The Dog Stars

Throughout The Dog Stars, displacement is a major theme. The novel’s narrative present is nine years after a combination of a superflu and blood disease have wiped out most of humanity, effectively displacing those who live through the pandemic from the life and society they once knew. In regard to his plight and present mind-state, after the collapse, Hig offers this analogy:

Thoughts that once belonged, that felt at home with each other, were now discomfited, unsure, depressed, like those shaggy Norwegian ponies that Russian professor moved to the Siberian Arctic I read about before. He was trying to recreate the Ice Age, a lot of grass and fauna and few people […] Half the ponies died, I think of heartbreak for their Scandinavian forests, half hung out at the research station and were fed grain and still died. That’s how my thoughts are sometimes. When I’m stressed (8).

When Hig encounters Pops and Cima, his sense of displacement is eased: “For the first time in what seemed like years my head seemed clear” (176). However, Hig’s sense of feeling displaced by societal collapse can’t help but remain.