Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Because of Winn-Dixie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling and Listening
Sadness, Happiness, and Growing Up
Family and Loss
Openness, Friendship, and Community
Summary
Analysis
When Winn-Dixie and Opal get to the pet store the next morning, Opal gives Otis a Littmus Lozenge. He asks if it’s Halloween and awkwardly accepts the candy. When he puts it in his mouth, he begins to cry and thanks Opal. He says it tastes good, but it also tastes like being in jail. Opal scolds Gertrude, who tries to steal the wrapper, and then asks Otis if he was in jail because he’s a murderer or a burglar. Otis looks down at his boots and says he’s not dangerous; he’s just lonely. Opal accepts this and fetches her broom. When she returns, Otis is still staring at his shoes. He says that he went to jail for music—he used to play his guitar on the street. Sometimes people gave him money, but he did it mostly because “music is better if someone is listening to it.”
It’s clear that Otis has a story to tell if someone were to ask for it—and in all likelihood, it’s one that is both happy and sad. When Opal easily accepts Otis’s insistence that he’s not dangerous, it shows that she’s learning how to be a good friend. She knows that it wouldn’t necessarily be polite to pry, but it is polite for her to listen attentively when Otis does finally share his story. That Otis loved playing music in public suggests that deep down, Otis wants to connect with other people—but because of his time in jail and how others judge him for that, it’s much harder for him to do that now.
Themes
Otis says that the police came and told him to stop, since he was breaking the law. Otis kept playing, so the police tried to put handcuffs on him. Since handcuffs would’ve prevented Otis from playing his guitar, Otis hit an officer and knocked him out. Otis was locked up in jail for a while, and when they let him out, they made him promise to never play guitar on the street again. This is why Otis only plays in here, for the animals. The human Gertrude gave him his job at the pet store when she read about Otis in the paper, and she doesn’t have a problem with Otis playing for the animals. Opal points out that Otis also plays for her and Sweetie Pie, but Otis says that they’re not on the street. Opal thanks Otis for telling her his story.
Otis’s connection to his guitar, the music, and the other people who heard him play was strong enough to make him knock out a police officer for the right to keep playing. Learning Otis’s story makes it clear that he isn’t a cold-blooded criminal—he’s just a person who made a mistake in the heat of the moment. Now that he can no longer connect with others via music, he’s stuck in the pet store because of his shyness.
Themes
Sweetie Pie arrives later, and though she accepts a Littmus Lozenge from Opal, she spits it out immediately. To her, it tastes bad and like not having a dog. Opal sweeps the floor slowly so she can keep Otis company and help him be less lonely. She thinks that everyone in the world is lonely and thinks about Mama. Opal decides that thinking about Mama is like poking the hole left behind when you lose a tooth: the spot should be full, but it isn’t.
The fact that Sweetie Pie immediately spits out the lozenge again proves Miss Franny’s point that emotional intelligence is something that comes with age and experience. Meanwhile, now that Opal knows Otis’s story, she understands just how important it is to listen to others and bear witness to their tragedies. Doing so allows people to better help others by offering them support and companionship. Otis’s story also makes Opal realize even more that she’s not the only one who feels sad, a marker of her growing maturity.
Themes
