Literary Devices In The Dog Year

The Dog Year
The Dog Year, by Ann Wertz Garvin, is a story about Dr. Lucy Peterman, a reconstructive plastic surgeon for women who have breast cancer. She had a good life and very much loved her husband and was expecting their first child. Her good life is seemingly torn away from her when she gets into a car accident where she loses both her husband and her unborn child in one afternoon. Lucy opts not to seek grief counseling and instead turns to kleptomania as a way to try and cope. Her rash of thefts leads her to a suspension at work and, at times, in trouble with the law. She is unwillingly forced into counseling and it is in counseling that her therapist orders her to attend AA meetings. She makes friends along the way from both her therapist’s

LiteraryDevices states indirect or implicit characterization “is a more subtle way of introducing the character to the audience. The audience has to deduce for themselves the characteristics of the character by observing his/her thought process, behavior, speech, way of talking, appearance, and way of communication with other characters and also by discerning the response of other characters” (Literary Devices, 2014). Ann Garvin lets us get to know her characters through not only the eyes of others but also through themselves; this is seemingly the indirect way of things. We know that Lucy has a low self-esteem so she often describes herself as ugly or gives us a sense that she feels this way about herself, “She’d never been able to come to terms with the name her mother bestowed upon her. There was nothing luscious about her. One look made it clear. And everyone knew she knew it” (Garvin, 72). On the other hand, others don’t believe her to be ugly at all when we get a look into how Sidney thought of her, “Have you looked at yourself since high school? There’s nothing ugly about you, and I would venture a guess that there never was” (Garvin, 178). Garvin presents what others think of Lucy as far as her personality, specifically through Sara’s thoughts on her, “‘You’re entitled, is what you are,’ Sara said

This is done through her dialogue as evident by her speech to her med student about how their patients feel, “’That woman in there knows that she no longer needs to accommodate her breasts when hugging friends, carrying groceries, or feeding a child. Her scars and the sympathetic look in her husband’s eyes will only cement those facts. Some of us know what it’s like to lose their entire world in an afternoon’” (Garvin, 7). A reader can really get the sense of just what kind of pain she is in and can empathize with her. Garvin shows throughout the story just how Lucy feels in her