When analyzing Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis through an archetypal lens, it becomes clear that human intelligence is a difficult gift as seen through the lives of the archetypal characters.
Apollo
If dogs were given human intelligence, they would be even more unhappy than humans.
Hermes
Creator
If one dies happy, Hermes wins.
Human Intelligence
Jelously
Grief
Violence
Atticus
Shows the leader archetype, which establishes him more of a dictator
He reacted in an intolerable way to the human intelligence the dogs were granted (26)
Atticus forms an alliance to try to get rid of some of the dogs because he does not accept the new human lifestyle, however, he plans and schemes like humans to get rid of them.
“Atticus spent much of his time surreptitiously justifying what he knew was to come: a pack needed unity, and unity meant that all understood the world in the same way or, if not the world, the rules, at least. Majnoun was the one who embraced the new way of thinking, the new language. The dog did not belong” (39)
"It was traumatic to know oneself to be a simple dog but to live in a world where other dogs treated you as something other” (26). He misses what he was able to do a dog without crippling self-consciousness (26).
Love
Majnoun
Shows the champanion archetype
Majnoun leaves the clinic after his treatment because Atticus tried to oust him. A human at the clinic takes care of him (Nira), and eventually he goes home with her.
Nira and Majnoun establishing a beautiful human-canine relationship.
“They had grown so close that Atropos, the Fate who cuts the tread of a mortal’s life, could not tell their threads apart” (133)
“Walking with Nira along Roncesvalles or by the lakeshore was time that he would happily have prolonged. If anything, their houses together passed too quickly. With Nira gone, however, there was little to protect him from the excruciation that duration can be” (137)
Passion
Prince
Shows the thinker archetype
Prince embraced the change of human consciousness (27)
Prince going beyond his canine by asking trivial questions and performing a set of bark, yips, and clicks (28)
Prince’s way of expressing the human language was by poems. It didn’t make sense to everyone, but it was his way of storytelling. Some dogs like Atticus disliked him for this reason. For many, it was difficult to think how one can speak and preform in such a manner.
Prince is curious about the word and wants to learn more. Prince made something of the human language, and it was amazing how his senses were so alert and vivid.
He had strange ideas, asked a lot of questions about humans, trees, smells and other trivial things, and he was the one who divided the day into sections.
