42 pages • 1 hour read
Andre AlexisFifteen Dogs
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Wager”
In present-day Toronto, Greek gods Apollo and Hermes give 15 dogs human intelligence, allowing them to maintain their dog memories. The chapter explores the dogs’ diverging reactions to their new capacities.
Apollo and Hermes’s bet begins with a debate about whether humans are better or worse than other creatures. Apollo argues that humans “have no special merit” (13) and only “think themselves superior” (15). Hermes disagrees, citing humans’ abilities to create and use symbols. Apollo bets Hermes that animals granted human intelligence will be no happier than humans are. Fifteen dogs residing at a veterinary clinic become the bet’s subjects. If even one dies happy, Hermes will win.
The dogs immediately begin experiencing complex emotions and thoughts and expanding their language. Majnoun, a black poodle, figures out how to open his cell, and the other dogs follow accordingly. Leaving the clinic, they feel “helplessly free” (17) and concerned about who will lead them.
Three of the dogs decide to stay behind. Agatha suffers extreme pain. Before receiving intelligence, the clinic was set to euthanize her. She dies frightened, wishing to see her “mistress” one last time. Ronaldinho and Lydia return to their humans. Ronaldinho dies “bitter and disillusioned” (18) by his humans’ condescension. Lydia, hurt by her humans’ neglect, eventually goes catatonic, and they euthanize her.
The 12 remaining dogs establish a den near the lake in Toronto’s High Park. Atticus, a mastiff, assumes leadership, worrying Majnoun. Majnoun distrusts dogs and prefers humans but chooses not to return to his owner because Majnoun values freedom above respect. Where Majnoun is inclined to be more thoughtful, Atticus prefers to retain what he thinks of as his essential dog nature.
The dogs use their new skills to refine their hunting techniques, create a system for marking time, and expand their language. They invent a new sound for “human” to replace “master” (23). Two of the dogs, Bella and Athena, develop a closer friendship than they have ever experienced.
Atticus, however, feels that their new self-consciousness has robbed him of the simple pleasures of being a dog. Frick, Frack, and Max suppress their self-consciousness except as it can serve their dog instincts. Majnoun and Rosie accept self-consciousness but would give it up if it meant being able to rejoin the dog community. Only Prince fully embraces self-consciousness. He begins composing poetry, angering most of the other dogs, who feel he has tainted their “clear, noble language” (29). Athena, Bella, and Majnoun appreciate Prince’s poetry. Majnoun defends Prince when Max attacks him, but Atticus orders Majnoun not to kill Max. Majnoun instinctively feels this is a mistake but accepts the leader’s decision.
Two days later, Atticus and Majnoun discuss the pack’s future. Atticus laments that their new skills alienate them from their own kind. Talking and thinking are useless, and they must “learn to be dogs again” (32). Majnoun disagrees, arguing that they should learn to use what their new gift. He privately wonders whether Atticus is right but ultimately decides that the dogs cannot turn away from what they have become.
Atticus approaches Frick, Frack, and Max, saying they must purge the back of dogs who refuse to behave like dogs. They plan to eliminate Athena, Bella, Prince, and Majnoun. Frick kills Athena, who is too small to resist. Frack lures Bella to a busy road and tricks her into crossing the path of a speeding car that strikes and kills her.
After Bella and Athena’s deaths, Hermes declares himself the bet’s winner since they died happy having experienced deeper friendship than before they had self-consciousness. Apollo objects since both were afraid when they died. To resolve the conflict without involving their father, Apollo allows Hermes to intervene in one of the dogs’ lives. Hermes chooses Prince. Warned by Hermes, Prince flees the pack before the others can find him. Atticus draws Majnoun away from the den, where the dogs ambush him. Atticus feels sorry because he understands Majnoun but justifies his decision. The dogs leave Majnoun for dead and return to their den.
Chapter 1 Analysis
The dogs’ various responses to their new capacities establish that the novel will examine the nature of happiness in conversation with ancient Greek thought. Apollo and Hermes are ancient Greek gods who appear in Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey influencing human events; both epics begin with gods conversing about how they will influence outcomes.
Self-consciousness immediately provokes anxiety in the dogs because it prompts reflection, which causes them to experience conflicted feelings about their instinctive behaviors. Atticus, who wakes up from a dream in which he catches prey, considers the pain his victims must suffer. Rosie regrets that she does not know what happened to all the puppies she has birthed. The dogs’ concerns about freedom and leadership are a further manifestation of the anxiety that self-consciousness and reflection provoke. The dogs had not previously questioned their instincts, fretted about their consequences on others, or interpreted how humans treated them. They experienced the world not through their minds but through their senses, intuiting their place in the hierarchy and either accepting or challenging it. The three dogs who choose to stay behind all die unhappy because “their new ways of thinking poisoned what had been (or what they remembered as being) idyllic and relatively long lives” (18). Self-consciousness alters how they interpret human treatment and prompts recognition that they are not as respected and loved as they had believed when perceiving only with their senses.
Apollo and Hermes’s wager mirrors an anecdote recounted in Herodotus’s Histories, the first known attempt to record large-scale history: Athenian leader Solon asserts that happiness can only be determined upon one’s death. Luck, Solon notes, can change, lifting people up one moment and bringing them low the next, thus individuals can only be truly happy if their luck holds out until the end of their lives. The terms of Apollo and Hermes’s bet broadly conform with Solon’s definition, but they do not specify whether they mean “happy beings or happy lives” (15). This lack of specificity will cause conflict between the gods after Athena’s and Bella’s death; further, it demonstrates how ambiguity can be both a gift and a plague. It allows for a multiplicity of meanings, which enables literary art like Prince’s poetry but can also lead to disputes when interpretations collide.
Before self-consciousness, the dogs had a natural language that enabled them to communicate basic needs (e.g. hunger) and feelings (e.g. submission or dominance). Their new “primate thinking” (17) expands their emotional range beyond the physical, and their communication must subsequently expand to accommodate it. Their word for primates was “master,” but their new self-consciousness leads Prince to develop the value-neutral term “humans,” allowing the dogs to “speak of the primates without speaking of mastery” (22-23). Nuances of meaning also enable the dogs to refine their hunting techniques through improved communication, but it also causes alienation from their dog instincts and, subsequently, from the larger dog community.
In terms of ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the dogs suffer because they want what they cannot have and cannot accept what is. Their various reactions to Prince’s poetry reflect the degree to which they accept their circumstances. Atticus, Frick, Frack, and Max hate Prince’s poetry because it is “a constant affront to clarity” (28). They long to return to their essential dog natures, idealizing it as a time of purity and truth. Prince’s poetry, with its wordplay and figurative language, clearly transcends dog reality. Majnoun, who longs to be what he was but believes that the dogs have no choice but to accept what they have become, finds Prince’s poetry moving. His and Atticus’s opposing attitudes lead Atticus, the self-appointed leader, to purge the pack, keeping only those who agree to return to their former dog ways and killing, or attempting to kill, the rest. Atticus’s violent assertion of leadership performs pack roles, but he feels regret because he understands Majnoun’s feelings, signaling that self-consciousness has changed him despite his refusal to accept it.
