Dog Man Unleashed

Pilkey establishes the theme of The Power of Friendship and Loyalty through Dog Man’s characterization. In this section, Dog Man is characterized as having the positive qualities of both Officer Knight and Greg the Dog, as well as some problematic dog behaviors that annoy others and interfere with his job. The Foreword’s specific mention of his pure heart and loyal brain demonstrates the loyalty he shows to the other police officers. His actions further highlight his loyalty. For example, he is excited about the other officers choosing him to go to the pet store to acquire the Chief’s fish, which shows that he is a team player and willing to help. Pilkey juxtaposes his sometimes problematic canine traits humorously against this: he is shown licking people and objects, knocking the Chief down, and causing chaos in the pet store by chasing balls everywhere. Pilkey highlights Dog Man’s characteristic loyalty and mischief, which contributes to the friendship he has with fellow police officers and other characters throughout the text. 

Pilkey also demonstrates the positive and negative attributes of the other police officers. Like Dog Man, they are loyal friends: As soon as they realize that it is the Chief’s birthday, they immediately begin planning a party and presents. They show that they know him well when they choose the Brain Dots to help with his memory and that they care about his feelings when they choose the fish to assuage his loneliness. Despite their loyalty toward each other, they can be critical and condescending to Dog Man. Annoyed by his canine hijinks, they sometimes speak harshly to him: one officer even extols the virtues of fish because “they aren’t filthy and obnoxious like dogs” (19). As with Dog Man’s negative qualities, however, Pilkey portrays these moments as humorous rather than hurtful, establishing the novel’s lighthearted tone. In showing both the strengths and flaws of the police officers, Pilkey reinforces The Power of Friendship and Loyalty. 

Chapter 2 introduces Flippy, one of the story’s eventual antagonists, and the theme of The Struggle Between Good and Evil. Pilkey first develops this theme in the Foreword with the characterizations of the heroic Knight and Greg and the description of a world overrun by villains for them to battle. After the pet store employees’ build-up of Flippy’s nature—as the supposed “fishy face of evil” (42)—the revelation of a small, ordinary fish followed by the blank looks of the store employees creates a comic juxtaposition of images. This hints that Flippy’s “evil” nature is initially harmless. In Chapter 3, however, Flippy ingests the Brain Dots and becomes more powerful. The author uses multiple panels to focus on a short period, creating a dramatic slow-motion effect as the bottle of Brain Dots tips and lands in Flippy’s bowl. This emphasizes the significance of the moment: this is the beginning of the book’s central conflict, in which Flippy becomes engaged in the criminal mischief that Dog Man must stop. The close-ups of the fish’s evil expression and the magnified image of his brain growing larger, juxtaposed with the Seussian language used in this chapter, make it clear that although Flippy’s capacity for evil has grown, the adventures that follow will be comical. Flippy’s transformation establishes him as a clear antagonist, launching the conflict that will propel the narrative forward. 

Throughout this section, multiple elements of the text work together to create a humorous tone and introduce the theme of The Importance of Creativity and Silliness. In addition to the plot and characterizations that help create the text’s humorous tone, its art and metafictional elements also contribute to this atmosphere. The story’s metafictional introduction, in which characters from another Pilkey book claim authorship of Dog Man Unleashed and make big promises about what the story will contain, undercuts its claims with an illustration of the story’s supposed “romance” simply being Dog Man sniffing another dog’s rear end. The visual style of the narrative is another metafictional element. Its childlike drawings saturated with many different colors, the juvenile handwriting of its lettering with misspellings and nonstandard punctuation, and other “errors” create verisimilitude—the closeness of events or details in a literary work to reality—around the idea that the authors and illustrators of the book are two elementary-school children. The art’s cheerful, casual style increases the humor of the book’s tone. When Dog Man accidentally knocks the Chief into the air on Page 28, for example, the Chief is depicted high in the air, upside-down, with his hat falling off below him. Emanata—lines that radiate outward from or trail behind a character or object to visually indicate motion or emotion—indicates his rapid tumbling. The Chief calls out, “Hey!” as Dog Man, oblivious, rushes by with a big smile on his face. The exaggeration of the Chief’s motion serves both amusing and dramatic purposes. Dog Man’s inattention to the trouble he has caused—particularly since the whole purpose of Dog Man’s errand is to give the Chief joy on his birthday—is ironic and adds to the scene’s humor. Visual choices like these develop the text’s motif of absurdity, which connects to the book’s thematic focus on creativity and silliness.