Fifteen Dogs

Though the novel follows the fates of 15 dogs, its jumping off point is a discussion between Apollo and Hermes about human nature and whether human intelligence, which they define broadly as symbolic language, makes humans superior to other mortal creatures. Apollo claims human languages are “too vague” (14). Hermes concedes that this may be true but counters that it makes humans more amusing than other creatures because they would “swear they understood each other,” but “not one of them has any idea what their words actually mean to another” (14). Hermes’s observation ring true repeatedly through various relationships explored in the text, most explicitly through Nira and Majnoun’s relationship.

The disconnect between Majnoun and Nira centers around the distinct ways they gather and process information. Nira’s method is emotional and intellectual while Majnoun’s is sensory. Nira considers abstract, ambiguous concepts like God, religion, government, and love by examining their ideals and her feelings about them. Majnoun, meanwhile, considers these same concepts through sense perception. Nira describes love, the concept they discuss in the most detail, as “[t]he feeling you have for your mother” (49), but Majnoun cannot recall whether he ever knew his mother and, if so, whether he felt any emotional connection to her.