Sounder

Sounder is a 1969 book for young readers by American author William H. Armstrong. In the novel, a young boy grows up in a Black sharecropping family on a sprawling plantation in the 19th-century in the American South, where he lives with his parents, his siblings, and his faithful dog, Sounder. Bored and lonely, the boy dreams of returning to school and learning to read, and he copes with his life of obligation by hunting in the woods with Sounder. However, one day, men come to arrest the boy’s father for stealing, and they also shoot Sounder. With his father in prison and his dog wounded and missing, the boy faces bigger challenges than ever before and must learn harsh lessons in order to succeed at Surviving Racism and Hostility. The novel also focuses on The Bond between Dogs and Their Humans and The Power of Storytelling as a source of hope and courage.

William H. Armstrong (1911-1999) graduated from college in 1936 and went on to raise a family and work as a farmer in Connecticut. However, his true calling arose when he became a teacher of adolescents and taught ancient history in a career spanning 52 years. His first novel was titled Study Is Hard Work (1956), but Sounder (1969) became such a success that it was awarded the prestigious Newberry Medal. It is followed by two sequels: Sour Land (1971) and Macleod Place (1972). 

This guide refers to the HarperCollins eBook edition.

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide feature depictions of racism, violence, physical abuse, cruelty to animals, incarceration, and death.

Language Note: Because the source text was written in 1969 and is meant to depict the social realities that Black families faced in the American South in the 19th century, the author utilizes several outdated terms that are now considered to be derogatory. 

Plot Summary

In Chapter 1, the boy relaxes in his cabin with his parents and younger siblings, reflecting on the cold, windy autumn that is making his favorite activity of hunting much more difficult. Lonely and bored, the boy misses going to school; he was compelled to drop out of school due to the grueling eight-mile walk each way. Now, as he listens to his mother cracking nuts to sell, the boy wishes that she would tell him a story, and he promises himself that someday he will learn to read so that he can enjoy stories by himself. Today, the boy’s mother makes a particularly luxurious dinner, cooking a large ham for the whole family.

Suddenly, three white men appear at the cabin and abruptly arrest the boy’s father for theft, accusing him of stealing the ham. The children are frightened by the commotion, and the boy watches in distress as his father is chained and put into a wagon. As the wagon drives off, Sounder chases it, and the strange men shoot and wound him. Sounder runs off. 

As the family deals with the aftermath of this event, the mother must temporarily leave the children to go sell walnuts, so she leaves the boy in charge of his younger siblings. Sounder is still missing, and the boy is determined to find his dog, dead or alive. He searches under the cabin and in the fencerows between the fields but finds nothing.

Later, Sounder is still missing. The boy’s mother warns him not to get his hopes up, but she wonders if Sounder is hiding in the oak woods trying to heal. Weeks pass, and the boy is disappointed when Sounder remains missing. On Christmas, his mother tells him to bring a cake to his father in prison. When the boy gets there, he is bullied by the sheriff and has a brief exchange with his father, who tells him not to return.

The boy returns home, wishing that a stray dog would appear so that he could keep it. The next morning, the boy hears a whining noise and is astonished to find a starving and wounded Sounder on the front porch. He is happy to see his dog, even though Sounder is not as happy or athletic as he used to be. Later, the boy decides to travel through the county, hoping to find his father among one of the groups of convicts at farms and quarries, but his search is fruitless.

As the years continue to pass, the boy periodically leaves home to look for his father. When the boy stops by a road camp with convicts who are whitewashing a stone path, a prison guard injures him and shoos him away. Hurt, the boy goes into town, where he meets a kind school teacher who helps him and offers to teach him in exchange for doing chores. Later, the boy returns home and tells his mother about the school teacher’s proposal. She agrees, and he moves into the school teacher’s cabin. When he returns home to help his mother in the summer fields, the two are surprised to see the boy’s father walking up the road, injured from his time as a convict laborer. A few months later, the father and Sounder go hunting, and the boy later finds his father dead under a tree. After the boy buries his father, Sounder loses any remaining interest in life, and the boy knows that his beloved dog will likely die soon, too. Weeks later, Sounder dies, but the boy never forgets his father or their faithful dog.