Dog

The Dog in The Testaments is not a literal character but a persistent figure of speech and a symbolic presence drawn from Aesop's fable of the Fox and the Cat, which Aunt Lydia meditates upon. In the fable, the Dog represents the relentless, violent force of the hunters and their hounds that pursue the Fox and the Cat. Aunt Lydia recalls the story from her childhood reading of Aesop's Fables, where the Fox boasts of having many tricks to evade the hunters and their dogs, while the Cat admits to only one: climbing a tree. When the hunters and their dogs arrive, the Fox exhausts his bag of tricks and is killed, while the Cat, having climbed the tree, watches safely. Aunt Lydia uses this fable to frame her own strategic thinking, asking herself whether she is a Fox or a Cat in the dangerous game of survival within Gilead. She concludes that she has been both, employing a bag of tricks while also maintaining a position of safety, like the Cat in the tree. The Dog, then, embodies the lethal, implacable force of the regime—the hunters, the Eyes, the Angels—that she must outwit. The Dog also appears as a simile for the predatory nature of men. In the school lessons taught by Aunt Vidala, girls are told that men's eyes are "like the eyes of tigers" and that they roam like ravenous beasts, ready to tear apart the "precious flowers" that are the girls. This imagery of predatory animals, including dogs, is used to instill fear and justify the strict control of women's bodies and behavior. The threat of being hunted like an animal is a constant undercurrent in the lives of the Handmaids and other women. The Dog also appears in the context of the escape. When Nicole and Agnes are fleeing in the inflatable boat, Nicole worries about being tracked by sniffer dogs, a real and present danger in Gilead's security apparatus. The fear of being caught by dogs, literal or metaphorical, haunts the fugitives. Finally, the Dog appears in a moment of dark humor. When Nicole, having just punched Aunt Vidala and dragged her behind the statue, picks up an orange from the ground, she worries about the scent of the orange peel attracting dogs. This small, anxious thought underscores the constant vigilance required in their escape. The Dog, therefore, functions as a multifaceted symbol: a figure from a fable that represents the lethal power of the state, a simile for predatory male desire, a real threat of detection, and a source of anxiety for the fugitives.