ABSTRACT
Bull’s-eye is a dog abused by his master, corrupted by his master, and condemned by canine nature to adhere to, and therefore die with, his master. Probably the most famous of all Dickens’s fictional dogs, he had made his reluctant entry into Oliver Twist (in chapter 13, by way of Fagin’s den) before Dickens kept a dog himself, but – as an animal who is always convincingly the animal he is likely to have been, given his circumstances and the treatment to which he is subjected – he is the creation of an author who was, as we have seen, already an astute dog-watcher. He is essential to the presentation of Bill Sikes, for he serves as a means for the criminal’s eruptive violence (heavily associated with his copious spirits-drinking, though not expressly caused by it) to demonstrate its murderous potential. He has been trained by his master to be ready to spring at a throat – Oliver’s, for example, or Nancy’s – if required to do so; he is observed maliciously licking his lips in anticipation of a command to make such an attack; he is considered by the Dodger to be ‘the downiest’ 1 prig (the most knowing thief) in the gang; and he is admired by Dodger’s confederate Charley Bates as ‘an out-and-out Christian’ (p. 117) for his fierceness and intolerance (p. 260). 2 However, the only person he is seen to attack is his master – or rather, his master as represented by his half-boots, with which the dog is himself so frequently attacked.
