’s based on events that occurred after the Civil War in a city over the summer within a tenement. But why didn’t the dog try to escape its situation and continue to seek happiness with another family? Given the time period, this short story teaches readers that sometimes you have more trust and love for another creature than with yourself and your family.

Crane mentioned how as the dog got bigger and older, the dogs devotion to the child grew bigger. “The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terrible potentate. Hidden in the dogs soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity and perfect faith for the child.” This is where the story teaches how the child loved the dog more than his own family. Unfortunately, no matter how strong the child and the dog’s relationship grew, it didn’t stop the abuse to the dog. Crane wanted to show that when he mentions that the father of the family came home drunk one day. “He held carnival with the cooking utensils, the furniture, and his wife.” This shows that the father didn’t just abuse the dog and the child but the mother as well. When the child and the dog arrived to the home, the child ran for a safe place knowing what may happen, but the dog did not understand and mistook the child’s dodge for under the table as a ‘joyous gambol’. The father began the abuse even with the child present. He would hit the dog with a heavy coffee-pot repeatedly, and kicking the dog down with his foot. This time, the child’s yells and cries for his father to stop didn’t work. Instead the father ignored the child, and at the same moment the dog began to give up knowing there was no escape from the father. Since he was so drunk, the father grabbed the dog and threw him out of the window which was five stories high. This is when Crane shows the side of how strongly the child felt of the dog by talking about the struggles of getting down to the dog as quickly as he could, “it took him a long time because his size compelled him to go downstairs backwards, one step at a time and holding both hands to the step above.” Crane mentions that the family went to find the boy later on, only to see him sitting by “the body of his dark-brown friend.” At this moment, he calls the dog the child’s