Where the Red Fern Grows Themes

At the heart of Where the Red Fern Grows is the beautiful relationship between a boy and his dogs. When Billy Colman buys himself two hound pups, he makes a lifelong promise to care for them both. As the dogs grow and learn to hunt, they become much more than pets. Wilson Rawls ultimately argues that through caring for dogs and learning to see them as soulful, feeling, capable creatures, human beings can learn important…

In Where the Red Fern Grows, the harsh realities of the world are never too far off: over the course of the novel, Billy Colman has both experiences and witnesses violence, cruelty, and death to varying degrees—both in the animal world an in the human one. Throughout the book, Wilson Rawls uses instances of violence and death, which are both necessary but often ugly or frightening parts of the circle of life, and Billy…

The majesty of the natural world is an important part of Where the Red Fern Grows. On nearly every page, there is some description of nature as the young Billy Colman tromps and tracks raccoons through the scenic Ozark mountains. Billy is under the spell of nature, and through Billy’s reverence for the beauty all around him—and his disdain for even the small “cities” miles and miles from his mountain home—Rawls argues that to…

Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows is a classic of children’s literature, but one of the most groundbreaking things about the novel is its treatment of masculinity and emotion. Throughout the novel, Wilson Rawls shows his protagonist Billy Colman emoting openly—and Rawls shows the majority of men in Billy’s life, including his father, doing the same and even encouraging Billy’s softer side. Rawls ultimately argues that society’s understandings of masculinity can—and absolutely should—make…