Analysis of the 24-Hour Dog, Jeanette Winterson

(Wo)Man’s Best Friend Unraveled

The 24-hour Dog, Jeanette Winterson

 In a close analysis of this short story, explore the significance of intertextuality, metafiction and/or other narrative strategies and what these techniques suggest about thematic concerns and social-cultural contexts.

Nicole Schumann                                                                                           English Seminar Essay

19472315                                                                                                                                 Group 1

The notion that a dog is man’s best friend was said to be recorded as a statement made by Frederick ll, the king of Prussia, who was expressing that his greyhound at the time was his best friend (Laveaux). This statement is notoriously known, however, often one does not understand why this term was coined. Dogs and other animals are seen to have large impacts on their owners, whether consciously or unconsciously. This essay will address the short story “The 24-hour Dog” in Jeanette Winterson’s collection The World and Other Places(1999) in my analysis focusing on the interaction between the dog and the narrator, as conveyed through narrative strategies (genre, structure, intertextuality)  to explore themes.

The short story is told by an unknown narrator on the short amount of time that he or she, as the gender of the narrator is not specified, shared with the dog. Due to the ungendered narrator I will be referring the them as a female throughout this essay as the author Jeanette is well known for writing gender based stories on homosexual relationships. During the time of contact, we are exposed to the thoughts and feelings of the narrator and her interaction with this dog she just adopted. The narration of the story is written in the first person, from the point of view of the temporary owner and can be seen as the text is complied of, ‘I’s and intimate feelings and thoughts from the narrator’s point of view. However, the narrator may be regarded as unreliable. This can be seen in the text when it appears the narrator is continuously making up excuses for her actions, “I don’t know what the farmer thought. I mumbled the suitable excuse… What I couldn’t say was that the real reason was so much deeper…” (Winterson 13). Although the text is mainly about the feelings and thoughts of the narrator and little about what events occur, one could argue that the narrator is using the text as a cavass to express her exact feelings, this can be seen when the narrator expresses how she feels about the dog no longer belongs to her, but someone else, expressions like “What would I have done? Taught him to read?” (Winterson 13) further shows how this story is the narrators canvass of thoughts. The story itself is not written in a chronological order, in a fragmented structure. It appears the text jumps back and forth starting at a ‘climax’, which is the moonlit interaction between the dog and narrator, moving to a flashback of the days before the adoption when the narrator was preparing for the arrival of the dog, back to the ‘climax’ and then concluding with an ending, where the dog is returned to the farm (Uniengelsk 1). This chronology may be an indication of the narrator’s mindset as what the narrator is thinking is being expressed directly, as one’s memory, it tends to jump from one thought to another. This is essential to understanding the themes in the story and the relationship between the dog and narrator as the physical structure of the text is a contributor to the effectiveness of the short story.

The main genre of the short story may be described as a drama. Reasons for this could be that the story itself is quite tragic in that the narrator feels that she cannot keep this dog that she has just adopted and takes it back to the farm, as the narrator expresses, “I know he won’t be the dog he could have been if I had met him edge to edge…Maybe it’s better that way.” (Winterson 14). However, the story also leaves the reader with a sense of happiness in that the dog will remain in the narrator’s heart and mind, “I cannot lose him, and he cannot die” (Winterson 13). Here the narrator expresses how the time they spent would be treasured. Within this particular genre, the theme of time and preservation is continuously present. This can be seen in the chronology of the text being discontinuous and jumping around. Time is also evident when the narrator describes how pure and innocent the mind of the dog is and how it is so new to the world where time is nothing; this is expressed in the text, “In this moment there are no cars or airplanes. The Sistine Chapel is unpainted; no book has ever been written. There is the moon, the water, the night, one creature’s needs and another’s response” (Winterson 4). This demonstrates what the dog has missed over time, as it is so young, but adds to his ‘clean slate’ mindset and how he has not been involved or exposed to anything that may tarnish it. Another demonstration of the theme of time is at the end of the story where the narrator expresses “There he is, forever, part of the pattern, the dance, and running beside me, joyful” (Winterson 14) as is is emphasized how although the dog is no longer the narrators, it will remain in his or her heart forever.

There is evidence of intertextual allusions in the text. This can be seen in the name the narrator gives the dog at the end of the story, Nimrod. Nimrod was the mighty hunter of Genesis, “who sought out his quarry and brought it home” (Winterson 14). This name shows the presence of intertextuality in that in the story the dog goes into the garage and begins to fetch the contents and bring them to the narrator. Besides the story of Nimrod, the narrator does not stick to conventional drama. The lack of chronological order not being conventional leading to the series of events expected events to be distorted and the lack of a night in shining armor, instead the hero is a dog, again displays how the story does not comply to the genre’s norms.

One of the fundamental aspects of the text what will be examined is the relationship and interaction between the narrator and the dog with reference to the above narrative techniques. With regard to relationships in general first, one can assume that the narrator’s current relationship with her girlfriend is rocky before the dog is brought to their home. This is evident when the narrator sends her partner to get a baby gate for the dog and has a bad experience, leading the narrator to sleep on the dog bed for the evening, however, the narrator justifies this as, “I was pretending to be a dog” and by using words like “force”, one may deduce that the narrator is blaming herself for the incident at the ‘Mothercare’ center, which may not necessarily be true. This relationship might be seen as a reason for the adopting of a dog in the first place.