6533b7ddfe1ef96bd127514b

RESEARCH PRODUCT

On Long-Lasting Humanimal Friendships: Gayness, Aging, and Disease in Lily and the Octopus

subject

description

This paper analyzes the significance and structural development of the theme of aging in Steven Rowley’s debut novel, the bestselling Lily and the Octopus (2016), a narrative that extends and reinvents the literary approach to manhood through alternate forms of humanimal relations. The novel intersects postmodern conceptions of madness, grief, loneliness, intimacy, and death through a tragicomic exploration of the symmetry between an unlikely (insofar as literary tradition goes) couple: Ted, a gay white male in his early forties, and his senior female dachshund, Lily. As signs of the end of Lily’s life are fleshed out by the cancerous “octopus” that chokes her brain, Ted inadvertently parallels his own aging condition as a single gay male with the helplessly ephemerous lifespan of his beloved companion. The chapter addresses the metaphorization of the aging of the male protagonist through his projection into the character of the old, sick dog. Then, it shows how the process of animal transformation of the protagonist acquires tinges of literary fable. Finally, it provides a reflection on how Lily’s disease is assimilated with Ted’s aging process.