Warlight

The greyhounds are symbols of displacement and anonymity and represent Nathaniel’s desire for belonging and freedom. Smuggled onto The Darter’s mussel boat and sold with forged papers, the greyhounds do not have traceable documents to confirm their identities. Nathaniel describes them as “wastrels with no recorded past, either kidnapped from a château or saved from a meat factory to be given a second chance. They were as anonymous as roosters” (75). Nathaniel’s upbringing is similarly disorienting as he and Rachel were uprooted and evacuated during the Blitz and after the war found themselves without their parents and raised by a group of strangers. The stories they were told were also “forged” in the sense that they were never told the complete truth about their parents’ absence and the work of The Moth and his colleagues. Like the scared and vulnerable animals hiding under blankets, the siblings had to accept their estrangement in their own homes, never quite knowing if they were in danger or “saved.” For Nathaniel, the dogs’ unrecorded past also parallels his own doubts about his past and desire to trace his parents’ history to help him understand himself.

At the same time, the greyhounds also represent a desire to break free from restrictions and run free.