Book Essay

Shawndi Heidegger
Book Essay
Sophomore English
22 January 2008
When one thinks of a book, it is usually a boring thought and is probably a book needed to be read in class for a grade, not just a book to read for fun during one's free time. Where the Red Fern Grows is a book where one cannot predict what will come out in the end, but is an authentic story in which one will usually get sentimental.
Unpredictable is a way to describe this story because one is not expecting Rueben to fall on the axe in the middle of the night and kill himself while the boys are out hunting the 'ghost coon'. Or expecting Old Dan to die after getting ripped apart by the mountain lion. Nor does the reader expect Little Ann to slowly fade away after Old Dan has gone and drag herself to his grave only to finally die on top of it.
When Billy walks 30 miles over the mountains to pick up his puppies at the train depot, one figures that this is the life of a boy from the hills, who will go anywhere no matter how far to get what he wants. Then the reality of the story hits one when the town teases Billy mercilessly about his dogs, clothes, talk and finally beat him down for being a hillbilly. When the sheriff kicks the town kids off and takes Billy down to the store to get a soda-pop, Billy is overjoyed by the new bizarre fizzy taste in his mouth. The novel shows that Billy is truly a boy from way back in the mountains.
Towards the end where Billy and his dogs win the hunt, when the dogs die afterwards and the red fern growing to cover both graves Billy starts to question God's ways, one will get sad and overwrought by the style and way the author tells the conclusion of the story.
So one has this one question at the end of the novel: why should Billy have to suffer with his dogs dying after all he went through with them and to get them? The feelings one has at the end should not be something to be ashamed of because of the sketchy plot and dying story line.