Dogsong

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1985

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 2, Chapters 6-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-14

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Dreamrun”

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary

Part 2 of the book is broken into four journeys: a run north by Russel and his team, followed by a dream; another run and another dream; and so on until Russel competes his journey, both physically and metaphorically.

Russel leaves Oogruk on the sea ice and runs the dogs north for 18 straight hours, letting them find the way. They leave the tree line where Russel’s village is sheltered and run through progressively more barren and forlorn land under the northern lights. Russel appreciates the beauty of the ice and scrub, respecting “the mother of wind and the father of blue ice” (80), and marvels at the colorful dance of the northern lights. Eventually the dogs run out of energy and start to faulter, so Russel stops them and tries to get them to eat some meat. With building fear, he realizes that the dogs are too tired to eat, something he did not know was possible, and he thinks, “Without the dogs he was nothing” (82). Fear rages in him. He feels helpless and alone. Russel finds that he, too, is unable to eat, so he tries to calm down and rest. He lies down between the dogs and closes his eyes until one of the dogs stirs. Rested, the dogs get up and eat ravenously, before going back to sleep until the morning. The following day Russel and his team continue running north, with Russel scanning the ice for any kind of animal to hunt, aware of the increasingly dire need for food. Finally, they come across a herd of caribou, and with his arrows and dogs Russel takes down four of them. As they fall, he says out loud a poem-song as it comes to him: “They brought the deer down, They helped the dogs to bring us meat. My arrows are true” (86).

Russel sets up camp, butchers the deer into portions, and settles down with his dogs around the fire, where they eat until they are full. Russel makes a fur sleeping bag from the fresh deer skins, layering them with raw sides touching, and crawls inside. He takes off his cloths, which are wet with perspiration, and goes to sleep. He feels at home; he is warm, full, and with his dogs. He is content. As he sleeps, he dreams.

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Dream”

In Russel’s dream, through thick fog he sees a skin shelter on the ice beside the ocean. Through the skin tent, lit by the yellow light of an oil lamp, he sees two happy children and a beautiful woman, all eating a type of meat that is new to him, deep red with yellow fat. He also sees a man with his back to him, enjoying the happy company of the woman and children. The man goes to leave the tent, dressed in a parka and holding a spear, ready to go hunting. The children keep on laughing, but the woman is worried, fearful for the man. Russel senses the man is also afraid, but he goes out anyway and harnesses the dogs. Russel feels “[m]ore than close” to the man and the dogs in the dream (93). The dream dogs are huge and gray, with yellow eyes, and the sled is made entirely of bone and ivory, held together with rawhide. The dream man runs his team over unfamiliar land on which the grass is different from the tundra grass. Russel can tell they are hunting something and is amazed to see how the man is one with his dogs, handling them silently. Russel’s dream team finds fresh tracks of what they are searching for, and Russel feels an intense fear, feeling the fear that is in the dream man. Finally, the fog clears, and in his dream Russel sees what they are hunting, an immense wooly mammoth with great tusks and red eyes.

Russel knows that either the beast or the man and his dogs are going to be killed. In his dream, the wind blows the parker hood off the man’s head as he jumps from the sled with his long lance, and Russel sees his face for the first time. Russel sees that the man is himself. With this knowledge Russel feels a deep fear because he knows “that he would have to fight the mammoth. He would have to fight it and kill it” (96). The dream dogs distract the mammoth long enough for the man to set his killing lance in the snow and lure the oncoming mammoth onto the lance’s point, killing it, sending a beam of light through the mighty beast. As the mammoth falls, two dogs are thrown to their deaths before the mammoth lies still. The man in his dream begins to sing. He sings songs of joy, luck, death, meat and fat, the wind, and finally gratitude for the mammoth who, by dying, provides him with a large supply of food. Then, the dream fog descends, ending the dream. Even as he sleeps, Russel feels the songs deep in his soul; he feels everything the dream man felt because they are one and the same.

Part 2, Chapters 6-7 Analysis

Beauty and solitude are two motifs that run through the beginning of Part 2. Russel feels alone, but not lonely, as he starts his long journey, initially pushing his dogs too hard and too long as he runs away from Oogruk, away from “death sitting on the ice in Oogruk’s form” (81). He is enraptured by the beauty he sees in “the mother of wind and the father of blue ice” (80), in the stark barren landscape, and, “Even in the wind there was beauty to Russel” (81). The reader is transported north on the run with Russel and his dogs, enveloped in descriptions of the changing colors of the sky, snow, and ice. Russel grows in knowledge during this run: He learns that it is possible to run the dogs too hard and from that learns to listen to them more. He is thoughtful and quiet, only speaking out when words of his song come to him, this time praising his arrows after a successful deer hunt. He is content, even though he is still unsure of why he is running north.

The dream Russel has after the run is full of delicious food, happy children, and a beautiful, round, smiling woman. Paulsen uses the motif of food and sustenance to convey contentment and survival. Russel knows by the end of the dream that this is his family—that they rely on him for food and skins, without which they will die. His dogs in his dream are larger than life and magical, reflecting how Russel feels about his dogs in reality. In this dream the man heroically slays the mammoth, and even though the man loses two of his great dogs and feels the sorrow and sacrifice from the mammoth, Russel emerges from this dream full of joy, and more importantly full of song. He is creating his song both in his reality and in his dreams, where the man is the man whom the boy Russel is becoming.