Dogsong

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1985

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 2, Chapters 6-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-14

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 2, Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “The Dreamrun”

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Run”

Russel wakes from his deep, dream-filled sleep to find his dogs eating one of the deer carcasses. The dogs had fought during the night, breaking the gangline, so Russel fixes the rawhide then pulls the dogs away from the deer and back into line. He loads up the sled with the skins and deer meat and sets off again, letting the dogs lead the way north. Russel instinctively knows the weather and can tell from the color of the sky, a deep purple, that a storm is coming. The impending storm does not worry him; he senses it will not be severe, but something is making him uneasy, and he thinks it may be remnants of the dream, pushing him to drive his team on. Russel also feels more connected to his dogs since the dream. He lets the dogs lead the way and reflects on whether they know his mind, whether they have become “part of his thinking” (102). He wonders whether the dogs know why they are heading north, something he’s not sure of himself.

Russel lets the dogs run for about six hours, using all the daylight, until he sees a small valley with some brush. It is the perfect place to set up camp, and without direction from Russel the dogs instinctively know to go there. Russel uses the skins to set up a cozy camp, feeds the dogs, and warms up some meat for himself. He is settling down to sleep when he feels a lump under his shoulder. It is a stone, a smoothly polished disc with one side hollowed out to form a dish with a groove on the edge. Russel realizes that it is on old stone lamp, even older than Oogruk’s lamps. Using fat from the deer carcasses and moss he finds nearby, Russel eventually manages to coax the lamp to give a warm, glowing flame. Russel feels proud and content. He has everything he needs in the face of the impending storm: shelter, food, and heat. He settles down to sleep.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “The Dream”

Once asleep Russel dreams. The fog is back, and the dream man and his huge dogs arrive at a village on the beach-ice. The village is idyllic: Happy children play with fat puppies, and women call to each other from glowing tents. Russel, the man in the dream, holds back, feeling sad and nostalgic for his own village, but the dream dogs pull his sled into the village, excited at the sight of other dogs. The man and his team are welcomed with great joy. The villagers see the man as a powerful hunter and invite him in to tell his tales and sing his songs. The dream shifts to inside a great tent, with many people sitting around the man, gathered to listen to him. The man is big and extremely strong, wearing only a loincloth and standing in the center of the tent.

The man begins to move, and Russel knows the man is telling a story. The movement becomes a dance, and the man transforms into a gigantic mammoth, the same mammoth Russel saw in his previous dream. The mammoth stomps and sways, scaring the children, but also sings a sad song and dances in a way to depict its own death by a man with a lance. The dream then takes a different turn as the mammoth grows in strength and challenges the man with the lance and attacks the dream dogs. Russel is now the mammoth in the dream. In his dream Russel feels, “it was not the time for the mammoth to die but time for the man to die and Russell knew this, knew all of this because of the movements of the man in the dream” (114). Another change of tack and Russel is once again himself in the dream, killing the mammoth with his lance, portraying the events to the villagers with song and dance. The villagers express their joy and approval, and dream Russel falls to the floor, exhausted. He lies there as other hunters get up and dance and sing their songs, and the fog returns as the dream fades.

Part 2, Chapter 8-9 Analysis

Remnants of Russel’s dream impact his run. Russel’s connection with his land and surroundings is getting stronger. He can sense a storm coming by reading the light and wind, but more than that, his connection to his dogs has deepened to a point that verges on mystical. It is as though his dogs are aware of his dream, that they can read his mind and he can read their minds. He asks them if they know why they are heading north, not expecting an answer, but illustrating the bond he feels to them—that they are equals. Russel is becoming the man Oogruk was coaching him to be, one with nature and one with his dogs. The ancient lamp that Russel finds in his camp is a symbol of the past and of his future. Russel starts speaking in the third person—“See what a man has been given” (105)—as he holds the lamp, subconsciously making a connection to the past as he lights the lamp that will glow and provide warmth as he drifts off to sleep to dream of his possible future. Once again, this dream takes him to a place of welcoming, warmth, and plentiful food, highlighted once more by fat puppies and fat dogs, and happy women and children. The harmony between humans and nature, albeit in the cold Arctic environment, is reinforced by this bucolic scene.

This time it is a whole village of strangers, rather than a family unit in a solitary tent, his family unit. Even though he cannot make out the words, in this dream the lost tradition of Inuit dance and song is revived as Russel (in his dream a huge, strong, and powerful hunter) performs the mammoth hunt from the previous dream. This is the first time Russel experiences a traditional Inuit dance, and it leaves him spent. The sequential dreams carry the story forward for Russel: He knows it is his story and his song, and these glimpses into the future provide a path and a reason for his journey. The dreams take Russel deeper into the man’s magical connection to nature. He becomes the mammoth, which allows him to understand how the animals he hunts feel; he feels the mammoths’ rage, strength, sorrow, and acceptance. The dreams are essential to Russel’s evolution; they are part of his self-discovery.