Sublime and Fantastic Elements in A Day We Were Dogs "The Day We Were Dogs" is a short story written by an author born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1993 . Elena Garro's main themes revolve around the concepts of time and memory. I don't think this story is a true example of magical realism; however I see the sublime and the fantastic used in this story. I think this story is actually a misidentification of magical realism. To begin with, I was moved by the way the author talked about a day with two days in it. What could this event be like? It's two days and two realities. There were also two afternoons and two skies, dogs that talked, dogs called Buddha and Christ. I just see Garro trying to imitate magical realism, but he did a terrible job. But I have to give her credit for introducing the sublime and the fantastic. The characteristics of magical realism are phenomenal, deeper realm, visibility, mystery, conceit, timeless fluidity and fascinating. This story has none of these characteristics, or at least it doesn't express them as a magical realism story would. «We recognize the world, even if now – not only because we have emerged from a dream – we look at it with new eyes» (Roh 17). I understand what Roh is trying to say about magical realism, and I don't think you can use these certain strategies to understand this story because it is fantastic and sublime. The fantastic is characterized by the wonderful, the disturbing, the natural and the supernatural. The wonderful thing for me in this story would be the two parallel days. It seems so normal how Garro talks about it. They looked at one day or one thing and saw what happened, and then they looked at another. Being able to experience time like this seems so wild and crazy. Rabkin states that "we recognize this reversal (from 90 to 180) through some textual (signals): the reactions of the characters, the statements of the narrators, and the implications of the structures provided by the implied authors." (Rabkin 11). The story shows a great reversal as dogs act like dogs and people act like dogs. Also, the character asks, “Am I a dog”? Then another dog replies, “Yes, we are dogs.” I saw that later in the story she realizes that she is a dog by responding "Woof, Woof, Woof" when someone asks her a question.