The Dog Stars

Representing the novel’s climax and denouement, the final three chapters of The Dog Stars combine beauty and brutality in equal measure as the three unlikely friends struggle to survive and return to the relative safety of the airport in Erie. Hounded by deadly circumstances from one danger to the next, they stagger from the box canyon to Grand Junction to Winter Park, and finally back toward the fragile promise of a more peaceful existence in Hig and Bangley’s home territory. Throughout these tumultuous shifts in setting, Heller relies upon the Beast to set the pacing, and the Cessna essentially becomes a plot device to move the characters from one challenge to the next in their arduous journey toward a better home. Yet even as they fly over myriad scenes of destruction—from blackened cities to raging wildfires—they bring with them several symbols of hope. Most notably, the incongruous presence of the lambs, taken from Pops and Cima’s abandoned ranch, suggests the possibility of Finding New Purpose After Societal Collapse and rebuilding a new life from the tattered remains of all that they have lost. 

Yet before they can reach this point, they must first contend with a barrage of deadly dangers, and the treacherous couple at the airport in Grand Junction represents the ultimate betrayal in Hig’s mind. For years, his thoughts have returned to the inherent promise in the radio message he once heard, and now that he is faced with the realization that the source of his hope is nothing but a lie and a trap, he is hard-pressed to contain his anger. In many ways, his and Pops’s violent counterattack becomes a bitter expression of their much deeper fury at the injustices of this post-apocalyptic world. This interpretation is further supported by Pops’s ruthless treatment of the pair, for he has no inclination to show mercy toward his would-be murderers. Instead, he follows a course of action that the hard-nosed Bangley would immediately approve: He keeps the dying old man alive just long enough to interrogate him about his fuel sources, then ruthlessly kills him to eliminate the threat entirely. While Hig responds with dismay at this show of violence, the novel as a whole makes no apology for the brutality of the scene, and even the sensitive Hig makes no substantial comment, recognizing the hard necessity of Pops’s actions. Heller also devotes considerable time to describing the doomed couple’s home and quaint hobbies, demonstrating once again the peculiar mix of violence and beauty that pervades the entire narrative.

Notably, the focus of Hig’s journey has been his need to return safely to Erie, and he operates on the naïve assumption that his home will remain an untouched sanctuary in his absence. In his mind, he must simply reach his haven in order to be safe once again from the world’s unpredictability, and he never considers that Bangley might have trouble in his absence. Thus, after surviving a vast landscape of destruction, Hig and his new companions must contend with the unwelcome realization that this same destruction has dogged their steps and followed them home. As Hig plunges into a headlong rush to find his friend, hoping against hope that Bangley is still alive, the very intensity of his emotions forces him to realize the true extent of the bond that he has forged with his quirky comrade over the last nine years. In the aftermath of the crisis, the new community finds its bearings and regains a sense of daily calm and routine, and although Heller chooses to leave many new connections largely unstated, it is clear that in Cima, Hig has finally found a steady romantic companion to help fill the inner void left by his late wife.

The novel closes with Hig describing sleeping beside Cima at night, under the stars, suggesting that their relationship will continue even as Cima continues to heal her own psychological wounds. The fact that Heller ends the novel on a poetic note relieves some of the narrative’s devastation, but Heller deliberately leaves the future open-ended, closing the novel on an ambiguous note that leaves room for the imagination and refuses to spell out an explicit conclusion for the book’s characters. The implication is that in a world shattered by grief, there may be no such thing as a happy ending, but hope endures nonetheless.