SOURCE: “Dylan Thomas's Image of the ‘Young Dog’ in the Portrait,” in The Anglo-Welsh Review, Vol. 26, No. 58, Spring, 1977, pp. 68-72.

In the following essay, Davies examines canine allusions in Thomas's short stories, which he feels reveals the author's youthful bravado as well as his resolution that he is destined to lose his vitality.

The stance Dylan Thomas chose to emphasise in his Portrait stories, that of a “young dog”, evokes an image of bravado, defiance and aggression in the face of life, a devil-may-care approach to existence that would seem to be well suited to Thomas's fertile comic fancy. I use the word “seem” because a reader would be insensitive to Thomas's vision of life if he failed to see the irony of the “young dog” pose. There is a pattern in Thomas's parade of youthful versions of himself but it is not the one that is generally...