Canine Death in Canonical American Fiction

Amelia (Molly) Labenski is a Canadian scholar of American literature and animal studies and is an instructor in the English Department at the University of Calgary.

"For many Americans, a core childhood memory involves reading a book in which a beloved dog dies, leaving readers with emotional scars that can last a lifetime, as the presence of the website "Does the Dog Die" indicates. Amelia Lebenski's Canine Death in Canonical American Fiction explores this trope, and argues that there is more to these literary depictions of canine death than the romantic "loyal dog is sacrificed to teach humans a lesson" explanation. Dogs have died at human hands for as long as we have kept, and loved, dogs, just as they have been weaponized by humans to kill other humans, and Lebenski argues that these very real deaths, unsentimental and terrible, tell a much more nuanced story of the human-dog relationship. This book offers an important corrective to the overly sentimental way in which we represent and understand the deaths of our most cherished companions."

• IntroductionChapter 1: An Inventory of Literary Good BoysChapter 2: Dead Dogs and Growing Girls in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Bluest EyeChapter 3: Is There a Dog?: Looming Canines in The Grapes of Wrath and Slaughterhouse-FiveReferencesThe Globe and Tail