63 pages • 2 hours read
Saving Shiloh
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Symbols & Motifs
Judd Travers’s Fence
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty and death, physical abuse, and death.
The fence that Marty helps Judd build is a symbol of the relationship between Marty and Judd. While a fence in literature often symbolizes the barriers between people, in Saving Shiloh, the fence is a collaborative project between Marty and Judd—a mending of the conflict between them and a symbol of a fresh start.
At first, Marty’s desire to build the fence is born out of his concern about Judd’s dogs: He wants to prevent Judd from chaining his dogs, which leads them to become aggressive and in turn makes Judd hostile toward them. Marty also views the fence project as a way to absolve some of his own guilt for taking Shiloh but not the other dogs: “Once I do something for all Judd’s dogs, I can stop feelin’ so guilty about saving only the one” (57). The fence does not begin as a way for Marty to build a new connection or fresh start with Judd, but rather as a way to help the dogs and assuage his own guilt.
Marty is incensed when Judd at first refuses the offer of the fence, in part due to the somewhat self-serving nature of his motivations: “All I am trying in this world to do is make life a little easier for Judd Travers’s dogs and what do I get? Trouble up one side and down the other” (62). Throughout the text, Marty grapples with whether to give Judd the benefit of the doubt. Marty takes offense at Judd’s refusal, using it as corroborating evidence that Judd is beyond redemption.
When Judd reconsiders, however, Marty quickly jumps on the opportunity to help him, and the process of building the fence together enables Marty to glimpse Judd’s true character, despite his past mistakes and rough exterior. When Judd kills one of his dogs after it attacks him, Marty sees Judd’s sorrow over the death of his dog even though it died at Judd’s hand: “I see a little mound of fresh dirt at the edge of Judd’s property [..] There’s a horseshoe stake driven in the ground at the head of this little grave, and around the stake is a dog’s leather collar” (110). Although Marty understands why Judd killed his dog, and the depths of Judd’s remorse and sorrow over losing it, Judd’s guilt leads him to retreat from Marty, with the fence now acting as a barrier between them.
Judd’s rescue of Shiloh at the end of the text once more bridges the gap between Marty and Judd. Marty goes to Judd’s house while he is at work: “I got a hammer stickin’ out of one pocket, pliers and wire clippers in the other […] But finally, when I give the gate a push, it opens in and opens out, just the way Judd needs it to” (127). Marty finishing the gate symbolizes the reopening of a door between Marty and Judd. Marty is doing this not only for Judd’s dogs but also for Judd.
The Man From Bens Run
Early in the novel, a news report about a missing man from the nearby town of Bens Run becomes a source of gossip and intrigue in Shiloh. The man disappeared shortly before Judd crashed his car while driving under the influence of alcohol, and the coincidence raises the possibility that the two incidents are somehow linked. Marty’s best friend, David, even suggests that Marty killed the man and then crashed his truck on purpose to destroy the evidence. Throughout the novel, as more information about the missing man surfaces, he comes to serve as a symbol for everything going wrong around town—everything that the community, without evidence, blames on Judd.
Marty’s belief in Judd’s ability to become better shapes his actions throughout the text, even as the town’s attitude toward Judd continues to deteriorate. In the wake of the unidentified man’s disappearance, a string of robberies occurs in and around Shiloh. The man’s body is discovered, and his death is ruled a homicide, with his skull showing evidence of blunt-force trauma. The body becomes a figure symbolizing a sudden eruption of crime and danger in this normally sleepy, rural community. Around the same time, Marty finds a heavy iron pipe in the back of Judd’s truck, making it easy for him to imagine that David was right all along. The man from Bens Run symbolizes the temptation to scapegoat others and find easy answers to complex problems. Marty wonders why he is defending Judd when all the evidence seems to point to his guilt and when everyone else in town seems ready to assume the worst of him: “Why don’t I wish Judd would be found guilty? Why don’t I wish he’d get sent to jail? […] It sure would solve a lot of problems […] I wonder why I been trying so hard to take his side?” (74). Marty acknowledges that if Judd were to be found guilty and imprisoned, Marty would no longer have to worry about Judd’s looming presence in his life. Despite the temptation of simplicity, Marty chooses to believe Judd and accept that these other mysteries will remain, at least for now, unsolved.
Marty’s acceptance of moral ambiguity rests on his empathy for Judd: “Once you know what happened to someone as a little kid, it’s hard to think of him as one hundred percent evil […] When’s it going to end?” (74). Marty knows that Judd’s childhood with an abusive father contributed to many of his ongoing struggles. Marty wonders whether this cycle of abuse goes back generations and asks when the cycle will end. Although the question is rhetorical, Marty’s give an answer: The cycle ends with him. Since Marty does not give up on Judd, despite his past mistakes and the harm he has caused, Judd is able to forge a path forward in his life, heroically saving Shiloh at the end of the text and forging a new path forward for himself.
Lying and Fibbing
An important motif in the text is lying or stretching the truth, something that Marty grapples with as he continues to develop his moral compass and personal code of ethics. The nature of lying is a recurrent motif throughout the Shiloh series, as Marty admits that Shiloh came to be his because of a lie: “Right this minute I am wondering what the difference is between a fib and a lie. Last summer, when Shiloh ran away from Judd and come to me […] I told Judd Travers I hadn’t seen his dog” (24). Marty distinguishes a “fib” from a lie in that a fib is told in the service of some moral good—in this case, rescuing Shiloh from Judd’s abuse. Through various examples in the text, Marty comes to use fibbing to achieve goals that serve the greater good and improve Judd’s life.
Marty primarily employs fibs to help Judd. In pursuit of Marty’s goal to help Judd build a fence for his dogs, Marty lies to Judd to encourage him to act fast and take him up on the offer of the fence: “‘Doc Murphy’s having his garden fence took down this afternoon, wants it off his property by tomorrow. First come, first get. I asked him not to give it to nobody till I’d talked to you.’ I pray Jesus this isn’t a true lie, just a social conversation” (60). In truth, Marty is the one who suggested to Doc Murphy that he would take the fence off his hands. By telling Judd that there are others clamoring for it, he is trying to entice Judd to take the fence.
Marty feels momentary guilt about his lying, but he reassures himself that his lies serve a greater purpose. Later in the conversation, Marty goes even further, fabricating a fictional man in a nearby town who wants the fence for himself as a way to get Judd to act: “I am stretching the truth so far I can almost hear it snap. Don’t even know a man in Little” (61). Marty uses this familiar idiom, “stretching the truth,” to illustrate how uncomfortable he feels lying to Judd, while knowing that getting the fence will help improve Judd’s circumstances.
Marty learns to stretch or exaggerate the truth to achieve what he believes to be solid moral gains. For example, when Marty regales his classmates with the story of how Judd plowed his neighbors’ driveways after the blizzard, “[t]o hear [him] tell it, Judd [i]s part Paul Bunyan and part Jesus Christ, doin’ all kinds of hero and wonderful things” (89). This is an example of Marty stretching the truth, characterizing Judd’s kind act as something akin to myth, legend, or divine action. Again, Marty stretches the truth for a noble reason: to encourage his classmates to open their minds to the possibility that Judd has changed for the better. Lying may not always be the advisable choice; however, Marty proves that the moral choice and lying can coexist.
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