Dog's Death by John Updike

Dog’s Death: John Updike
Sherralle Wieglenda
Ashford
ENG 125 Victoria Stamm
July 23, 2012

The Dog’s death is a poem by John Updike. It is a very sad poem about the death of a family dog. The approach I am going to use to analyze this poem is the readers response approach.
This poem captured my interest because I have just recently lost one of my dog named Puppa. While we were on vacation we got a phone call telling us that they Puppa needed to be put down because they found that her lungs were covered with cancer. While reading this poem I could really feel the pain that this family was feeling. John Updike wrote this poem with the tone of sadness and also gave us the image of what this poor dog looked like when he was getting ready to die.
The analytical approach that I want to use to evaluate the meaning to this poem is reader-response approach. The way you use this approach is you find a personal connection with the literary work but you must not depend totally on feelings and your opinions (Asselin, 2010) there are some questions that you need to ask yourself to use this approach:
  i. What captures my imagination?
  ii. Was it a feeling, and emotion, a curiosity, or an aspiration?
  iii. Did it involve a desire to escape a past or present association?
  iv. What motivation or change did my connection with this piece of literature create in my thinking? In my relationships?
  v. What connections can I make between this piece of literature and others that I’ve read?
  vi. Did my “connection” reinforce thinks I knew or add new insights? (Clugston, 2010)

A narrative poem is the best approach for the subject of John Updike’s poem “Dog Death”.   The subject about the loss of a love one is usually told in the form of stories. The narrative creates an image of how much this family valued this dog.
The title indicates that the poem is about the death of a young dog or puppy. Updike personifies the dog, to stress of how this families loss...