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Where-the-Red-Fern-Grows-Lit Chart 51
Course: Wika Kultura (FIL 289)
100 Documents
Students shared 100 documents in this course
University: Phinma-republican College
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In the middle of the night, Billy gets up and goes out to the
doghouse to cry. Mama hears him outside. She comes out to get
him and bring him back in. Billy cries himself to sleep. In the
morning, he gets up and he makes a second box. He goes up to
the hillside and he digs a second grave. Billy buries Ann right
next to Dan—and he feels he has buried “a part of [his] life”
alongside both of them. Upon returning to the house, Billy asks
Mama if she believes that God has made a place in heaven for
good dogs. Mama says she believes He has. Billy says he hopes
his dogs are there.
As Billy grieves his dogs, he doesn’t try to control his emotions—and
his parents don’t try to stop him from feeling his feelings, either. Billy
isn’t exaggerating when he says that “a part of [his] life” has been
buried alongside the dogs—the carefree optimism, the trust in
nature, and the pure love of the hunt they helped him feel is gone.
CHAPTER 20
Several months later, spring arrives in the Ozarks, and Billy and
his family prepare to leave for town. Mama and Papa are elated
about the move. On the day they’re to set out, Billy helps his
parents pack up their wagon and then he asks if he can have a
few minutes to himself to say goodbye to the dogs. Mama and
Papa urge him to go to their graves. As Billy walks up the
hillside, he sees something amazing: a giant and beautiful red
fern has sprung up between the graves and it has grown over
two feet tall. Billy knows that there is an “old Indian legend”
about how the red fern grows on the graves of those who have
died in order to sanctify the land around them. Only an angel,
legend has it, can plant the red fern’s seeds.
As Billy spies the red fern—the product of an intermingling of native
legend and Christian imagination—he realizes that both God and
the majesty of the natural world have blessed his dogs’ memories.
Billy has been in pain over his dogs’ deaths for months—but now,
the red fern shows him that it is okay to move on while keeping his
memories of his dogs alive with him wherever he goes.
Billy calls for his parents and his sisters, and they all approach
the hillside together. Mama in particular is in awe of the red
fern, and Papa concedes that “perhaps there is something to
the legend.” Papa suggests that the fern is “God’s way of helping
Billy understand why his dogs died.” Billy says he does
understand—he doesn’t hurt anymore. As Billy looks at the
ferns, he marvels at the beautiful mountains all around. He bids
his dogs goodbye and he leads his family back to their wagon.
Together, they set off for town. As Billy looks back over his
shoulder at the home he grew up in, he realizes how “sad and
lonely” the house looks.
Billy finds himself comforted by the idea that God has, after all,
played a role in not just his dogs’ lives, but in their deaths as well.
The red fern does indeed symbolize rebirth and the ongoing circle of
life. Though Billy has had to witness his dogs die violent and terrible
deaths, the fern reminds him that there are new things on the
horizon—and that Dan and Ann did not die in vain.
The older Billy, looking back on his tale, states that he has never
been back to the Ozarks—he only has “dreams and memories”
of the place he grew up. He hopes that one day, “if God is
willing,” he will be able to return to the hills of his boyhood days.
He imagines returning to the hillside where Dan and Ann are
buried and looking again upon the glorious red fern, whose
legend he still believes to this very day.
The legend of the red fern continues to fill the older Billy with hope
and reassurance. He believes that his dogs came into his life for a
reason—and he knows that under the protection of the red fern’s
blessing, the lessons they taught him and the ways in which they
shaped his life will remain sacred and alive forever, even though Dan
and Ann themselves have passed on.
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