Dogsong

“He wanted to go on and say father, I’m not happy with myself, but he did not. It was not the sort of thing you talked about, this feeling he had, unless you could find out what was causing it. He did not know enough of the feeling to talk.”

Russel loves his father and is uncomfortable expressing his unhappiness. He has tried to fit in with his father’s way of living with modern conveniences but still feels angry and unsettled. Russel hates the diesel smells, imported tobacco, and other modern intrusions but is still unsure why. It is not until Russel speaks with the shaman Oogruk that he realizes how deep his need is to connect to his Inuit roots.

“Russell had heard about the songs his father spoke of. They were private and belonged only to the person who owned them. Now almost no one had a song.”

This is the first mention of the Inuit song and the tradition that each Inuit has their own individual song. In this quote the concept of Inuit song is introduced, coupled with the revelation that this core tradition is almost extinct. Finding a song is the heart of the book, and while this quote shows that Russel was aware of the songs and their rarity, Russel has not yet connected that loss with his unsettled mood.

“‘I have used these weapons to take meat. They do not belong in a museum,’ he snorted, ‘any more than I belong in a museum. These tools are for using, not looking at.’”

This quote is Oogruk’s response to Russel exclaiming that he has seen weapons like Oogruk’s in a museum. It shows how modern culture has relegated traditional, beautifully crafted, and fully functional tools to museum status. Modern culture is pushing out traditional culture, turning it into something quaint and obsolete. Oogruk’s comment about himself not belonging in a museum is pertinent because he, like the tools, is full of useful knowledge and wisdom that must not be displaced if the Inuit ways are to survive. Oogruk is in a sense a tool whom Russel uses to revive and live in th e old ways.

“You don’t get songs, you are a song. When we gave up our songs because we feared hell we gave up our insides as well. If we lived the way we used to live, mebbe the songs would come back. Mebbe if we lived the right way again.”

In this quote Oogruk explains to Russel how the Inuit lost their songs. The missionaries preached that singing and dancing were sinful, scaring the Inuit people into giving up their songs. This quote implies that the songs were also lost because of other cultural changes. Oogruk is saying that the lack of respect for nature and the land has changed the people, and therefore they can no longer be a song. 

“When the modern, white mushers ran the races, they used toboggans made with plastic and bolted together. Ugly little tough sleds.”

This description of the modern sled shows the distain Russel has for modern material. The mention of “white” mushers highlights the blame Russel places on white people for the introduction of artificial materials into his land. Even though the sleds are “tough,” he cannot see any beauty in them, unlike Oogruk’s traditional, hand-carved sled.

“‘You will have to know me,’ he said quietly to the dogs after a time. ‘Just as I will have to know you.’”

Russel is just starting to get to know Oogruk’s dogs in this quote. He is beginning to realize that there is more to running dogs than simply giving them direction. It is a foreshadowing of Russel’s future relationship with the dogs, in which they truly get to know each other. At this point Russel does not know how deep that relationship will become.

“The feeling […] is that the sled is alive; that I am alive and the sled is alive and the snow is alive and the ice is alive and we are all part of the same life.”

Russel is doing practicing runs with Oogruk’s dogs, and this quote is taken from the moment when, for the first time, the dogs pull for Russel in a coordinated line. This feeling of being alive with all the elements lifts Russel’s mood, and he returns laughing to Oogruk. He has been able to tap into his environment and now feels the elation of being one with nature for the first time.

“He thought of cold not as an enemy but as many different kinds of friend, or a complicated ally.”

This quote highlights the relationship Russel has with the Arctic environment. The Inuit have always respected and worked with the harsh Arctic environment, unlike the white culture from outside, which is more interested in trying to control the elements. Russel is able to survive because of this respect for the cold. He understands the benefits of the cold, such as fattening prey and storing food, as well as its deadly nature.

“He could not trust himself, couldn’t see anything to help him, but he could trust the dogs.”

Russel is lost on the floating ice cake. He has been forcing the dogs to run in the wrong direction. Out of options, he casually asks the dogs out loud what he should do—and he has this moment of clarity, captured in this quote. For the first time he realizes that he must fully trust the dogs, to let them decide. From this moment on, Russel tries not to second guess his dogs.

“‘Men and dogs are not alike, although some men try to make them so. White men.’ Oogruk had laughed. ‘Because they try to make people out of dogs and in this way they make the dogs dumb. But to say that a dog is not smart because it is not as smart as a man is to say that snow is not smart. Dogs are not men. And as dogs, if they are allowed to be dogs, they are often smarter than men.”

Oogruk teaches Russel about man’s relationship with dogs and the different approaches taken by the two discordant cultures. This quote highlights the distain Oogruk has for white men. Oogruk, in the Inuit tradition, does not anthropomorphize animals but respects them for their unique essence. He teaches Russel not to try and control the dogs as if they are humans, but to let the dogs be dogs and to come to an understanding with them.

“It was a beauty he could not measure. As so much of running the dogs proved to be—so much of it a beauty he saw and took into himself but could not explain.”

The motif of beauty runs throughout the book. This quote captures the ubiquity of beauty that Russel sees. Beauty is present in the feeling of the runs, in the physical landscape, in the people and dogs, and in the harsh elements Russel encounters. It is in opening his mind to this beauty that Russel is able to endure his journey.

“He was working towards something in his mind, not away from something he didn’t like. He had moved in with Oogruk, but his father knew it and approved.”

In this quote the reader is reassured that the reason Russel was unhappy had nothing to do with his father. Paulsen explains that in Russel’s village Russel was considered old enough to make his own choices and that an education with Oogruk was a valid education. This point is important because it underscores the point that Russel’s decision to go on his journey was from an instinctive drive to find his roots, not an escape from his father.

