Dog Pays a Visit to God

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

Way back when, civilization what not as advanced as we are today. They had far less knowledge than we do, and far less technology. Because of these vulnerabilities, and other reasons, people told tales and myths as to why certain things happen. In the tale of, The Dog Pays a Visit to God a group of dogs after consuming carrion (an herb) decided to pay God a visit. God however found the scent of such plant very unpleasant and unaware of where the smell came from, thought that one of the dogs had defecated on his rug. God and the dogs thus tried to find the culprit of the mess by sniffing each other’s behinds, which the story tells us they are still doing so to this day. Clearly this is not the actual reason why dogs sniff each other’s behinds, but for lack of knowledge as to why this happens, this story was created to help the people understand to the best of their abilities why. In the end humans strive to understand the main question of why.

Just as I mentioned above, they civilizations from the book, had little to know knowledge as to the things that we know today, and the only thing they could do to understand life was to create stories to get them by. Griots in early West African culture were usually the ones to tell these stories to the community during big events, or simply just to pass the time. Creation stories, myths, and tall tales, they were all created to ease people’s mind as to why the world is why it is, and it has been going on for as long as people have been able to communicate. Not only to these stories serve as knowledge, they served as entertainment for the community.

            This doesn’t really hold a moral to learn from it is more of an entertaining way to understand a concept. If we had no other entertaining way to understand things why else would we remember them? Think about it next time you see a dog sniffing another’s behind, are you going to think of this story, I bet you you will.