The first few pages of this novel amused me and caught my attention right off the bat. The first quote that I found interesting was "Scranton Roy was most disturbed not by the death yells of old men and the few warriors shocked naked from their robes, but by the feral quiet of the children." I think that it set the stage of the violence and madness occurring in the village. Soon after, his contempt for the children, the paragraph mentions him as he, "bayoneted an old woman who set upon him with no other weapon but a stone picked up from the ground." This certainly interested me, but what caught my attention even more was the dog.
The dog interests me not only because Roy takes pity on the child and therefore it, so he follows it, but it also becomes a symbol to lead throughout his journey away from the horrifying scene. I have found that dogs always seem to hold emotional entitlement in many pieces of writing, and typically, they die, or are injured when this happens. I found it interesting that Scranton and the dog "found rhythm" in their breathing. Soon after Roy was afraid to "frighten him with a rifle shot", soon after he had just destroyed a village. The connection between the two seemed interesting, when he repeatedly cannot connect to the child. The fact that it was so easy for him to fall in sync with the dog was a thought of value.
I was a little taken aback by the fact that he let the child mock breast feed, because I couldn't think of many men who would have gone that far, that I know personally to comfort a child that wasn't theirs, when they had little skill with children. The ending of that idea was a bit confusing as he gave a milk from his breast, I was a bit quizzical all and all as to if it was a dream or not. Mostly It made me excited to keep reading on and tied me into the book.
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