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Chapter 13
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
Chris, Gordie, Teddy, and Vern reach the long, narrow trestle bridge across the Castle River in the middle of the afternoon. In 1960, the wide river is still fairly clean, although pollution from the textile mills is already apparent in its musty smell. The boys feel scared and excited: crossing the bridge is stupid but will give them something to brag about for weeks. Briefly, they discuss detouring to the highway bridge, but that would add 10 miles to their journey. Crossing is risky, but they figure they can make it across before another train comes along.
Crossing the trestle is the second test of the boys’ resolve. But while the danger posed by Chopper rested mostly in the exaggerated stories of little kids, the danger of crossing the trestle is very real. There is nowhere to go if they get caught by a train. Their nervousness shows that the understand this, but their ultimate disregard for the consequences suggests that they still don’t really think that they themselves are mortal. They don’t think a train will come, but they can’t predict fate.
Themes
The boys start across the trestle, Chris leading the way, Gordie bringing up the rear, and Teddy and Vern in the middle. Gordie quickly becomes dizzy and disoriented, but he keeps walking. Near the middle of the river, he stops to clear his head by looking up at the sky. And then, in a moment of precognition, he reaches down and touches one of the rails. Fear grips him as he realizes the rail is vibrating—a train is coming! In panic, he finds himself unable to move and unable to control his bladder. Then, the spell breaks and he begins to run, screaming “Train!” to warn his friends.
Once again, Chris leads the way. His is the example Gordie strives to follow. Gordie implies that he’d follow Chris anywhere, and to prove it, he picks his way across the vertiginous expanse of the trestle. The train offers a pointed reminder, however, of how little of life lies within a person’s control. The boys might expect it, but they can’t predict when it will arrive, or how ready they will be to face it.
Themes
Chris and Teddy are near the far bank, but Vern and Gordie are still near the middle of the trestle. Gordie catches up to Vern and begins to push him forward. Soon, they can hear the train hurtling up behind them. Gordie has never felt more scared—or more alive. Finally, in the nick of time, he and Vern reach the far bank and jump off the tracks on the far side. Gordie cannot look at the train as it wooshes past. Afterward, the boys decide to take a break.
Gordie felt like he was having a brush with danger when he ran from Chopper, but that was nothing compared to this. And it makes matters worse when he considers that this is exactly how he and the gang think Ray Brower died—underneath the wheels of a train. The slim chance they’d discussed has come to pass, and Gordie and Vern survive more through luck than anything else.
Themes
