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Chapter 24
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
A massive thunderstorm has begun to overtake the boys when Chris finally sees the Royal River through the trees. Lightning strikes a nearby tree and Gordie wishes he were back at home with a good book. And then, Vern catches sight of Ray Brower’s body. Gordie looks where he’s pointing and sees one limp, white hand protruding from a washout near the tracks. For the rest of his life, that hand will be the first thing Gordie sees in his mind’s eye whenever he hears about an atrocity or tragedy.
The growing thunderstorm mirrors the intensifying drama as the boys close in on their goal. If they need any reminder about the seriousness of what they’ve undertaken, the lightning strike provides it. And although he’s steeled himself for this moment—part of the reason he struggled to sleep the night before was because he was imagining what the body might look like—it’s more horrifying to confront death than he expects.
Themes
Chris, Vern, Teddy, and Gordie freeze. No one knows how to react. Then, the rainclouds open up. To Gordie’s ears, the sound of the falling rain and whipping wind has an accusatory tone. Chris leads the gang into the washout where Ray Brower lies face-down with his head pointed toward the tracks. He has reddish-brown hair and wears a green tee shirt. Thirty feet away, his empty shoes are flung into a bush. Looking at them, Gordie wonders how boy and shoes could have been thus separated. With growing horror, he faces the fact that Ray Brower, this boy his own age, is dead. Utterly, completely, irrevocably dead.
As he’s done so many times before, Chris takes the lead into the washout to confront death. As elsewhere, this implies to readers that he is already more experienced and mature than the others—that the harshness of his life has already taken most of his innocence. The contrast between what the boys expected—some sort of B-movie horror monster—and what they see—a little boy who looks uncomfortably like themselves—adds emotional weight to the moment. Death is no longer a distant idea, but something that happens to people and to people like them. With growing horror, Gordie realizes that he, too, is mortal.
Themes
Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern turn Ray Brower’s body over. There’s a little blood and bruising on his face, but he doesn’t look as bad as they had expected. One of his eyes stares blankly up at the thunderclouds. He’s a little swollen and he smells faintly of rot. He’s crawling with bugs. Gordie feels like he should be sick, but nothing happens. For a long time, the boys look at the body. Then Ace Merrill’s voice cuts through the din of wind and rain.
In this moment, it becomes clear that Gordie expected death to be gross in the same way as the leeches were gross. But the real source of horror isn’t the bugs or the bloating of decay: it’s how normal Ray Brower looks. His death doesn’t seem like as much of an aberration as Gordie expected and that—its quietness and normalcy—makes it all the scarier. Ray didn’t see his death coming, and Gordie realizes that he can’t, either.
Themes
