The Baddest Dog in Harlem

1. Describe the environment in the short story with special focus on the relationship between the community and the police in Harlem. Use specific examples.

- The relationship between the young people and the police is very bad, because the police is very suspicious. The young boys and the people do not expect anything good from the police and are scared of them (“I did just like everybody else leaning on that rail did, said a quick prayer and put on my innocent face.” p. 17, ll. 1-2).

- Another reason that the police and the community has a bad relationship is that the narrator is sure that if the police could, they would have arrested all of them, (p. 18, ll. 5-7)

- The block where they live is a place where many of the young men do not have a job, they are just hanging around, and when the cops arrives, they are standing on the streets to see what is happening.

- The people in the community do not want to be witnesses, because if they see something they are suddenly involved in the case.

2. Comment on the language in the short story. How is it told and by whom? What characterizes the tone of voice and word usage of the narrator? Use specific examples.

- It is a first person narrator and it is told in past tense, (“Outside the shooting started again and I squinched under the counter the best I could.” p. 20, ll. 27-28). The narrator is also a very calm and quiet young man and he just likes to hang around with his friends, but he has a feeling that things are getting worse. After he has been to the apartment with the dead kid he wants all in the community to talk about the little kid’s death and understand how easily somebody could be killed in their community, but he does not tell Willie about it, because it is not necessary because Willie can see it in the narrator’s eyes.

- He has lived in the area for a long time, because just the sound of the wheels of the police car makes him nervous and he knows that something is going to happen and he does not want to be a witness. He tries to get away from the police by first hiding in the restaurant and later behind the counter.

- The tone of the language is very plain; there is nobody who speaks in a provocative way to the police. All the young men say the same thing, that they had been there for two or maybe three hours, except for Mr. Lynch, who just arrived.

 - They try to get away from the place, but the police speak to them in a rather hard tone. The police tell them to stay right where they are.

3. Select three quotes from the text that you believe are central to the story in terms of plot and/or themes. Explain the quotes – what do they mean? Is there any hidden meaning to them?

- “After a while the shooting stopped and I heard someone outside say, “They got the guy with the automatic weapon and it was some Arab!” p. 20-21. ll. 31-2. The reason I picked this quote is that it shows that the black people are fast to make a conclusion about who had the automatic weapon, and it is easy to lay the blame on an Arab,

- “She snatched it away from him and said she wasn’t going anywhere with them unless she had a black man with her.” p. 21, ll. 27-28. The quote shows the mistrust between the community and the police, and especially the mistrust between black and white.

- “That dog look like a terrorist to me,” one of them said. You could see they were breathing easy again, “That is probably the baddest dog in Harlem” p. 23, ll. 8-10. This quote is very central to the story’s plot because it shows that it was not some crazy dude with an automatic weapon, they had seen in the window, it was a dog. It is ironical that the shooting started because a police officer slipped in a dog doo and it is a dog that gets shot, and it shows how easily things gets out of control.

Ditte-Marie