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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Body, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loss of Innocence
Fate, Luck, and Chance
Confronting Mortality
The Power and Limitation of Friendship
Making Meaning through Stories
Summary
Analysis
Gordie will never forget stepping onto the railroad tracks with Chris, Teddy, and Vern at exactly noon. The heat is merciless—the tracks seem to shimmer in it—but only Chris and Teddy brought canteens. No one brought food. The boys pool their money and plan to stop at the town dump for water (it has a good well) and a nearby convenience store for supplies. Gordie is slipping the cash into his pocket when Chris yells, “Train!” He and Vern immediately jump down the embankment, but Teddy waits on the tracks, intent on dodging the train.
With the benefit of hindsight, Gordie sees the quest for what it was: not just an adolescent adventure but a rite of passage, a coming-of-age ritual that turned him from a boy into a man. Thus, he invests the moment that they take their first steps with heavy significance. But the fact that he didn’t bring a canteen and that none of them brought food shows that they didn’t understand the gravity of their quest at the time. In the moment, it was as casual as camping in Vern’s field.
Themes
Stunned for an instant by Teddy’s colossal stupidity, Gordie recovers and pushes him off the tracks. Furious, Teddy starts screaming and throwing punches. Chris and Vern hold him back until he calms down. Gordie points out that if the train conductor saw and reported them, the authorities might stop them. Reluctantly, Teddy agrees to a truce.
Gordie presents Teddy’s games of chicken as attempts to prove his own bravery—he wants to show people that like his father Norman, he can face death and danger and live to tell the tale. Of course, Norman didn’t emerge from WWII unscathed, and Teddy’s profound inability to appreciate the gravity of the danger suggests that he still has a lot of growing up to do.
Themes
