You've probably seen it on Facebook already. And if you've clicked on a friend's link and read the short comic "Written in the Bones," by Christopher M. Jones and Carey Pietsch, there's a good chance it broke your heart. It's a devastating story: the interior monologue of two dogs mourning the death of their puppy.
But then writer and critic Cheryl Lynn Eaton pointed out another way to read the story that's even more profoundly wrenching: the language, she realized, sounded like it had been lifted directly from an antebellum slave narrative. "Human beings were treated like this. For half an era." wrote Eaton on Tumblr. "And it is swept away like nothing, while it is so easy for us to sympathize with dogs."
Jones, who wrote the comic, told WIRED that he hadn't initially intended to connect the comic to slavery—but acknowledges that the reading makes a lot of sense. "The relationship between the dogs and the humans was based on that of a worshipper and a deity," Jones said. "The piousness with which Art (the narrator) speaks of his masters is something that was influenced directly by the language of the Gospels—and slavery and Christianity obviously share a long and tragic intertwining history."
Meanwhile, Eaton's observation is chilling: it's difficult to imagine that "Written in the Bones" would have been read—let alone shared—so widely were it about slaves instead of pets. And it makes the initial sledgehammer-to-the-chest impact of the story last even longer.