“He never felt so alone and for a time fear roared in him. The darkness became an enemy, the cold a killer, the night a ghost from the underworld that would take him down where demons would tear strips off him.”

Usually Russel sees the elements, such as cold, and natural cycles as part of his world to be respected and synchronize with, but not to be afraid of. This is one of the times when Russel is truly afraid of the dark and the cold, and even more, afraid of losing his dogs. He has run the dogs too long and hard, and the realization that he may have pushed nature too far and that without his dogs he will die terrifies him. It is one of the experiences that Russel survives and learns from.

“It was a home. The sled, the dogs, the food, and more food to eat when he awakened. It was a home. It was as much of a home as his people had had for thousands of years and he was content.”

Russel has completed his first solo run north following Oogruk’s death, and for possibly the first time he feels “at home.” He is wrapped in fresh skins, alone with his dogs, nowhere near civilization. He is not in a house or with his family, but he feels at home. Russel is truly content with being one with nature in the same way as his ancestors, not wishing for anything more. This feeling comes naturally to him; he is not forcing it or knowingly suppressing desires for modern comforts.

“And Russell felt all those songs inside his soul, felt them even as the man in the dream sang and the fog came again to hide him and the dogs and the mammoth. Russell knew it all because he knew them all. He was the man and he was the dream. He was the fog.”

In Russel’s dream, the man sings songs of the death of the mammoth, of the hunt, of the meat and fat, of the wind and his dogs, and of gratitude. This quote refers to these songs and tells the reader that Russel is doing more than just dreaming these songs. The songs are becoming a part of Russel and his reality, and he is beginning to feel that he is the man in the dream.

“Out ahead was everything, out ahead was where they were going and he let the dogs decide because that was the same as his deciding.”

Russel is further into his journey and is starting to think about his connection with his dogs. It is dawning on him that they seem to be able to read his mind. He asks his dogs if they know why they are running north. This quote illustrates his belief that he and his dogs are of one mind. Even though the dogs don’t answer his question (he doesn’t know the answer himself), he lets them decide the way and believes that their choice is his choice, too.

“Then he lay back on the skins as the storm came up and he looked all he had done and he knew Oogruk would have liked it. Where there had been nothing now he had shelter and food and heat and comfort. Where there had been nothing he had become something.”

From the beginning of the book, it is clear that Russel was unsettled in the village, but this is the only time when he refers to his previous self as “nothing.” After successfully completing runs alone, Russel has shed the boy he was, and this quote summarizes the confidence he now feels in himself and his place in the world. He is successfully surviving the old way, getting shelter, food, warmth, and mental satisfaction from what the Arctic supplies and nothing more.

“He is not a man standing on the ground, Russell thought—he is growing up from the ground. His legs are the earth and they take strength from it, up through his ankles and into his muscles so that he grows with what he takes from it.”

This quote is taken from Russel’s dream, when the man is about to start his song and dance depicting the mammoth hunt to the dream villagers. It captures the idea of humans being solely what they can take from the earth by being connected to the earth. Without the connection, the man would not grow. This connection makes the man strong and also allows the connection to nature to exist. Through this connection, the man is able to become the mammoth.

“Oogruk had said, ‘It isn’t the destination that counts. It is the journey. That is what life is. A journey. Make it the right way and you will fill it correctly with days. Pay attention to the journey.’”

Russel thinks about Oogruk’s words in this quote while he is trying to remember what lies north of him when he is far into his run. Rather than dwell on whether he is close to the mountains or the sea, he stops thinking ahead and refocuses on the present. Oogruk’s words apply to everything and everyone. The modern culture that is stifling the Inuit culture cares less about the journey and more about the destination, taking the shortest route to material satisfaction. Oogruk and Russel are reversing this trend, reclaiming the journey.

“When he thought of what happened, later, when he wasn’t sure what he would be but wasn’t what he had been, he thought that in some mysterious way a great folding had happened.”

Paulsen describes the merging of the dreams and Russel’s run as a “folding.” It appears that Inuit ways and spirituality have somehow folded into Russel during his run, started by Oogruk’s teaching and guidance. This quote also illustrates that Russel does not fully mature into the man he will become during this journey. It implies that humans’ journey is never over—that people are always learning and changing.

“Whatever decision he made, when the light came back, it was his decision, just as going back to live the old way must have been his decision.”

This quote is taken from a pivotal moment in the book. Russel, Nancy, and the dogs are on the verge of starvation, with no game in sight. Russel calls on Oogruk’s ghost for help and gets no answer. He realized that he alone is responsible for his decisions. During this struggle he gains the maturity to see that all his previous decisions have been his alone. He gains the confidence to take action and to take responsibility for his actions.

“But wait, bear. Wait for me. Wait for the sadness of your life that you must die to feed the man. Not all the time. But wait for the sadness this time, bear.”

This quote comes from the climactic moment in the story when Russel slays the polar bear. Russel becomes one with the bear, feeling what the bear feels. Russel guides the bear to its death with respect and gratitude. Russel communicates with the bear, understanding its sadness and acceptance that this time the bear must die to feed others.

“They had seen and done much and now they knew the man on the sled, knew that he was part of them, knew that no matter what happened he would be there and that made them stronger still. The strength in them came back to Russell and he fed on it and returned it as more strength still.”

Russel and his dogs have survived endless runs, hunger, storms, and both mental and physical obstacles and have now arrived close to the end of their journey, having saved Nancy. This quote describes Russel’s dogs and how they feel towards him. The reader is already clear about Russel’s devotion to his dogs, and this quote reinforces the fact that the dogs are equally devoted to Russel. Russel and his dogs are much stronger together than alone.