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Metaphors of Menace: Black Dogs

© Diana Adams

Ian McEwan was accused of winning the Booker Prize with a flimsy novel,Amsterdam. Some critics pointed to the shorter length of the novel, and its somewhat comedic characters as a slender Booker entry from a very gifted writer. McEwan may have responded with his newest book,Atonement, which is in every way larger, in theme and length, than his previous books. I am a huge admirer of his shorter books, however, because they are tightly crafted, poetic, and give the reader absolutely no time to catch their breath.

Black Dogs is a great book to illustrate what McEwan does best. First off, before even reading the book we are confronted with the macabre element McEwan works so well with- right in the title. The Black Dogs in the novel do in fact refer to the dark canines left by the Gestapo, encountered by the character June in a desolate region of southern France. But black dogs refer to many other things and it takes a gifted writer to get at the bloodlines, so to speak, of language. Black dogs, as in the case of Winston Churchill, also refers to depression, and reach even further back into folklore as a menacing presences with occult related tendencies.

Make no mistake; McEwan is highly praised for the menace in his writing. He has a remarkable ability to generate unease in his readers about things such as: childhood, depression, enduring love, tragedy. The state of unease occurs because he is able to get to some essential truths, that we all, I'm sure, would rather leave buried in our psyche. (If you prefer something buried in the basement however, please do not hesitate to read McEwan's The Cement Garden).

In Black Dogs the landscape of menace happens to be the territory of memory and the past. Can memory be accurate? Or, is it symbolic of something entirely different? He wants us to question whether June's encounter with the black dogs actually happened. The effects, certainly, of the black dogs on June Tremain were very real: the meltdown of a marriage, and an abrupt turning to God. By using the dogs left behind by the Gestapo, McEwan is dredging up the dark past of Europe. He wants us know that present is firmly connected to the past. Or as George Orwell put it "The past doesn't come back to you, you are actually in the past."

As with many books by Ian McEwan, the first sentence is a key to the puzzle of the entire novel. In Black Dogs : "Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents." This type of literary technique is a masterful use of language, something similar to the mechanics of poetry, or shorter works of prose and poetry combined. He may have let the sails out for the writing of Atonement, but I hope that McEwan returns to his shorter length novels that really are masterpieces of mechanics and leave us sitting on the edge looking for more, more...menace.

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