Animal Magic

This month’s story features a rather unusual dog. In The Fellow by Joy Williams we meet three characters, all of them somewhat enigmatic, in a tale that takes a surreal turn. As always, you’ll get most from the master class if you read the story for yourself: https://writ.rs/thefellow

One of the things I want to look at is how animals are used in the story. The first creatures mentioned are bed bugs (actually conenose bugs, the narrator explains) and fire ants. These are seen as a nuisance and something to be got rid of. They are part of the sometimes challenging environment the characters are dealing with, alongside the water or lack of water in the nearby creek.

The next animal reference is to a river horse (another word for a hippopotamus). This appears to be an allusion to a literary reference and a memory rather than an actual animal, although