The Death of Rover

A look at our pets.

 Let’s talk about pets. It’s a tricky subject, one that we all would rather not exist. I don’t care how hardcore you are; we all have a weak spot hardwired in us for Rover, Fido, Missy, Zoe, Misty, Bunny, Bobby, Rex, what have you. Just think back to the many stories you watched or read as a kid. Boy is lonely. Boy meets stray dog. Boy grows with dog. Blossoms into manhood as dog becomes old. Dog dies. Audience sobs. Great story.

 

How many you got? Five? Ten? Twenty? Remember, Where the Red Fern Grows counts as two. That’s what I thought. So, what’s up with that? It’s a storyline, a guaranteed hit it would seem. It’s as sure a hit as Old Yeller isn’t making it back home. There’s a sort of platonic innocence in a boy and his dog that rings in complete harmony with us all.

 

As kids, I think we watch these animal lovers with a kind of passionate longing. “I wish I had a dog like that.” Whether we realize it at the time or not, there’s an ideal that occurs only in the world of the story. After all, it has to be ideal because it’s a world that has been created specifically by the author. Within this world there is only the story, nothing that complicates the unseen like what drags the real world down. Here, the story ends with the boy learning from his experiences as he rides to the wedding chapel to marry the girl of his dreams. There is a sadness in it. It is at the same time a hello and a goodbye. The dog becomes something greater than the loyal beast and enters the realm of the metaphor. The dog becomes the childhood that the boy can no longer have. The girl represents manhood.

 

The dog must die for the boy to grow.

 

Sorry, Rover. Click-click, bang.

 

In the real world, things don’t happen as cleanly. There is no convenient ending that freezes the characters in their upward gazing. There is no lesson. The freeze frame of the wedding party full of smiles is an illusion captured on a camera. The photographer puts the camera down, the group goes home. A year later they move away, fall out of touch, the couple divorces, or they don’t. There is more to the story. There is always more to the story, that’s what makes our story different. There is no end. There are personal ends that we don’t control for the most part, but they dovetail neatly into other stories so there really is no ending. Chapters that don’t necessarily have rhyme or reason. We like to think they do, we struggle to provide meaning. We employ people in every discipline to find meaning, find a story.

 

I took a Shakespeare class in college, and I remember reading Antony and Cleopatra. The professor described it in a way that I have found myself returning to time and time again. She summed up A and C is R and J, if the lovers had been allowed to grow up. I guess that’s my final point here. The tragic story of Romeo and Juliet is tragic because their lives are cut short, but it is that same act that makes the story beautiful. They are immortalized in their deaths; the young lovers who wanted nothing more in life but what was denied to them up until their very end, that is, to be in each other’s arms.

 

Antony and Cleopatra, however, do not die. They grow up. There is a power struggle, a rip in the marriage. War, violence, betrayal. Shows what happens when a writer lets a story get out of control, fails to pull the reigns on it at the right time. Bring it to a close. Otherwise it all starts to look pretty familiar.

 

We pick from the random occurrences that happen in a given time and find a point in which we can best match up the events of real life to that of a story. That’s really the best we can do.

 

Unfortunately, in the real world, there is no metaphor. Rover is just Rover. A friend that passes away. He doesn’t symbolize a bittersweet goodbye to the innocence of childhood. Certainly not an entrance to the world of experience. Step aside, William Blake. We strive to find meaning in it, and I guess, at the end of the day, if we are able to match up and create one for it, that’s good enough. But the event in and of itself, the death of Rover, is meaningless.

 

I’d rather live in the story. Rover gets to mean something. For real.