80 pages • 2 hours read
Barbara O'ConnorHow to Steal a Dog
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The South
O’Connor describes writing as a process of getting to “sit at my desk and pour my memories of my Southern childhood into my stories” (O’Connor). Although O’Connor has lived in other parts of the country, such as California and the Northeast U.S., when she imagines the feelings and experiences of childhood, she returns to the kind of setting that resembles the place where she grew up in South Carolina. The South is a consistent background motif in How to Steal a Dog, which is set in the real small town of Darby, North Carolina. The setting becomes apparent in the unchecked kudzu vines which “snaked their way up the chimney and across the roof” of the old creepy house where Georgina and her family squat, and in Georgina’s fear of rising temperatures as early as April, which will make car-living even more uncomfortable (42). Thus, while a child in the North of the United States might still worry about freezing in a car in springtime, Georgina’s concern is typical of a Southern climate.
However, most of all, the motif of the South appears in the speech of all the characters, who adopt regional 
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