Canine Death in Canonical American Fiction investigates the presence of dogs in literature
through an analysis of classic and popular novels. The author interrogates the validity
of the “man's best friend” trope by using fiction as a telling source of cultural attitudes
towards animals and questions why dog death is so pervasive in literature. From sentimental
tearjerkers like Fred Gipson's Old Yeller to canonical classics like Toni Morrison's The Bluest
Eye and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, this book examines the wealth of human-dog
relations that the literary archive does not currently address and complicates prevalent
assumptions of this relationship as inherently altruistic and symbiotic. Amelia Labenski
argues that dogs carry a heavy symbolic weight in and outside of literature, where they
often function as moral alibis or romantic stand-ins for our other, more explicitly harmful,
relationships with animals. These arguments bring to bear a useful discussion about the
role fiction can play in how we re-envision our relationships with animals of all kinds and the
environment which we all share.