Aging, Abandonment and Friendship in a Cruel World: Human-Canine Bonding in Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend

Year 2022, Issue: 56, 45 - 66, 01.11.2022

Nilsen Gökçen Uluk

Abstract

German-Panamanian-Chinese-American writer Sigrid Nunez’s
seventh book The Friend (2018) is a hybrid narrative, a composite
of memoir, meditation, novel, fiction and metafiction, on human and
non-human animal companionship. It amalgamates issues that have
become trademarks of Nunez’s fiction such as loss and grief with the
companionship of non-human animals and humans. The book thematically blurs the boundaries between humans and non-human animals
and fundamentally challenges and questions Western ways of thinking
about human-animal dualistic hierarchy, according to which animals
are associated with instincts rather than reason, with teh body rather
than the mind, and with nature rather than culture. While the human
world the novel presents is filled with vile gossip, competition, senseless brutality and bloodshed, the animals set an example of loyalty and
friendship; with their superior mental and bodily capacities, animals in
The Friend are portrayed, rather than dumb creatures, as wise kin of
humans still persisting in goodness though wrongfully exiled from human privileges. Thus in her intricately knitted narrative, Nunez offers
the companionship of non-human animals as the only saving grace in
human life.

Keywords

: Sigrid Nunez, The Friend, (Human) Animal Studies, Friendship with Animals, Violence

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