The story starts at the rising action, and continues with a cyclic plot of flashbacks mixed in with the present. The setting in the first part of the story keeps with the theme and takes place in the DeRoy Symphony Hall, where seemingly happy couples who are in love have come to enjoy a show. Anna, the protagonist is at the theater with her husband (the antihero) who is off getting them drinks. While he is away, she sees her lover, who is the antagonist. Seeing her forbidden man when she least expects it causes her to panic. She is sick with what she calls shame that feels like “mucus, like something thick and gray, congested inside

Her husband, a clumsy, soft, aging man loved his wife the best he could. “Sometimes he failed at loving her, sometimes he succeeded” 758. He was self absorbed, and probably made Anna feel as though she wasn’t important. “He talked to her always about his plans, his problems, his business friends, his future’ 751. “She was certain he had a future” 751, but she wasn’t so sure she had one. Her husband didn’t intend on taking his wife’s identity away, but he did. She didn’t feel anything. In this story she is continually distraught over her secret, yet she is continually drawn to the man she shares the secret with. One January day she even cuts herself with a razor blade “to see what it would do” 751. Not to commit suicide as one might think, but to see if she still feels. She wonders if she can even feel physical pain, because she is so detached from herself. She has no internal love for her being. She has no outward love for her husband. All she knows is that she has a conflict in her soul over a man she is not supposed to be with.

The falling action takes place when she catches a glimpse of him in the mirror on the dresser in the hotel room. She watches him. He’s checking himself, to make sure there is no sign of his infidelity anywhere on him. She realizes at that moment that they are separate, yet together. She finally realizes that she doesn’t need someone else to make her feel important or worthy. She sees her own self worth apart from him. She sees him apart from her. She finally feels no shame in their love. She realizes she does love him. She loves him so much she would “risk the craziest of mistakes” 761. Her love for him finally showing through startles him, and begins to make him feel guilty. “We don’t have any right to it” 761 he states. She was sure it was completely What’s Love Got To Do With It?

The story contains several flashbacks, often bouncing back to her husband attempting to make clumsy, angry love to her after she sees her lover at the theater. She can’t receive her husbands love either. She doesn’t love herself. In the midst of the story, she flashes back to the time when her lover and she first met, and when they first made love. It jumps forward from that point to the climax of the story. They are in a hotel room, and her lover finally makes her realize why she feels the way she does. “Look, it’s you. You’re the one who doesn’t want to get married. You lie to me…759. “You love me but you won’t marry me, because you want something left over” She wants security. She wants that back up love to build up her self-esteem. He continues to say “All your life you can attribute your misery to me, to our not being married – you are using me-“ 760. She is using him. She is trying to bandage herself from a loveless life, and a loveless marriage. She wants him to stop saying such things, because the truth hurts. “I don’t want to

Some topics in this essay:
Symphony Hall, Lady Dog”, Dog” Oates, Carol Oates’, Anton Chekov’s, What’s Love, “the lady, “the lady dog”, love husband, lady dog”, love story, DeRoy Symphony, Pet Dog”, Lady Pet, Joyce Carol, can’t receive husbands, love doesn’t, husbands love, doesn’t love, midst story, flashes lover, theater can’t receive, receive husbands love, story flashes, husbands love doesn’t,