Liesse 1

Jordan Liesse
Kevin Jackson
English 120
2 February 2015
Urban Legends

In both past and modern society, various cultures have customs, beliefs, and
practices that are unique to themselves such as forms of prayer, types of food and diet,
music style, and much more. With these cultural differences comes various types story
telling about events, fears, beliefs and just ways of life in general. These stories are
commonly known as urban legends, and are told across generations in order to persuade
listeners to follow the moral lesson within the story. Typically, such legends are told as
warnings against a cultural shift, and told to either scare or instruct listeners from taking
part in events similar to the legend told. Urban legends may either morph over time, or
new ones may be created, in order to adapt to societal changes.
Society has become more and more liberal as the 21st century advances, causing
older generations to not only dislike the habits of the young, but also to fear them due to
their lack of understanding. As one of the younger citizens of America, it is easy to say
that parents and grandparents, just dont understand, but in reality, they know what is
going on because they have done the same rebellious things, just in different forms.

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With this cultural shift, urban legends such as The Choking Doberman have
transformed to fit modern habits.
The Choking Doberman, an urban legend that has been told across generations,
is about a young woman who came home and found her dog choking. In an attempt to
get help for the dog, she brings it to the vet for an emergency surgery. The vet warns
her about the sadness of the surgery and lets her know she can go home and have the
dog stay the night at the veterinary hospital. When she returns home, she sees that the
vet called her instructing her to get out of the house immediately. He told her that the
dog was choking on a human finger. As the cops arrived to the house, they found a man
bleeding profusely from the hand in the bedroom.
There are a few variations of the legend, but each gives the listener a sense of
fear, as well as teaching similar stories. In one version, the dog owners were coming
home from a night out drinking, and the wife had to take care of both the dog and her
drunken husband while a stranger was in their home the whole time. Either way the
story is told, it lends to the fear of strangers breaking into someones home.
With the various versions, it is easy for different cultures, generations and
societies to tell the story and make it applicable to their surroundings. Jan Harold
Brunvand describes urban legends as stories that reflect many of the hopes, fears, and
anxieties of our time. It is predictable that anyone telling the version with the single
woman is telling it to warn young women of the dangers of living alone. Women have

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become more and more independent throughout the generations, and as young adult
women in the 21st century have been doing almost everything by themselves, older
generations fear the outcome of those actions. Grandmothers or mothers may tell their
female descendants the story to scare them away from choosing to live by them selves.
Though hearing the story may not prevent young women from living alone, it may
influence them to take better precautions in locking their home, choosing a
neighborhood, or getting a protective dog.
Though thinking about what hearing an urban legend does for people is
important, it is equally as important to contemplate where they come from. The
significance of the stories, their origin and their accuracy are all common topics that
many scholars debate. It all begins with the word urban, which means, in, or relating
to, or characteristic of city or town. When combined with the word legend, which is
typically a historical but unauthenticated story, the word urban can take on a whole new
meaning. How can something be modern in its societal and geographical aspects, but a
historical story? The answer to that is that these stories transform and change over time,
allowing them to be told in multiple generations. These transformations in society cause
the acceptance and diffusion of beliefs, legends, and rumors (Fine 227). With the
change and acceptance of these apects it becomes easier for listeners to believe these
stories because they morph into events that are completely possible within society. It
would not be effective to tell an urban legend about typical events in the rural

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communities during 1920s in todays technology driven, city based society. The legend
would not be effective, or even have relevance to the listener. What is done instead is
that lessons from previous eras are being told in stories that seem able to occur in
present time.
Some may think that since urban legends alter over time, the lesson or moral
changes as well. That assumption is false for many reasons. Though older generations
may not have done the exact same rebellious activities as the current generations, they
were fairly similar. Parents did not want their children to put themselves in dangerous
situations, disobedience was not tolerated, and many were expected to follow rules set
by religion or family. Now, though, there are less and less traditional family values.
Elders will always try to convince their grandkids to act and believe in certain ways and
things as they did at a young age. At times, urban legends are a quick and easy way to
influence people and children, revealing how By repeating urban legends, people can
respond to social strain, expressing their doubts about the modern world (Best,
Horiuchi 5). Urban legends and stories are obviously an effective way to display those
emotions towards listeners.
In conclusion, it is important to reiterate that urban legends have many different
traits, and are very complex. The main purpose of them is to reveal how society has
altered, causing different generations, cultures and individuals to interpret and reveal
how they view societal changes. These urban legends are able to adapt to modern

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practices without losing their original moral lesson, giving them a sense of immorality
to not only readers but listeners as well. Scholars may debate this frequently, but it also
serves a purpose to average citizens to have an understanding of these stories. Knowing
that, for the most part, they are not true, but still have a lesson within them gives the
urban legend a purpose. It allows them to become worth listening to, while also a
worthy thing to analyze. Over all, they have a greater purpose in the community than to
scare people out of taking part in certain activates. These stories reveal cultural
changes, shared fears, stereotypes of other cultures, and the continuous influence of
elders on younger generations.