Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Body, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loss of Innocence
Fate, Luck, and Chance
Confronting Mortality
The Power and Limitation of Friendship
Making Meaning through Stories
Summary
Analysis
Dawn finally breaks during Gordie’s watch. Relieved, he scrambles up the embankment to the train tracks where he sits to watch the world wake up. Just before he’s about to stand up, he sees a beautiful, serene deer on the tracks. She stares at him for a moment before nibbling the grass. Gordie watches, rapt. Then, he feels the rail begin to vibrate. A second later, the deer bounds off into the woods. The passing train wakes Vern, Teddy, and Chris. Gordie says nothing about the deer, keeping that special and sacred moment to himself. It sounds so minor when he describes it, but it sticks with him as the best, “cleanest” part of the trip. He always remembers it in times of trouble.
The deer represents a moment of pure grace for Gordie. After the terror of a long, dark night in the woods and the depressing messages of his dreams, the deer and the sunrise remind him of the beauty in the world that makes it worth enduring the pain and suffering. For a moment, everything seems right in the world. And Gordie gathers the necessary strength from that moment to face what lies ahead of him. The deer becomes a personal story about life that he falls back on when he needs to remind himself about what matters.
Themes
