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Where-the-Red-Fern-Grows-Lit Chart 49
Course: Wika Kultura (FIL 289)
100 Documents
Students shared 100 documents in this course
University: Phinma-republican College
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As Billy approaches with his lantern to grab the dogs’ collars
and pull them away from the tree, he spots two “burning, yellow
eyes” and he realizes that his dogs have not treed a bobcat, but
a mountain lion—“the devil cat of the Ozarks.” Old Dan lets out
a loud howl. The mountain lion responds with a deep growl
before launching from the tree and jumping upon Dan. Little
Ann joins the brawl and she locks her jaws around the cat’s
throat. A bloody, horrible fight begins—Billy, “berserk” at the
sight of his dogs in trouble, charges in with his ax and he chops
at the big cat. When the cat rounds on him, Dan and Ann leap to
Billy’s defense.
Billy realizes he has made a horrible (and indeed possibly fatal)
mistake much too late. His dogs are already determined to fight off
the predator—and once they lock onto a threat against Billy, there is
little chance of calling them off. Billy has no choice but to join the
fray and help defend his dogs against the giant cat, mirroring their
devotion by demonstrating his own.
The fight goes on and on as Billy continues chopping at the cat
while the mountain lion rips and tears at Dan and Ann. Finally,
Billy manages to strike a fatal blow and fell the mountain lion.
The effort of the blow and the shock of the brawl get to Billy at
last, and he passes out. When he reawakens, he sees that his
dogs are still “glued” to the cat’s lifeless body, unwilling to
release their jaws’ fatal grips on him. As Billy sees his ax sticking
out of the mountain lion’s back, he thinks of Rubin Pritchard.
Billy goes to the dogs and he examines them. Little Ann is cut
up badly, but none of her wounds look fatal. Dan, on the other
hand, is a “bloody mess.”
The second major instance of violence and death that Billy has
witnessed—the attack of the mountain lion—reminds him of the
first: the death of Rubin Pritchard. Billy is more traumatized by this
incident than by Rubin’s death, yet he finds himself in a similar
position of being forced to pry his dogs’ jaws off of the entity which
threatened Billy’s safety. Billy is reminded not only of his dogs’
devotion, but of their savagery as well.
With tears in his eyes, Billy begins trying to stanch Dan’s
wounds using mud. Billy pulls his ax from the mountain lion’s
corpse and he starts leading the dogs back home. Halfway
there, he realizes that Old Dan is not behind him—he turns
around and hears a pitiful cry. When he doubles back to find
Dan, he realizes that Dan’s entrails are falling out of a wound in
his stomach and have wound around a berry bush. Billy helps
extricate Dan from the bush and stuff his entrails back into the
wound, then continues leading the dogs home.
As Billy leads the dogs home, it becomes clear that Dan’s wounds
are much worse than they appeared to be. Billy remains in denial of
the fatal nature of the wounds, however, maintaining his belief that
there’s still a way for Old Dan to pull through if he can just make it
home to Mama and Papa’s care.
Back at the house, Billy wakes his parents. Mama immediately
gets to work on Old Dan’s terrible wounds, washing his entrails
and sewing him back up. Little Ann is easier to tend to. As Billy
works on Ann, he tells his parents about how Dan and Ann
saved him from the mountain lion. After Mama finishes sewing
Dan up, Billy and his parents sit and wait with him on the porch
to see what will happen. Before daybreak, however, Dan begins
struggling to breathe—soon, he is dead. Mama and Papa try to
comfort Billy by reminding him that he still has Little Ann, but
Billy states that he’ll never be able to forget that Dan gave his
life so that he himself could live.
Billy is devastated as Dan dies. His gratitude for the fact that Dan
gave his life so that Billy could survive the mountain lion attack is
outweighed by his misery over losing his beloved dog. Billy once
valued his dogs’ almost automatic, unthinking devotion—now,
however, he finds himself nearly resentful of the fact that Dan was
loyal to the point of such selflessness.
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