Littmus Lozenges represent the idea that it’s impossible to separate happiness and sadness from each other. Miss Franny Block’s great-great-grandfather, Littmus W. Block, began manufacturing the lozenges after the Civil War, and he included a secret ingredient in the otherwise sweet candy: sadness. His experiences during and after the war taught him that even things which seem righteous and good can have hideous aspects—and that even in the midst of grief and horror, it’s possible and necessary to take the time to celebrate the happy parts of life. People’s reactions to the lozenges suggest that this understanding is something that comes with age. While adults and even 10-year-old Opal are able to appreciate the taste of the sadness (representing their grasp of this idea), young children like five-year-old Sweetie Pie Thomas spit the candy out—at their age, they’re not yet ready to see the world in such a nuanced way.
Littmus Lozenges Quotes in Because of Winn-Dixie
I ate my Littmus Lozenge slow. It tasted good. It tasted like root beer and strawberry and something else I didn’t have a name for, something that made me feel kind of sad. I looked over at Amanda. She was sucking on her candy and thinking hard.
“Do you like it?” Miss Franny asked me.
“Yes ma’am,” I told her.
“What about you, Amanda? Do you like the Littmus Lozenge?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said. “But it makes me think of things I feel sad about.”
I didn’t go to sleep right away. I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing.
I got up out of bed and unwrapped a Littmus Lozenge and sucked on it hard and thought about my mama leaving me. That was a melancholy feeling. And then I thought about Amanda and Carson. And that made me feel melancholy, too. Poor Amanda. And poor Carson. He was the same age as Sweetie Pie. But he would never get to have his sixth birthday party.
“Well,” said Gloria Dump. “We didn’t do nothin’. We just sat here and waited and sang some songs. We all got to be good friends. Now. The punch ain’t nothin’ but water and the egg-salad sandwiches got tore up by the rain. You got to eat them with a spoon if you want egg salad. But we got pickles to eat. And Littmus Lozenges. And we still got a party going on.”
Littmus Lozenges Symbol Timeline in Because of Winn-Dixie
