Opening Passage:
In the middle of the night somebody began to cry outside of Chauntecleer's Coop. If it had been but a few sprinkled tears with nothing but a moan or two, Chauntecleer would probably not have minded. But this crying was more than a gentle moan. By each dark hour of the night it grew. It became a decided wail, and after that it became a definite howl. And howlying -- particularly at the door of his Coop, and in the middle of the night -- howling. Chauntecleer minded very much. (p. 13)
Summary: Long before the rise of men, Chauntecleer is lord of the Coop, and of all the land around. He's a bit silly and a bit vain, a foolish Rooster, but he makes an honest effort to keep peace and uphold order, and with a bit of muddling he mostly does well enough. The book opens with him meeting a creature new to his domain, Mundo Cani Dog, a perpetually over-humble, over-sensitive, weepy, mourny dog, who irritates him to no end, but he soon learns that it is handy for Rooster to have a Dog help with some things, even if the Dog is a mope who never stops talking about how much of a failure and a nothing he is. Unbeknownst to all the animals in the land, they were made by God to be the Keepers of the Wyrm, a terrible and ancient power imprisoned in the earth beneath him, who, if he should ever be freed, would devour the world.
Nor is the Wyrm quiescent. In another domain, ruled by an aging Rooster named Senex, he has begun to whisper. Senex has no heir, and as his abilities slip in his age, he is terrified of being a failure. With Wyrm's help, Senex lays an egg, and the unnatural abomination of the Rooster-laid egg is hatched beneath a Toad. This is Cockatrice, who is like a Rooster and yet not, a scaly, featherless thing of great malice who soon kills Senex, usurping his place, and initiates a regime of terror focused on only one thing: the breeding of snake-like and venomous Basilisks. A Hen, named Pertelote, eventually escapes this regime and finds shelter in the lands of Chauntecleer.
Some elements of the story here have been told elsewhere, but instead of Wyrm, Cockatrice, and Toad, the characters in that story were called the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. For this is a story about the End of the World, or, at least, a first taste of it. As Chauntecleer keeps the peace in his little realm, unaware of the dangers beneath his feet or multiplyling in the rivers, all things move slowly toward the Armageddon of the animals. And against the pride of the Wyrm, the wickedness of Cockatrice, the malice of the Basilisks, against all of that evil, there is nothing to defend what is good and prevent the end of all except a decent but foolish Rooster, and a loyal Dog who never stops mourning, and some beasts, brave in their way, sometimes, but narrow in their views. God has not left them entirely without resource, since He sends to them the Dun Cow, who gives Chauntecleer what he needs to fight, but the fighting will have to be their own.
Do not let the talking animals give you the wrong idea; this is a book about war, the War, and there are books about war with human characters that are not as brutally honest as this one is about how bad even a necessary war can be. The brutality of Cockatrice's regime, or the terror and loss of the Final Battle in which beast after beast dies from the poison of the Basilisks, are laid out without any pulled punches. Obviously, the earth is still here, and thus Chauntecleer and his allies will narrowly win, but the sacrifices will be terrible by the end, and the Wyrm that wants to devour the world still waits to be freed.
Favorite Passage: Chapter Twenty-Four ends in the middle of a sentence with this passage:
Suddenly Chauntecleer took dizzy and began to sway. How many battles make a war? How muh, and how much more, can a rooster bear before the break? He let his slack wings touch the ground on either side of him so that he wouldn't fall altogether, and then dragged back to the camp. But again and again he turned his head to look behind, trying to believe what he saw.
He stumbled into the trench at the bottom of the wall. Slowly he raised his eyes. There was Pertelote, still standing on its top and looking at him. Chauntecleer shrugged his shoulders and tried to smile. He spread his wings empty in front of her. The smile didn't work. It hung too crooked on his face. "Do you know? Do you know?" he said as if he were very young. "Pertelote. I don't know anymore," he said, and then he fainted. Many of his bones had been broken.
Chauntecleer had won. Chauntecleer was victorious, but
(p. 223)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
*****
Walter Wangerin, Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow, Pocket Books (New York: 1978).
