Beware of the Dog

“It had nothing to do with him. It was just a mess which happened to be there in the cockpit; something strange and unusual and rather interesting. It was like finding a dead cat on the sofa.”

Peter observes his injured, missing leg with a sense of morbid detachment. This evocative simile implies a comfort with violence along with a sense of dissociation. These tendencies could be seen as potential coping mechanisms developed by Peter and other soldiers as a result of being exposed to extreme trauma during wartime. The dark yet strange imagery is also typical of Dahl’s other works.

“His head kept falling forward onto his chest because his neck seemed no longer to have any strength. But he knew that he was flying the Spitfire. He could feel the handle of the stick between the fingers of his right hand.”

Peter begins to lose consciousness. However, sensory details continue to serve as ways to ground him and bring him back to reality. Even during dire, disorienting circumstances, he can orient himself via concrete clues such as the feel of the airplane controls in his hand.

“One day, when it was white, he put out a hand and he touched something.”

Peter has just undergone a disorienting fall through the air, and an unknown amount of time passes before he wakes in an unknown place. Yet again, he orients himself via sensory details. Through interacting with his environment, he pieces together where he is. This becomes a common thread throughout the rest of the story; gathering concrete details from his environment eventually leads Peter to the truth.

“[The fly] would run forward very fast for a few inches, then it would stop. Then it would run forward again, stop, run forward, stop, and every now and then it would take off and buzz around viciously in small circles […]. He watched it for so long that after a while it was no longer a fly, but only a black speck upon a sea of grey.”

The fly (which originally triggers Peter’s memory of his crash) becomes a point of fixation for Peter as he lies in the hospital bed. The fact that it buzzes “viciously in small circles” over “a sea of grey” evokes the scene of a dogfight (an aerial battle) above water, much like the one Peter has just experienced. Flies evoke themes of death and decay, suggesting that Peter’s condition may be more serious than he thinks. Moreover, flies are easily killed and considered to be disposable. Peter, who has just sacrificed a limb to the war, and is now lying, helpless, in a hospital, could be compared to the fly, as in war, humans are considered to be disposable.

“The engines seem to sing a duet.”

Peter is so familiar with the sound of bombers that he can confidently distinguish one type of plane from another. He knows that JU-88s “sing a duet,” with two different sounds resonating together. This line shows Peter’s expertise, and also describes an instrument of violence in poetic terms. Similarly, throughout the story, wartime violence is often euphemized.

“I’m sure I don’t know. I didn’t hear them.”

The nurse denies hearing the planes that Peter has just heard. This is the first moment in which a character who is supposedly helping Peter is revealed to be potentially deceptive. From this interaction onward, Dahl employs dramatic irony to show that Peter is in more danger than he realizes.

“He remembered how the water was so soft that you had to take a shower afterwards to get all the soap off your body, and he remembered how the foam used to float on the surface of the water, so that you could not see your legs underneath.”

Yet again, sensory details serve as important clues for Peter to uncover the truth. The nurse’s comment about the hard water he is being bathed in triggers a memory from Peter’s schooldays in Brighton. The sensory memory of Brighton’s soft water, coupled with the undeniable sound of the JU-88s, is powerful enough to jolt Peter out of complacently accepting the reality presented to him.

“They were JU-88s, he said to himself. I know they were. And yet it is not possible, because they would not be flying around so low over here in broad daylight. I know that it is true, and yet I know that it is impossible.”

This passage establishes a story as a psychological battle, one that grapples with truth and reality. Peter struggles to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable truths, reflecting a core struggle of the modernist movement and of war-torn society in general.

“He remembered the Junkers 88s and the hardness of the water; he remembered the large pleasant nurse and the kind doctor, and now a small grain of doubt took root in his mind and began to grow.”

Peter gathers together the sensory clues he has observed so far—a series of seemingly irreconcilable truths. This moment serves as a turning point, where Peter’s doubts about his reality overcome his doubts about his own perception of reality.

“There was nothing except the table with a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches and an ashtray. The room was bare. It was no longer warm or friendly. It was not even comfortable. It was cold and empty and very quiet.”

Peter begins to see everything in a new light. Now that he has started to doubt what the hospital staff have told him, he also doubts the hospital itself. The nurse’s demeanor was initially pleasant but may be hiding colder motives; similarly, the hospital, which was assumed to be benign, is now shown to be “cold and empty.” The surroundings themselves have not changed, but Peter’s perspective has. The developments of the story are traced through Peter’s shifting understanding of the world around him.

“Slowly the grain of doubt grew, and with it came fear, a light dancing fear that warned but did not frighten; the kind of fear that one gets not because one is afraid, but because one feels that there is something wrong.”

The grain of doubt that started out small (as Peter contemplated the sound of the planes and the hardness of the water) starts to grow, and along with it, Peter’s relationship to fear shifts. As a primarily psychological story, this marks a point of rising action, building toward the climax where Peter will realize with certainty that he is behind enemy lines.

“He knew then that he must do something; that he must find some way of proving to himself that he was either right or wrong, and he looked up and saw again the window and the green curtains. From where he lay, that window was right in front of him, but it was fully ten yards away.”

Peter, who up until this point has been in bed, resolves to crawl to the window. While the story mostly centers on Peter’s inner struggles, this external obstacle—the distance it takes to get there—serves as a visual representation of Peter’s battle for the truth.

“With two arms and one leg, he crawled towards the window.”

This scene marks the story’s climax. Peter may not be on the battlefield, but his situation mirrors that of a typical wartime story. Since he is injured, and considering all that the window represents—a definitive glimpse at the truth—the task at hand is indeed challenging, and the stakes are high. This scene draws a parallel between soldiers crawling across war-torn battlefields in traditional war narratives and Peter’s fight for truth.