"Under the Wolf, Under the Dog" by Adam Rapp

Have you lost a loved one or know anyone who has? If so, you know that everyone deals with loss differently. Steve Nugent from Under The Wolf, Under the Dog, can only find solace in drugs, detachment, and the subsequent insanity that controls his actions when a deadly cancer eats his mother into her grave.

But how is one to deal effectively after witnessing a loved one in an incurable state? Nearing the end of her life, Steve describes his mother as “[. . .] totally bald [. . .] and the whites of her eyes had dulled to this weird brownish gray. She only weighed eighty-something pounds and her lips had sort of disappeared. [. . .] I could see a new growth pressing through her forehead. There were things emerging all over her lately. At first they were calling it breast cancer, but now it was everywhere. A few weeks before, the oncologist had discovered a tumor in her abdomen that was the size of a baseball” (p. 48).

Steve, the main character, reminds me of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. Both characters are the same age, have similar physical features, are easily unnerved, preoccupied by women, and are ultimately torn up inside by their experiences in life. Holden generally has depression and is sad about the loss of innocence in the world, whereas Steve has to cope with the death of his mother. In my opinion, Steve’s issue is the most troubling, causing him to transform from being a normal guy with an above-average academic standing to a deviant teenager that wanders the streets. Like Holden, he winds up in an institution for troubled adolescents. There, he finds himself surrounded by kids with suicide scars and a talented ex-junkie who can insert $1.87 in change up his nose.

Today’s generation might not be able to identify with Holden’s world in the coming of age novel, The Catcher in the Rye and may appreciate and connect to Steve’s struggles in Under the Wolf, Under the Dog’s more modern version of a distraught adolescent ineffectively dealing with life’s hardships. I found Steve to be a more interesting character than Holden because of his daring nature. Unlike Holden for instance, he doesn’t just think about calling the girl he has a crush on, he becomes a genuine stalker: Steve breaks into her house, calls her several times, and ends up meeting her for a date. He also experiments with drugs, which gets him into more trouble than a passive Holden Caulfield ever could have made for himself.

As a modern-age, drug-induced Catcher in the Rye with a bolder Holden Caulfield who carries heavier baggage, Adam Rapp’s Under the Wolf, Under the Dog takes the reader to the brink of insanity and then drops them at the mental health institute.