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Where-the-Red-Fern-Grows-Lit Chart 50
Course: Wika Kultura (FIL 289)
100 Documents
Students shared 100 documents in this course
University: Phinma-republican College
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Mama and Papa go to bed, but Billy stays up by the fire. Around
dawn, he hears a mournful cry. He goes out to the porch to see
Ann curled around Dan’s lifeless body, whimpering and crying.
Billy runs away from the house into the woods and breaks
down in horrible sobs. When he is finished crying, he returns to
the house and begins building a box to bury Dan inn. When the
box is finished, he digs a grave on the hillside and solemnly
buries Dan.
Billy tries to control his emotions and keep them hidden from those
around him, even as the intensity of what he’s feeling is obviously
the thing that’s controlling him in these painful and tender
moments. Billy doesn’t want to add to Ann’s suffering—but little
does he know there’s no helping her recover from Dan’s death.
Two days later, Billy realizes that the worst is not over. When
he comes in from working in the field with Papa, Mama tells him
that Little Ann has been refusing food all day and that she’s
now disappeared. Billy calls and calls for Ann, eventually finding
her in a bush at the very back of the property. As Billy looks into
her eyes, he sees that there is “no life” in them anymore. Billy
brings Ann back up to the house and he attempts to feed her,
but Papa tells Billy that Ann has lost the will to live.
Little Ann’s devotion to Old Dan is so intense that she loses her will
to live after watching him die. Ann and Dan are still connected, even
after Dan’s death—and she is determined to be with him no matter
what, for reasons Billy can’t understand.
Billy nurses Ann all night and all day, but when he goes out to
work with Papa for a bit, he comes back to find that Ann has left
her spot on the porch. Billy knows that she has gone to Dan’s
grave to die. He goes to the grave and, sure enough, he finds
Ann’s lifeless body atop Dan’s resting place. Billy cries and he
turns his face to the heavens. He asks God why his dogs had to
die—and why he now must suffer. Mama approaches Billy and
she comforts him by telling him that “even the Good Lord
suffered while He was here on earth”—and that the dogs have
“fulfilled a prayer that [she] thought would never be answered.”
Mama tells Billy to come up to the house—she and Papa want
to talk with him. Mama believes that Billy may feel better once
he’s heard what they have to say.
Billy’s pain doubles when he realizes that Ann has given up her life
to be with Dan. Losing one dog was hard—losing both feels like a
curse. Billy doesn’t understand the reasoning behind his dogs’
deaths—and though his mother and father try to comfort him with
important tenets of their faith, Billy remains unable to see why God
would give him his dogs only take them away.
Back inside, Papa tells Billy that now is the time to “stand up like
a man” and accept that there is a reason for everything God
does. Over a dinner of sweet potato pie, Papa tells Billy that he
and Mama have been praying each day to be able to save
enough money to move the family into town so that Billy and
his sisters can get an education. Papa says that because of Dan
and Ann’s success at the competition, their prayers have been
answered—they now have enough money to move.
Billy’s dogs fulfilled a purpose in his own life by teaching him
important lessons about love, loyalty, hard work, and determination.
Learning that they fulfilled a purpose in the lives of his family
members, too, makes Billy feel proud but not necessarily comforted.
Billy concedes that God may have given the dogs to him in
order to fulfill Mama and Papa’s prayers—but Billy wonders
aloud why He took them away. Papa says there is an answer for
that, too. He and Mama had decided a while ago not to separate
Billy from his dogs when the family moved to town—they
planned to leave Billy and the dogs with Grandpa. Now, though,
their family will be able to move to town together—they won’t
be split up.
While Billy can understand that perhaps his dogs didn’t die in
vain—perhaps they served a larger purpose of allowing Billy’s family
to stay together—even his faith in God’s plans doesn’t fully comfort
him in this devastating time of mourning.
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