This chapter's epigraph comes from a line in the play's first scene, in which the narrator laments the loss of his beloved dog. The dog, he says, "protected me . . this demon wolf . protected me ." The dog's name is Nemo, and it's the same dog that the narrator's father used to protect him when he was a young boy. Nemo's dad used to use the dog as a metaphor for the family's relationship with the snake. The narrator, however, is not so sure about his dad's use of the dog. He's not sure that the dog is really a metaphor, and he doesn't want the dog to be a symbol of the family.