37 pages • 1 hour read
The Power of the Dog
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Phil is described at the beginning of this chapter as having an ability to see the true nature of animals and people alike. He has a gift for seeing in the eyes of a person what kind of temperament that person has, and can sense any lack of confidence. Because of George’s out-of-the-ordinary behavior of late, Phil knows that something is up.
While working in his blacksmith shop, Phil recalls memories of his youth and the way George and he were raised. Modesty, particularly as it relates to the body, was one of the more esteemed values in the Burbank household. This modesty of the body and of being naked carried into George and Phil’s adulthood. Phil then reflects on alcohol consumption and how the ranch-hands would typically abuse it and get very drunk. His memories then shift to an incident in which a ranch-hand put small sticks of dynamite into the rear of magpies only to watch them fly away and explode. Phil was ambivalent about this act of cruelty; although he believed the killing of the parasitic magpie to be necessary, he was conflicted about how the killing was performed.
George continues to act differently, and his typically predictable schedule changes, which bothers Phil. Once again, Phil is seen working at the forge in his blacksmith shop and he notices George going to the car and reaching under the dash. Phil questions George, and they have a brief, stunted conversation. George pulls the car into the garage, gets out, and then Phil notices the passenger door open. Rose steps out. Phil immediately retreats to his room and plays his banjo. He also writes his mother to tell her what George has done, and who he has involved himself with. As the chapter concludes, George confronts Phil, saying that he and Rose had been married. Shocked, Phil storms out of the house and saddles his horse, and when the horse gives him a hard time, he slaps the horse with the saddle multiple times.
Chapter 5 Summary
This chapter returns to the fallout of Phil’s harassment and mocking of Peter and his lisp. Awkwardly, George tries to comfort Rose and realizes how much he is beginning to love her. They briefly chat about Peter, and patrons arrive at The Red Mill. The customers are noisy and unruly, causing difficulty for Rose who is short staffed because Peter is no longer helping her out. Noticing that Rose is struggling to both satisfy the boisterous customers and keep them tame, George offers to help. Rose declines the offer, but George intervenes anyway and begins to wait on tables. The customers, recognizing who their new waiter is, immediately settle down and become much quieter.
As Rose grows to care about George, she coincidentally tries to rationalize Phil’s cruelty toward Peter. Eventually, her feelings about the incident are brushed to the side, especially after George proposes to her in his awkward way. George offers to put Peter through school, and Rose refuses. She is quick to mention that she does not love George for his money.
The narrator discusses the letter Phil writes to his parents from the parents’ perspective. They do not have the reaction that Phil had anticipated. Instead, they are weary of Phil and his intrusion into George’s life. Also, it turns out that George had already written to his parents and told them his plans. At first, they were reluctant to embrace his plan to marry simply because they had not yet approved of Rose. However, they also trust George’s judgment. After discussion between the two elder Burbanks, the biggest reason for their reluctance to embrace George’s decision was that they feared how Phil would react. They decide to travel from their residence in Salt Lake City to pay George a visit and to meet his new wife. They like Rose and the way she appreciates George’s kindness.
Rose tries to befriend Phil and calls him brother. Phil responds by bluntly saying he is not her brother, and his coldness toward her begins to take on a life of its own. He still believes that Rose has ulterior motives, or that George has naively overreacted about his feelings for her.
Chapter 6 Summary
The narrator provides a brief history of Phil and George’s college days. Everyone at the college knew that Phil and George came from money. Phil was highly esteemed and a straight-A student, and the fraternities wanted him to join so they could reap the benefits of his reputation. Phil knew all of this, and at an important dinner in which the president of the fraternity was present, Phil called them all out on their purpose and spitefully embarrassed the president and his fraternity. When it came time for George to join, the residue of Phil’s actions had made such a move impossible.
George and Rose head into Herndon so that George can attend a meeting at the bank. On their drive into town, in the middle of winter, Rose suggests they stop and have a picnic. George expresses how moved he is by Rose and her personality. While in town, they visit Peter. Later, at the Herndon House, a kind of community hall, George mentions that the governor is there and that he was supposed to have a meeting with him. George chats with the governor, telling him that he has been married, and the governor invites George for dinner at his home. George returns the favor and invites the governor to his ranch for dinner.
George buys Rose a piano, and after much hassle in the shipping required to bring it to the ranch, Rose begins practicing. Phil, spending most of his free time isolated in his room, is critical of her skill at the instrument. Whenever she plays a song, he plays the same tune on his banjo, as if to prove to her his superiority. Phil almost never speaks to Rose, and Rose only practices her piano when she knows Phil is out of the house. There is obvious tension that mainly comes from Phil’s tacit disapproval of his brother’s decision to marry Rose and to bring her to live at the ranch. As the chapter concludes, George heads out to Phil’s blacksmithing shop, and after much hesitation, which Phil construes as nervousness and a lack of confidence, George asks him to clean up and look presentable when the governor comes to have dinner.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The narrative follows an asynchronous path in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 contains the revelation that George married Rose without Phil’s awareness of it. Chapter 5 backtracks to provide a more detailed account of how that came to pass. Phil sees Rose’s presence as a threat to the masculine order he has constructed around the ranch. His first act of sabotage is to write his mother and inform her that George has been married, but more significantly to slander Rose. In his letter, he writes of Rose as “a floozy with a suicide husband and who used to play, used to tickle the ivories, in some honky-tonk” (79). Ever the manipulator, Phil appeals to the East Coast, aristocratic heritage of his mother. Phil does not realize that George has already informed his parents. They do not have the reaction Phil expects. He underestimates their inclinations toward kindness, and the fact that, of the two brothers, they trust George more.
Chapter 5 reveals George’s true nature. He is not just a man of few words; he is also someone starving for a personal connection. Readers see how his life on the ranch has made him feel out of place. This is not the life he would have chosen for himself, and he is in that life most likely because of Phil’s demanding force of will. Phil sees George as a part of the world he has constructed for himself, and he hates the fact that George introduces change into the environment. Change is Phil’s biggest fear, and he tries to subdue that fear like he does almost every other obstacle by exercising his dominant personality. Because he sees Rose as the person responsible for this change, she becomes the target of his cruelty, and his retaliation is a preemptive attack. The scene in which Rose practices piano while Phil simultaneously plays the banjo is an example of this. Phil’s purpose is to make Rose feel that she simply is not good enough to be there. His abrasive personality extends to George as well. When George speaks with Phil about cleaning himself up for the governor, the younger brother is clearly nervous. After doing so, he just leaves the blacksmith shop without waiting for Phil to have a response. It is a passive aggressive act; he knows that he might incur Phil’s wrath for making such a suggestion.
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