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The white dog that Bunny sees lurking in the fog around the house on Quoyle’s Point represents trauma and death. At the beginning of the book, Bunny experiences significant trauma, first when her mother Petal sells her and her sister Sunshine to a man named Bruce Cudd for obviously abusive purposes, and then when Petal unexpectedly dies. Unknowingly, Quoyle compounds Bunny’s trauma by refusing to talk openly with her about Petal’s death or her other experiences. This leaves her with a paralyzing fear of the unknown, including the mysterious and seemingly dangerous animal she sees lurking around the house. The beast is actually a mangy and ancient animal owned by Nolan Quoyle, but it first appears to Bunny as a terrifying specter that solidifies her initial and intense dislike for the house and functions as an expression of her unresolved trauma. Her descriptions of the dog—which she eventually starts seeing in rocks and the curl of the waves under the prow of Quoyle’s boat—focus on its menacing teeth, and she frets that it will chase her or will somehow get into the house. Wavey Prowse ultimately helps Bunny conquer her fear of the white dog by presenting the little girl with a real white dog of her own—a husky puppy. And it’s Wavey who shortly thereafter gently but honestly introduces Bunny to the reality of death. Essentially, Wavey tells Bunny the truth about the world around her, which then allows Bunny to logically work through her trauma and eventually heal.
White Dog Quotes in The Shipping News
The The Shipping News quotes below all refer to the symbol of White Dog. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 15: The Upholstery Shop
Quotes
“Yes of course I remember. […] There was another white dog adventure couple weeks ago. You know that little white stone I had on my garden rock? If you squinted at it it looked like a dog’s head? She come pounding on the door yelling her head off. I thought something terrible’d happened. Couldn’t get her to stop yelling and tell me what was the matter. At last she holds out her hand. There’s a tiny cut on one finger, tiny, about a quarter of an inch long. One drop of blood. I put a bandage on it and she calmed down. Wouldn’t say how she got the cut. But a couple days later she says to be that she threw away ‘the dog-face stone’ and it bit her. She says it was a dog bite on her finger.”
The aunt laughed to show it wasn’t anything to have a fit about.
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Chapter 18: Lobster Pie
Quotes
Quoyle made them sit side by side in the boat. They gripped the gunwales. The boat buzzed over the water. “Go fast, Dad,” yelled Sunshine. But Bunny looked at the foaming bow wave. There, in the snarl of froth, was a dog’s white face, glistering eyes and bubbled mouth. The wave surged and the dog rose with it; Bunny gripped the seat and howled. Quoyle threw the motor into neutral.
The boat wallowed in the water, no headway, slap of waves.
“I saw a dog in the water,” sobbed Bunny.
“There is no dog in the water,” said Quoyle. “Just air bubbles and foam and a little girl’s imagination. You know Bunny, that there cannot be a dog that lives in the water.”
[…]
“Well, it looked like a dog. The white dog, Dad. He’s mad at me. He wants to bite me. And make my blood drip out.”
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Chapter 20: Gaze Island
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“Quoyle’s Point got quite a few known stinkers and rocks. There’s the Tea Buns, a whole plateful of little scrapers half a fathom under the water, off to the north of the Comb. Right out the end of the point there’s the Komatik-Dog. You com in on it just right It looks for all the world like a big sled dog settin’ on the water, his head up, looking around. They used to say he was waiting for a wreck, that’d he’d come to lief and swim out and swallows up the poor drowning people.”
Bunny, thought Quoyle, never let her see that one.
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Get the entire The Shipping News LitChart as a printable PDF.
White Dog Symbol Timeline in The Shipping News
The timeline below shows where the symbol White Dog appears in The Shipping News. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: A Rolling Hitch
...forever. Then she walks off. On the far side of the house, she sees a white dog in the brush. Her alarmed screams bring Quoyle and Agnis running, but they see...
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Chapter 15: The Upholstery Shop
Bunny has nightmares. She still talks about the white dog she saw in the fog the first day they arrived at Quoyle’s Point—one day...
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Chapter 18: Lobster Pie
...back to her house for tea, but one of the wooden yard decorations is a white dog, and Bunny refuses to get out of the car.
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...than Sunshine. But on the boat ride, she thinks she sees the shape of the white dog in the curling wake foam and panics. Quoyle tries to logically explain how that...
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Chapter 26: Deadman
...in a yellow garment floating face down next to a rock that looks like a dog. What are the odds, he wonders, formulating the headline in his mind: “Newspaper Reporter Seems...
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Chapter 33: The Cousin
Nolan Quoyle lives with an ancient white dog in a filthy hovel in Capsize Cove, and it’s immediately clear that he lost...
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Chapter 38: The Sled Dog Driver’s Dream
...from Wavey, whose brother breeds the animals. Quoyle can hardly believe his eyes: it’s a white dog. But Bunny is full of plans to train the puppy and become a sled...
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