Robert and the Dog

Language was born as an instrument to communicate people, to convey messages in many ways. According to the evolution of human beings, their language has been an evolution too and during this process literature emerged with an artistic interest to express feelings, thoughts and their imagination. But, what is literature? Many theorists have tried to explain that, and we have some patterns that are typical in their texts. In the text â€Å"Robert and the dog† by Ken Saro-Wiwa you can find some of this patterns such as the human being view, the disposition to analyze stories and the literature as an aesthetic object. To begin with, the first example is the concept of man that is given by the text. This is not about the generic male or female description is about the type of person in it. In the text we can see a men that is coward, insecure and with thirst of power. You can recognize this by the description of the character in the development of the story: the thirst of power is seen in â€Å"And he always repaired there nightly to exercise authority over his wife and six children. (Saro-Wiwa, 1) the insecurity in â€Å"Robert began to feel like a human being† (Saro-Wiwa ,page 3) and the cowardice in â€Å"He gathered up all the tins of dog food, all the tins of milk, tethered the dog to the settee and walked off, out of the house and the job he had loved to do. † (Saro-Wiwa, page 5). In these cases we can see that the author invites to get into the feelings of the character, giving a description of it. This is a clear example of a literary text, because by this he is describing a man that is typical in the actual lower classes. On the second case we can see the disposition to analyze the story. The author has a particular way to describe the principal character feelings about the dog. He shows us by a image what â€Å"Robert† thinks: â€Å"And when he got home in the evening and saw his children, with distended stomachs, gamboling in the filth that simmered in a swollen stream at his door, and watched them hungrily swallow small balls of eba, he asked himself, ‘Who born dog? † Saro-Wiwa, page 3) This description is not literal; you have to deduce it, according to the text. The author is trying to transmit to the audience the comparison that â€Å"Robert† is making with the dog, but not by words, instead he is using a shocking image of his children eating like dogs. That is were literature is present, in the way of telling and describing the thoughts of the character. In any other text the comparison is literal, but not in literature. On the last example we analyze the literature a s an aesthetic object. Literature, as a written representation of art, has to follow the basic concepts of aesthetic and, among others, there is the connection between its form and it’s content to make it beautiful. So, in the analyzed story this relation is present; the form of the text uses the language beyond the importance of giving a message, it makes it alter the grammar in order to give emphasis and sound to the text: â€Å"She ensured that he was well fed with tinned food and milk and meat and bones. (Saro-Wiwa, page 3) The word â€Å"and† is used too many times, and that grammatically it is incorrect, but in literature it is not a problem. The repetition of the word â€Å"and† is a way to explain that the dog has more than Robert, and this shows that â€Å"Robert† it is prisoner of his jealousy and his thirst of power. The language and the message, the content and form make this story a work of art that traps the lectors and transmites one of the worst parts of the human being. So, to sum up the text â€Å"Robert and the Dog† by Ken Saro-Wiwa is a literary piece, because of its form and content, the way of the language is used and the message that it contains. A non literary piece of writing is less emotional, and everything is literal, you do not have to conclude anything, but in this text the author uses a very particular way of explaining the feelings and thoughts of the principal character, using the aesthetic as a way for you to interpret every situation that he goes through. Also the vision of human being that is showed in this text, reflect that is a literary piece, because the author describes a men with a poor economical situation, but he never says it, you know that just for de description. On the last the use of a shocking image makes you think about how he sees his own life. So if you connect these three reasons you can see that in a literary text the most important parts of the writing are the ones that are not written; what you can infer, the moral that leaves you and the feelings of each person, and at the end that is what every work of art wants, it is the purest purpose of literature.