A Dog Called Homeless

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2012

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-9

Chapters 10-18

Chapters 19-27

Chapters 28-36

Chapters 37-45

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Mom’s Red Raincoat

In A Dog Called Homeless, Cally’s mom wears a red raincoat and a green hat whenever Cally sees her. Cally first sees her mom after she has died on the one-year anniversary of her death, “standing on the wall of the cemetery, wearing her red raincoat and green rain hat” (6). The raincoat symbolizes grief and coincides with the excessive rain that falls throughout the story. Like the family’s grief, the rain has been coming down and has nowhere to go. Cally’s mom’s raincoat is an extension of that parallel.

In addition, Mom’s red raincoat is a fast identifier for Cally. She sees the red raincoat often before she sees Mom herself and always at a time when Cally needs her most. When she appears in the red raincoat, Mom is usually with someone who is alive and will be part of Cally’s next chapter in life. It happens when Cally sees Jed: “it was a red raincoat. […] And then, just when Jed came past her, [Mom] joined him, walked alongside him” (45). Jed is an important part of Cally’s grieving process and helps fill a hole in the story of Mom’s death. Mom also appears in the red raincoat with Homeless, signifying to Cally that Homeless is a dog meant for her family to have.

When the grief starts to move toward healing at the book’s end, Mom no longer wears the red raincoat. Cally doesn’t need Mom to guide her through her journey anymore, now that she has new friends to help her and Dad has started healing.

Clocks

The motif of clocks represents how healing takes time and symbolizes the importance of community during the healing process. The book introduces this motif when Cally remembers her family visiting a large cathedral. Inside was a clock: “The earth was painted in the middle of [it], and the ancient sun circled around the outside on the long hand” (11). Cally’s mom explained to her that back when the clock was painted, people didn’t know that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Even today, humans have much to discover about space, just as the bereaved have much to discover about the grieving process.

Another time the clock motif appears is when Cally starts finding a community at her new apartment. After she leaves Sam’s apartment the first time, his mom delivers two small cogs to her (a gift from Sam) and an invitation to come back when she’s ready. When she does, she realizes that the cogs belong to a clock that Sam is fixing. The clock, which is for blind people, has “a clock face with numbers pegged into it” (75). When Cally hands Sam the cogs back, it’s a sign of their budding friendship and a pact to learn to communicate in the way that each other needs.

Once Sam reassembles the clock, a “perfect steady tick com[es] from inside. [Cally sees] how all the little pieces made one perfect thing” (77). The clock represents the community that Cally is building: The cogs on their own don’t do much, but when they come together, the magic happens. It takes a village to help Cally and her family work through the loss of Mom, and the book follows the story of Cally finding that village.

The story solves some of the mysteries of grief at the book’s end, one of the last times the clock motif appears. Mom tells Cally, “Remember the clock inside the big old cathedral, the way they painted the solar system? […] Well, what you think is on the outside is in the middle” (148). Cally has felt that Mom is unreachable now, as if she’s on the outside. Mom assures her that she’s actually at the center of the community Cally has found. Mom is the thread linking all of the new people in Cally’s life together, and she’s at the center of Cally, herself. It took time and perspective to see that Mom is not as far away as Cally thought, which allows her to feel more at peace with letting go of the visual apparition of Mom.

Winter

Dad’s grief takes a different form than Cally’s and Luke’s. The symbol of winter explores how he handles the loss of his wife. Cally and Luke remember their dad as being fun and loving stories and music before Mom died. Now, the sadness has overcome him, even affecting his physical appearance. Every day he emerges with the “[s]ame old messy hair and beard, dark and speckled with gray, like he’d been out overnight in a frost” (35). This symbolism is a useful literary device to describe Dad’s change in the past year.

Another aspect of the winter symbolism relates to time. Cally and Luke are in a different stage in the grieving process, but Dad is stuck because he avoids the topic altogether. Cally describes him as being “like a raggedy old bear still sleepy from hibernating over winter. Except winter was ages ago” (35). Dad’s avoidant behavior keeps him stagnant in his grief, which ultimately impacts his children.

Dad doesn’t just avoid the topic of Mom; he isolates himself from his children. He doesn’t tell them in advance about important life changes such as having to sell the house. He isolates himself from the community as well. When Mrs. Cooper tries to help, he snaps at her. Cally notices “It [is] written all over his face. Stop interfering, mind your own business, and stay out of my winter cave!” (100). As Cally moves toward healing with help from her community, Dad’s isolation leads him to become even more sad, mean, and lonely.

As Cally’s silence forces Dad to reevaluate his own grief, the ice over his emotions concerning Mom starts to crack. He briefly mentions a memory of her, and “[f]or a minute it look[s] like he really remember[s] her, like he [knows] the winter [is] over” (143). Talking about his wife and sharing memories with others finally melts Dad’s wintery coolness, allowing him to start healing from his grief.