Running
The narrator of the book is a dog named Johannes who calls the expansive park he lives in his home. He boasts of himself, “I run like a rocket. I run like a laser.” He follows these assessments with the assertion that no reader has ever seen speed like his. These metaphors are composed by a dog, remember, yet they feel like symbols of humanity, the rocket and the laser. This use is somewhat ironic because the imagery of running is a recurring one that symbolizes the dog’s pure freedom in nature from the restrictions of the human world.
Dog Meets God
They say that dog spelled backward is god. What they never say is what that bit of wisdom is actually supposed to mean. Johannes the dog is more succinct even with metaphor. “God is the Sun. Clouds are her messengers. Rain is only rain.” The final sentence here is an illustration that the dog knows the difference between the literal and metaphor. By the Sun being God, he is referring to the light which allows him to see the world. The idea of clouds being messengers whereas rain is simply rain indicates that clouds can mean many things, climatically speaking. Not all clouds are rain clouds.
Crazy Art
With the arrival of a new building in the park, Johannes gets his first introduction to art. Specifically, paintings. A friend named Bertrand observes that “most of them look like they were made by loons.” The simile is explained by Johannes who lets the reader know that loons are really strange. Ducks may be narcissistic but loons are just plain strange, her further clarifies without actually making anything clearer.
The Eyes
Because of his ability to run fast and his overall intelligence, Johannes is given a special job by the Bison who are the elders of the park. “I am the Eyes,” he proudly announces throughout the narrative. This term is a metaphorical one used to describe his special task. He spies on the humans and then reports back any new developments.
Paintings
Johannes finds himself drawn to those strange, loon-like artworks in part because they look mostly like things he is a familiar with but not quite exactly. One painting features “something like a human child’s face but it was like a human child’s face in a hurricane.” The simile is an odd one because there does not seem to be much a difference for the point of comparison. In this case, however, that is the point. The dog is not familiar at all with seeing the world through the perspective of anyone or anything else. His description is therefore an illumination of the things humans take for granted. Namely, the ability to see through another’s eyes through artistic interpretation.
