43 pages • 1 hour read
John GroganMarley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Reproduction and Reproductive Health
The story takes place during the reproductive years of John and Jenny’s marriage. Jenny is eager for a baby but reads the death of their houseplant as an ominous sign of her parenting skills. Jenny killing the houseplant that John gives her as a gift foreshadows the reproductive health issues ahead for the Grogans: miscarriage, neutering, performance issues, another complicated pregnancy, and postpartum depression. Successfully caring for Marley confirms for Jenny that she’s ready to be a parent. Jenny’s parenting years begin just after Marley is neutered, signifying the end of his bloodline and the beginning of John’s, and foreshadowing the shift in Marley’s role from childlike puppy to quirky uncle in the Grogan family.
Inevitability of Death
Marley’s death becomes the focus of John’s reflections as Marley’s age progresses and his health declines. John knows Marley will not be with the family forever, and he’s experienced the lifecycle of a family dog as a child with Saint Shaun. Marley’s age still creeps up on John, who has thrown himself into family life just as Marley reaches adolescence. By the time the Grogans move to Pennsylvania and John slows down enough to turn his attention to Marley more frequently, it’s impossible to miss the signs of aging. The first time John is faced with the choice between surgery and death for Marley, he takes a third option and waits out the situation. Happily, the first instance works itself out, but even as Marley makes comeback after comeback, each health scare brings John closer to acknowledging that Marley’s time is coming to an end. This confrontation with the inevitability of death helps John appreciate the preciousness of each moment life offers.
Class and Status
John occasionally observes and comments upon socioeconomic class. He becomes somewhat obsessed with Marley’s pureblood lineage and qualifications, having never rubbed shoulders with “anything resembling high breeding” and being “a mutt of indistinct and undistinguished ancestry” himself (13). He explains, “This dog was the closest to blue blood I would ever get, and I wasn’t about to pass up whatever opportunities it offered” (13). John associates higher class with more opportunity and imposes his own ambition upon his dog when he names him Grogan’s Majestic Marley of Churchill, imagining himself gloriously trotting alongside his champion purebred (14).
The “indigent” labor ward is a mirror image of the private maternity ward “except for one obvious difference—the patients were definitely not the buttoned-down, disposable-income yuppies we had gone through Lamaze class with” (104). The families in this ward are mostly Spanish-speaking farmers from Mexico and Central America. The women in labor cannot afford epidurals during delivery. Jenny is a striking contrast with her access to pain relief and skin “white as a ghost” (105). Disparities between races and classes are highlighted by the differences between the two maternity wards. Despite connecting with the fathers in the “indigent” ward, John and Jenny still move to their private suite, removing themselves from the lower-class experience when presented with the opportunity.
