Grieving In 'The Dogs Of Babel'

Essay 2 - The Dogs of Babel through Literary Lenses Grieving is something that happens, or will happen, for everyone; it is human nature for people to mourn the loss of a loved one. Just as everyone’s situation in life is different, people handle grief in all different ways; even if it involves getting a dog to talk. In the novel The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst, Paul is seen grieving over the death of his wife Lexy. Rather than dealing with this loss, he gets stuck in a year of grief, trying to understand whether Lexy’s death was accidental. Using his dog Lorelei, Paul tries to get her to speak, feeling that she is the only witness that he could use to learn what happened the day Lexy died. Ironically, the truth of Lexy’s death, a suicide, was revealed from puzzles she left him, and not from Lorelei. Looking into the way Paul grieves and what caused Lexy to commit suicide, their behaviors can best be explained through a combination of psychoanalytical criticism and feminist criticism.

As the novel progresses, the reader learns more and more about Lexy from Paul, and it shows that he has created a false picture of her which makes him oblivious to reality. On the other hand, Paul’s oblivion towards Lexy’s bad side fades as the novel progresses, and he begins to realize why he has mixed emotions about Lexy, “And I find, at last, that I am angry...when I try to catch hold of the thread of anger...I hit knot after tangled knot” (Parkhurst 222). Paul himself can’t pinpoint his reason for anger, but as the reader, we understand that his anger comes from taking not being able to challenge anything Lexy did, in fear of outbursts of anger or a revival of her suicidal tendencies-which ironically came back