Does the Dog Die in This One?
A vegan take on classic required reading
I grew up a voracious reader, but a very sensitive one, an animal-loving kid who threw Charlotte’s Web across the room in a crying fit before even finishing the first four pages. I quickly learned to avoid any novel with a dog on its cover because that dog would be dead by the last chapter: Old Yeller, Sounder, Where the Red Fern Grows, I’m looking at you (through my tears). To this day, when I see a pup (or kitten or horse or swan) on a book, my anxiety levels skyrocket thinking about how I will deal with the trauma of their demise.
In honor of Back-To-School times, I revisited some of the most-assigned books for American high school students to find out if the dog dies in any of them, and what kinds of other horrors are inflicted on animals within their pages. It’s grim out there, sensitive ones…
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte
There’s lots of dogs out on these moors — snarling guard dogs, hounds loosed upon one’s enemies, dogs biting kids, bird-hunters and their dogs — but none of them die. THE DOG DOESN’T DIE. Cathy and Heathcliff, the main humans, go through lots of emotional and physical abuse, some at each other’s hands, before eventually dying. But do they really cease to exist when their ghosts continue to pester…
