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Chapter 3
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
Vern tells the guys he’d been digging under his porch that morning. For context, Gordie explains that Vern had hidden a jar of pennies there four years earlier. His mother disposed of his treasure map, and he’s not seen the pennies since. Everyone else assumes his older brother, Billy, dug up and spent the money years ago, but Vern still digs around to see if he can find it.
Vern’s ongoing search for his lost treasure suggests his childlike innocence. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he still hopes that one day, he’ll be lucky enough to find what was lost. But his failure hints that once some things—like innocence, or childhood friendships—are lost, they can’t be recaptured.
Themes
While Vern was under the porch, he’d overheard Billy and his friend Charlie Hogan talking about the previous night. They’d stolen a car for a joyride with their girlfriends—something they do regularly—and out on Back Harlow Road, they’d found Ray Brower’s body beside the train tracks. An upset Charlie thinks they should do something, but Billy doesn’t even want to make an anonymous report to the police. He’s afraid they’ll trace the call and start asking uncomfortable questions that will lead them to the stolen car. When they leave the house, Vern runs to the treehouse to tell the guys.
Billy’s and Charlie’s joyride reemphasizes the degree to which the adults in this community leave the youth to their own devices—and implies that adult Gordie doesn’t think that was such a good way to do things. Despite his tough-guy exterior, Charlie’s fear reflects a certain kind of innocence. Seeing Ray Brower constitutes his first encounter with death, and although it doesn’t scare him straight, it doesn’t leave him unmoved.
Themes
