The son insists on going to meet the neighbor, Grace. The three are finally face to face, and the narrator realizes that his voyeurism has ruined the possibility of any real connection between them. Their ritual dance is over. The dog's passion stirs the latent passion and emotion in his owner and leads him back to Maggie, his ex- wife and devoted friend. Their mutual concern for Hi John is the magnet that draws them back together, but the animal violence is the alarm that wakes his owner.
Animals are the instructors, showing the truth, lighting the way.
Gerald is a shipyard worker who wants a monkey for a pet, and this simple desire teaches the shipyard owner's nephew who tells the story that Gerald is human, not just a tool for the machine that produces the family fortune. While the relationship between Gerald, Wishbone, and Ford, the narrator, is being dramatized, the reader learns of Ford's relationship with his sister, Virginia, and their mutual bullying is as brutish as Wishbone's bullying of the rich white boy, the owner's nephew. Learn the value of a dollar by working hard for it, that sort of thing. I'd drag myself home in the evenings, caked with filth, feeling drained empty, like I'd spent the day donating blood, and there my sister would be, fresh and blond and lovely, stretched languorously on the couch in front of the television. A man has to decide how to live with a crippled woman he cannot make love to or how to leave her.