From my judgment, the text “A Dark Brown Dog” is more of a realistic text than it is a natural one. Realism refers to how artists try to present issues and persons as they are in real life. There is no exaggeration, and the events are depicted as they took place. In the reading, there are different aspects of realism that can be found in the text as discussed below;
The first example of realism that we can extract from the passage can be found in the first few paragraphs. In the first paragraph, the author gives us a clear picture of the place where the boy was standing and the general environment in which he was in. He tells us that the child was standing in the street corner with one of his shoulders leaning against the high board fence while swaying the other to and fro.
Typically, the scene comes into the mind of the reader without a second thought. The sentence gives the setting of the child and the place he is at. This is a typical child anywhere in the streets whether waiting for someone or contemplating something. It is a scenario that has been well explained with no exaggeration nor fictions.
The second part that indicates realism is the point where the family members have arrived to find a new dog in their house, and only the child is in support of the dog staying with them. What the family does is that they wait for the head of the family so that the final decision can be made. In his text, the author has gone ahead to say that it was until after the father had arrived that the final decision to either keep the dog or take it back to the streets had been made.
In a typical family, the father is usually the final say, and they make most of the decisions. They are also able to overrule any decision that had been made in their absence. This is how realism sets in. The child now has the father to thank after he has been allowed to keep the dog. It was obvious that other members of the family objecting to the decision could not be happy at all. This is the reason why they are always beating the dog when the child is sleeping. From this context, the author has been real and did not exaggerate. He only gives a background check of a typical family setting.
Finally, the author has finished by insisting on the authority of the father at home. On realizing the status that his father was in, the child went ahead to take cover where he felt and considered safe. In most cases, children will always want to stay away from their raged parents to avoid being pulled into the confrontation. Children in most cases fear to be quarreled by their elders. This is what the child does since he feels that his father is not in the right moods.
The situation where the father is drunk and angry at anyone or anything that comes their way is very realistic. Typically, drunk people will be at anything they feel is interfering with their feeling contented. The father had given the child the go-ahead to keep the dog in the state that he was in, it was only logical for him to realize that he couldn’t have allowed for the fog to stay. He, therefore, wanted to correct the mistake he had made at the beginning.
