Archive for July 27, 2010
Scolding the hound again, she knelt down and arranged the flowers on the grave.
Posted by: Israel Sanchez
Book: Where The Red Fern Grows
“The hound ran up to the graveyard and started sniffing and bawling. Mrs. Pritchard followed him. Seeing the flower’s on Rubin’s grave, she picked them up and looked at them. She scolded the hound, and then looked up at the hillside. I knew she couldn’t see me because the timber was too thick, but I felt uncomfortable anyway.”
In the previous scene where Billy has a confrontation with the Pritchards, Rubin Pritchard jumps on Billy and is about to beat him up. He stops when Old Dan and Little Ann get into a fight with the Pritchard’s dog. Ann quickly has the hound’s throat in her jaws while Dan slashes at his belly. Rubin picks up Billy’s ax and runs to save his dog, but before he can get there he trips and falls over a stick, the ax blade buries into his stomach and Rubin bleeds to death.
I chose to skip this gruesome scene and illustrate the passage right after where Billy visits Rubin’s grave to pay his respects. His trip to the Pritchard graveyard is cut short when Old Dan makes noise knocking a rock loose and Rubin’s mom comes out to investigate. These two powerful scenes show another side of the Pritchard family and also foreshadow future events in the story.
