Anxiety In The Short Story 'Bulldog' By Greg Bottoms

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In the short story “Bulldog” by Greg Bottoms, two adolescents are harassing a ferocious bulldog that one of them used to own. The narrator documents his friend, Mark, ranting about his familial issues, his hatred for his parents, and then taking his anger out on the bulldog. In these scenes, Bottoms uses various sensory details including auditory, visual, and tactile to create a strong overarching mood of anxiety that reaches the audience. The auditory sensory details Bottoms utilises create an atmosphere of anxiety by choosing words and creating sounds that make the reader feel uneasy, or unable to relax. He stimulates the feeling of suffocation when describing the bulldog’s breathing; “...every fourth or fifth inhale was a panicked, gasping

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