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Chapter 28
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
The trip home is uneventful, although the boys all know it isn’t over. Each expects a beating: Vern from Billy, Chris from Eyeball, Gordie from Ace, and Teddy from someone in Ace’s gang. But they’re proud that they did what they set out to do. Vern and Teddy peel off, and Chris walks Gordie home. They debate how long Vern and Teddy will last before telling about the trip. Then Chris confesses his fear that he’ll never get out of Castle Rock. He imagines Gordie coming home from college to find him, Teddy, and Vern virtually unchanged, stuck in their little small-town lives. Gordie doesn’t know what to say. And after a minute, Chris slaps him a high five and saunters off toward his own house.
All of the boys have been changed by their encounter, but the narrative once again suggests the fracturing of the foursome into the two pairs of Teddy-Vern and Chris-Gordie. Because they’re introspective people, Chris and Gordie have been changed more by the experience than their friends. And now that Gordie has lost some of his childlike innocence, he’s able to really hear, for the first time, Chris’s fear that he’s doomed to stay where he is forever. But the fact that Chris sticks with Gordie instead of heading off with Vern and Teddy suggests there’s still hope for him.
Themes
