A powerful, enigmatic very short story by Coetzee

J.M Coetzee's story, The Dog, in the current New Yorker, is possibly the best one-page story I've read in this magazine. Put in simplest terms possible, here is the plot: A young woman who cycles daily to and from work has to pass a chained dog, who snarls, growls, and leaps at her every time she passes. Terrified of this dog, one day she speaks to the owners and asks if they'll introduce her to the dog so that the dog will recognize her when she passes and not treat her as a threat. The owners flatly refuse; the woman continues to pass the dog daily, recognizing that some day the dog may break through its fencing and attack. That's it. But of course a first thoughtful look leads us to think about this slight but enigmatic story as somehow allegorical - an analogue for colonial oppression or occupation, perhaps in Coetzee's native South Africa. But it's not a simply a reductive structure. A few other elements raise questions: the young woman works in a hospital - so we she may not be an "oppressor" but part of a relief effort or of general benevolence, so in this sense the story touches on the fury and shame of those dependent on others, more prosperous and better educated?, for social services. Yet there is no direct reference to race or poverty in the story. In fact, the only salient topical detail is that the young woman addresses the dog's owners in her best attempt at proper French. So what is her class relationship to the dog's owners? Perhaps she's simply a foreigner living in a French-speaking land, even in France itself, struggling w/ the native language? Or perhaps French is the only common language in a 3rd-world country; perhaps the setting is Haiti, or one of the former French territories in Africa - and speaking "proper' French is equally difficult for all parties. Clearly what we do see is a clash of cultures, a rejected or rebuffed offer of conciliation, and fury held at bay - though tenuously and temporarily (like the black rage in Langston Hughes's Dream Deferred).
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