17 pages • 34 minutes read
Taylor MaliHow Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love as Unpredictable
Love is the overarching theme within Mali’s “How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog.” However, the author breaks down the abstract concept of romantic love into three categories, the first of which is love as an unpredictable force.
From the onset of the poem, Mali characterizes love as a paradox. His consistent use of contradiction exposes how even when one prepares for love, one could never fully anticipate the impact it will have on one’s life. In Stanza 1, Mali opens with a strong statement, saying, “First of all” (Line 1) in a tone of debate. Mali describes love as a “big responsibility” (Line 1), and yet, not two lines later, Mali walks this statement back, contending, “On the other hand” (Line 4), one does not need to consider love too thoroughly before jumping into it after all. For Mali, there is no perfect timing for meeting the love of one’s life, but rather, because of its unpredictability, love is at its best and sweetest when it “[l]eaves you little surprises” (Line 22) and “makes you meet people […] who have nothing in common but love” (Lines 34-35).
Love as a Learning Experience
Mali also sees love as a learning experience. Throughout the first six stanzas of the poem, the speaker considers the growing pains of a new relationship: how love is comforting but also extremely needy; how love is passionate but also messy and overzealous. However, by the seventh stanza, Mali becomes much more reflective. Stanza 7 begins with the word “but,” introducing lines that will contrast with what has already been previously mentioned in the poem. Here, Mali recognizes that despite the growing pains, partnership also opens up a world of new and exciting experiences simply due to the fact that each partner in a romantic relationship (or any type of relationship for that matter) comes from a unique walk of life. The theme of love as a learning experience exposes that sometimes contradiction can be a good thing: a catalyst for mutual development.
Love as Reciprocal
The final theme of love that Mali explores within “How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog” is the theme of reciprocal love. Mali does not reveal this theme until the final stanza of the poem, Stanza 8. Mali writes, “But most of all, love needs love, lots of it. / And in return, love loves you and never stops” (Lines 39-40). Love is, at its core, a reciprocal exchange, and Mali contends that in order to receive love, one must also give it back in equal measure to their partner.
