The Importance Of Human Intelligence In Fifteen Dogs

According to Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods, “Human Intelligence is not a gift. It is an occasional plague” (15). Many people on earth become distressed, troubled or conflicted in life due to their intelligence allowing their conscious mind to experience harmful events. The human mind is not a gift; rather, it is a curse given to humans to endure and suffer from. This curse is seen in the novel Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis, as human intelligence allows a pack of fifteen dogs to create their own language, lose their canine roots, develop a sense of love and create a lust for power which ultimately creates conflict in their lives.
Human language can come in many different forms, tones, sounds and is found everywhere around the world. …show more content…
Certain dogs recognize that they are dissimilar to other canines on earth. This causes conflict, as some are more accepting to this reality than others. Atticus, the leader of the pack, wishes to remain instinctively canine and supress the new consciousness by “[living] like they were supposed to” (33) but Majnoun, a thoughtful black poodle, “embraced the new way of thinking” (39). This results in Atticus persuading four other dogs into killing Majnoun, which they attempt to do but fail. The malicious intent Atticus shows towards Majnoun for simply wanting to live with the intelligence clearly shows how the new consciousness makes Atticus act violently. Along with the conflict Atticus has with other dogs, most of his fighting occurs within himself, as he cannot grasp the new way of thinking and deeply misses being a normal dog. For him “it was traumatic to know oneself to be a simple dog but to live in a world where other dogs treated [him] as something other” (26) was too much for him. Evidently, Atticus becomes traumatized by having to accept the reality that he is not a normal dog and never will be in his life. This mentality in Atticus shows how the intelligence serves to create inner conflict in his mind. Thirdly, as the pack becomes thinned out to those who wish to remain true dogs, the ones who remain attempt to be ordinary dogs again. However, this serves to be futile due to the canine’s inability to think at a lesser consciousness. This is seen in one of the old practises they attempt where the dominant dogs mount the weaker dogs. With this, Max becomes the underdog of the pack, he is mounted by the superior dogs until he believes that the superior dogs should be mounted from time to time in order to maintain a balance. As seen, Max becomes too smart to be mounted and begins questioning it, but with this