Television Symbol Analysis

While Enzo has always believed his soul to be more human than those of other dogs, he begins to cultivate what he believes is a more human outlook on life once he's introduced to the idea of watching television by himself. Thanks to the variety of channels that Denny leaves on for Enzo, from the Weather Channel to the Discovery Channel, Enzo uses television to learn how to be human. Television fosters Enzo's love for the dramatic and storytelling. He consistently offers up lists of his favorite actors and movies, many of which are famous for a relationship of some sort to racing or cars. Further, Enzo cultivates his humanity and love of storytelling even more when Zoë is old enough to watch Sesame Street and Enzo is able to teach himself to read. Later in the novel, Enzo uses the television shows he's seen to reconstruct his own dramatic retelling of Denny's court case. In this way, Enzo sees television not just as entertainment, but as something emphatically human—something to learn from, to study, and then to expand upon and use as reference material as he tells his own stories.