The Power of the Dog

Rose spends a lot of time thinking about the past, her parents, and her modest upbringing. She recalls her high school graduation and the fact that she made the floral arrangements for the ceremony. She was not an excellent student, but she was creative and had a special gift for flower arrangements. She snaps back to the present and wonders if other people spend so much time reminiscing about their distant pasts.

For his part, George is almost always enthralled by the things he discovers about Rose. He is also acutely aware of Phil’s growing contempt and scorn, and like Rose, he ponders moments out of his past that highlight the bluntness of Phil’s derision. He recalls a particular Christmas during which his mother made him wear a blue dressing gown with slippers. Phil openly mocked George then, and George suspects that when Phil is with the ranch-hands, he does the same thing. Even Phil’s parents were not free from his antipathy, and when The Old Gent defended George on that particular Christmas, saying that he too had a gown, an unsurprised Phil very cynically but casually confronted his father. Phil implicitly accused the Old Gent of being more like an eastern gentleman than a rugged western man.