Multiple Meanings of a Symbol in the PaseoThe use of symbolism has long been a technique by which an author can present much more than the literal meaning of a story . However, symbols are not always easy to define; indeed, it is sometimes possible for a symbol in a story to have multiple meanings, all of which lead the reader to a better understanding of the author's message. This is the case in the short story “Paseo” by José Donoso. The story is told from the point of view of a grown man who returns to the isolated and frightened child he was. While the boy's jealousy focuses on the attention garnered by a nondescript but persistent dog, Donoso takes us into the realm of multiple symbolism. Perhaps most obviously, the dog represents emotion. The boy in the story grows up among cold people, in a house which is “not happy” (316) and which expresses “an absence, a lack which, because it was unacknowledged, was irremediable” (316). The boy wishes that "the feeling of confinement of his family could overflow and be expressed in a fit of rage... or with a little stupidity" (317). Of course he knows that's not the case. The dog that her aunt Mathilda adopts, however, represents the opposite of a repressed, or even non-existent, emotion: “His whole body, from his quivering muzzle to his ready-to-wriggle tail, was full of an abundant capacity for entertainment” ( 323). . It is the dog's expression of emotion that permeates Aunt Mathilda's cold exterior and causes her to express her own emotions. Yet the boy is still isolated, perhaps more so, as his jealousy takes over. As he watches his aunt pet the dog sleeping on her lap, he realizes the extent of his own isolation and feels the loss of all hope that he, too, could be the... middle of paper... From As he enters, the boy recognizes the final influence that the dog and the madness he represents will have on his aunt: "I went to bed terrified, knowing it was the end. I was not wrong. Because one night...Aunt Mathilda walked the dog after dinner and didn't come back” (327) Who can say whether the aunt's disappearance is a manifestation of her madness or simply a rebellion on her part. , an affirmation of a life she has never lived before experienced? Yet, in the boy's mind, she is dead, and her death was caused by the dog and everything it symbolizes. Her aunt's repression of emotions was released by something extrahuman, and in doing so she brought disorder to order and madness to calm.Works CitedDonoso, José. “Paseo.” The Riverside Literature Anthology. Ed. Douglas Hunt. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1991. 315-27.