68 pages • 2 hours read
Where the Red Fern Grows
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Themes
The Bond Between a Boy and His Dogs
One of the most powerful themes of Where the Red Fern Grows is the bond between child and dog, or in this case, between Billy and Old Dan and Little Ann. The emotion of their bond exists long before Billy even acquires the hounds, appearing when Billy discovers the ad and prays for his hounds:
There on the banks of the Illinois River, in the cool shade of the tall white sycamores, I asked God to help me get two hound pups. It wasn’t much of a prayer, but it did come right from the heart (18).
Once Billy has Old Dan and Little Ann, it’s clear there is some mystical connection between the three of them. Grandpa and Papa are constantly observing how attentively the hounds listen to Billy and how uncanny their relationship is. While Billy saves their lives several times: first, from a mountain lion as pups; second, saving Old Dan from a tree; and third, saving Little Ann from the ice, Old Dan and Little Ann save Billy from a mountain lion in the end. Their relationship ends much like it began—with their first enemy. In this way, Rawls bookends their story with a mountain lion.
When the hounds die, Billy stubbornly makes their caskets and buries them without any help, contending that it was just the three of them during life, and it will be just the three of them in death.
Billy’s Coming-of-Age
As the novel is set in a time and culture different from modern life, Billy’s rapid maturation speaks to the backwoods culture of his time. However, even for his time, Billy is quickly becoming a man. He spends most of his time alone (or with his hounds) in the woods. He knows how to build fires, skin hides, and cut down great trees.
Billy’s emotional maturity is slower to grow. He often weeps in response to challenges and dangers and is hyper aware of his mother’s and sister’s emotions. He tries to walk with the long stride of his father but isn’t physically able yet. Billy imitates the father role in other ways, as well, by constantly trying to provide for his family. He both brings in vital income, as well as treats.
When Billy’s hounds die, and he moves off the mountain to receive an education, it symbolizes an end to his childhood. This move disrupts his connection with nature, which Billy portrays as a magical, God-like thing. The deaths also change his relationship with his faith, making the changes at the end of the novel something akin to a child who ceases their belief in magic. The difference being that Billy moves and forgets the magic, but his adult self rekindles the belief when he sees another boy’s hound.
Praying and Faith
As referenced already, prayers to God are a recurring theme throughout the novel. Billy appeals to God multiple times: to find his dogs, to get the money for his dogs, to find tricky raccoons’ trails, to help blow down the large sycamore where they tree their first raccoon, to help find his dogs in the storm, to help him save Little Ann from the ice, etc. Every time, something happens in the natural world that reflects a positive answer to Billy’s prayers.
Mama has also been praying, and the answers to Billy’s prayers often correspond to answering Mama’s prayers. He wins the cups and prize money in the competition hunt, enabling them to later move out of the Ozarks and into a town where the children will get a good education and their quality of life will improve. However, to keep the family at this point, Mama’s prayers give meaning to Old Dan and Little Ann’s death (as Billy would not have come with the family had the dogs lived).
As the story closes, Billy reconfirms his faith by relaying that he believes the red fern still grows on his dogs’ grave, and he still considers it a sign of their goodness.
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