37 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas SavageThe Power of the Dog
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Peter recalls his time in Herndon with his friend with whom he played chess and dreamed big. Like Peter, his friend was introverted and solitary, and they used to visit the train station and the man who worked there because for them, it symbolized escape. As he reminisces, he notices George’s things and how these are the things of a “man who had not yet proved himself” (229). Rose calls for Peter to come have a chat with her. She is evidently drunk, and the conversation is strained and at times incoherent. She tells him a story from when she was in school. Toward the end of the conversation, Peter compliments his mother, saying that she is beautiful even now, and Rose feels shame that he construed their conversation to mean she needed some kind of affirmation from him. Peter intimates that Rose does not have to drink nor live the kind of life she has been living and then promises to her that he is going to make sure she doesn’t.
Phil continues to braid the rawhide rope and looks forward to it being completed so that he can give it to Peter. Peter watches him braid, and Phil tells him of a place out beyond the hills where piles of rocks form a trail. Phil says he never followed it to the end but suggests that he and Peter take a ride out there some day and find out.
The hides that Phil has drying out at the ranch become a source of contention. A backstory is told wherein Phil denies a man who had come to purchase the hides because Phil suspected him of being Jewish and thus a schemer. The anecdote highlights another ugly side of Phil’s personality: He is antisemitic. Instead of selling the hides, out of principle and because he doesn’t need the money, Phil instead burns them.
Peter rides out beyond the hill that Phil spoke of by himself and follows the stones until he comes to a ravine. There down below, he sees the carcass of an animal that is not identified by the narrator. Meanwhile, Rose continues to struggle as her alcohol addiction becomes worse. She now makes regular trips into town to buy miscellaneous items such as clothing and always alcohol. She also becomes a frequent customer at a pharmacy in town for prescription medicine and a house where she enters from the back ashamed. The narrator does not disclose what she purchases there, but presumably it is some kind of illegal substance. One day, there is a knock at the door, and she staggers to open it. There is a man there looking to buy the hides that are hanging in the yard. After some deliberation and knowing full well that she will invite the rage and scorn of Phil, Rose decides to sell the hides to the man for $30 cash. Immediately, she wishes that she had not done that. She goes to her bedroom and passes out with the money falling out of her hands.
Chapter 14 Summary
One of the games the younger ranch-hands play involves removing poles from a pile to expose the hiding places of smaller animals such as gophers and mice. When the animals scurry to another safe place, the boys perform the same task until they became bored. Phil is naturally drawn to these kinds of boyish pursuits. The narrator recalls a time when the son of a cattle-buyer challenged him to a game of marbles. Phil let the youngster strut and showcase his confidence, and then when it was Phil’s turn, he made an incredible shot that left the boy stunned and defeated. Phil offered some words of wisdom to the boy and allowed him to keep his marbles rather than take them from him.
Phil introduces Peter to the game of removing the poles. When they finally discover a rabbit, one of the poles drops on it and breaks its leg. Phil tells Peter to put it out of its misery, which Peter does by snapping its neck. This act really impresses Phil. While playing the game, Phil cuts himself, and his wound is rather deep. It is not an ordinary nick. Phil tells some of the lessons taught to him by Bronco Henry. While it is not explicitly revealed, there is the suggestion that the two had a love affair when Phil was much younger. Phil brings up the subject of Rose and tells Peter that she is a drunk, to which Peter plays dumb as if he is not able to fully understand. Phil shows Peter some sympathy toward the end of their conversation and tells him that things will work out for him in the end.
Phil and Peter return to the ranch, and Phil notices that the hides are gone. He is enraged, and Peter tries to soften the anger by offering a hide of his own that Phil can use to finish the rope. Phil is touched by the offer and awkwardly embraces and touches Peter but goes no further in his physical intimacy. Phil finishes braiding the rope and requests that Peter watch him do it. The next day, Phil is late to breakfast, a total anomaly that leaves everyone wondering what happened to him. Finally, he comes downstairs looking ill and sweating. George drives him to the hospital, but it is too late. Shortly after his arrival, Phil dies. The unidentified animal that Peter had seen in the ravine was a cow that had been dumped there because it died from anthrax. Peter collected the hide from the carcass, and it was this hide he offered to Phil. When Phil touches it with his wounded fingers, he contracts the anthrax, and that is what kills him.
Chapters 13- 14 Analysis
The final two chapters tie the loose ends of the plot together in a way that keeps the reader guessing even after the penultimate moment when Phil is poisoned. There is a short conclusion after Phil dies, but the reader must still piece together Peter’s claim that he delivered his mother from her decline, and that “thanks to his father’s sacrifice, and to the sacrifice he himself had found it possible to make from a knowledge got from his father’s big black books. The dog was dead” (272). The enigmatic ending makes sense when the reader goes back through the main plot events, beginning with Peter’s arrival at the farm. He conducts experiments on small animals, specifically how to remove their hides. He brings his father’s medical books with him. His mother notices the odor of chloroform on one occasion when speaking with him. In Chapter 13, he discovers the carcass: “In that ravine, along whose side ran one of the ancient cow paths, Peter found exactly the dead animal he’d been searching for; he thought it fitting that it was Phil, in a way, who had led him to it” (239). Unlike Phil, who never wore gloves, Peter does. And knowing full well that Phil would not use gloves to finish the braiding of the rope, his offer of the poisoned hide is how Phil contracts the anthrax.
Importantly, Peter’s revenge plot gains momentum when Phil befriends him. At the end of Chapter 12, Phil is noticeably impressed that when Peter is whistled at, he is entirely unphased. From that moment on, and through these final two chapters, Phil takes a liking to Peter. When Peter kills the rabbit in an act of mercy and shows no squeamishness, Phil seizes on this moment. His tone toward Peter changes drastically. He tells Peter about Bronco Henry, a man whom Phil talks about nostalgically throughout the novel, usually as the ideal of what a man was and ought to be. He says to Peter, “‘You see the side of the hill. But Bronc, when he looked there, what do you suppose he saw?’ to which Peter replies, “’A dog…A running dog’ (255). This is a crucial moment as now Phil sees in Peter a kindred spirit to Bronco Henry and, by extension, himself. When Peter offers Phil the poisoned hide, Phil finally makes an advance at Peter. Phil’s voice changes and becomes “husky,” and he slides “his long arm about the boy’s shoulders. Once before that day, he’d been tempted, and desisted, because he’d always sworn out of that old loyalty never again to make that move” (260). The change in voice and the physical gesture imply an act of intimacy on Phil’s part. It calls into question his idealization of Bronco Henry. It suggests that his attitude toward Peter is not one of fatherly devotion, but something more sexual. For his part, Peter only plays along because it is part of his plot to enact revenge on Phil for humiliating his father and making his mother’s life miserable. As the novel concludes, Peter repeats the psalm that is the epigraph of the novel: “Deliver my soul from the sword,/ My darling from the power of the dog” (271). As it has played out through the novel, the power of the dog is the Alpha personality type. Deliverance from this power suggests that meekness and kindness can prevail, even in the harsh world portrayed in the novel. Not even the alpha escapes meeting his superior.
