My thoughts on the Strange Library

 As I was reading The Strange Library, I was at first very confused and puzzled by the many messages and strange themes throughout the story. However, after the final scene where Boku and the Sheep man try to escape and are confronted by the old man and the black dog, one particular theme stood out. As I stated in class, the old dog reminded me of something crucial in human development. The incident with the dog took place during Boku's childhood and he noted that after that incident he was never the same and his mother was always worried about him being out after a certain time. At a certain point in life, as children grow into true adults, there is an amount of reflection on the self that takes place. Forming an identity separate from the one during childhood is a part of that reflection; getting rid of baggage from the past, letting go old memories and learning to think for yourself instead of adults making decisions for you are common things. The dog in this story for me symbolized the part of Boku that was still holding on to his childhood. He was unable to think for himself properly and resist the ushering of the old man because he was still unable to put himself in a place of higher status as an adult. In the end, that canary destroying the dog was a natural liberation from that baggage that would ultimately set him free from that part of himself.

It reminded me a lot of nightmares I used to have as a child about a statue my parents owned and brought with us even after we moved to a different state. I would bring up having nightmares about it so much that my parents put it in the garage out of sight. One night however, I was having my usual nightmare about the statue, it was chasing me down a hall, but I turned back and started to smash it. I kept smashing it until it was a pile of dust and after that I did not have any nightmares. For me, that felt like the end of an era, because I had feared that statue since I was a toddler. I also felt a similar release of that type entering college and realizing that I was able to say no and make my own decisions/create my own opportunities. So when we talked in class about how the library was all in Boku's head, it was easy for me to believe that that world was a big subconscious meta-representation of an inner battle between the Boku of his past and the Boku that is struggling to break through.

Ariel