41 pages • 1 hour read
Robert CormierTunes for Bears to Dance To
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Inadequacy of Language
Language is simply inadequate to capture the depth of the emotions the characters experience in the novella. This theme is established before the novella even begins, in its first epigraph: “Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.” The quote, which comes from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, expresses the vast distance between what people say—compared by Flaubert to a discordant tune accompanying lumbering movements—and what they feel. The novel bears out this distance, as the characters repeatedly fail to find the words to articulate their deepest griefs and rare joys.
Grief so engulfs two characters, Henry’s father and Doris Hairston, that they can barely talk. The father is “swallowed up in his sorrow” (3)—the description itself evokes choking—and speaks so infrequently that Henry considers his every word to be important. An abused girl, Doris says her first word to Henry so softly and quickly that Henry at first doubts his ears. Though not typically reduced to silence, Henry and Mr. Levine also struggle to express their emotions in words. As Mr. Levine gazes silently at the miniature replica of his lost home that he has carved out of wood, Henry sits watching him, “silent.” When Mr. Hairston orders Henry to destroy the village, the boy cannot speak and later can’t find the words to tell his mother about his employer’s terrible suggestion. Language fails in these instances for a variety of reasons. Silence can be a form of self-protection (as with Doris), but it can also express the shock of confronting profound suffering. In failing to capture profound trauma, Robert Cormier suggests, words may also risk trivializing it.
The novel extends that risk of trivialization to positive experiences as well. There are few joyful moments in the story, but when the characters do experience great happiness, they are without words. As Henry’s mother pictures the headstone for Eddie’s grave that Henry has described, her laughter “bubble[s] merrily in the air” and Henry joins in (30). When Henry sees the sketch of the headstone that Mr. Hairston shows to him, he has no words to “describe a thing of such beauty” (52). Finally, as Henry greets Mr. Levine after a long absence, his answering response is a radiant smile, the single word “Wait,” and a gift. The fact that words fail the characters in both good times and bad shows the inadequacy of human language amid the extremes of human emotion.
The Everyday Nature of Evil
The novella’s second epigraph, “Deliver us from evil”—the last words of the Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer—establishes the persistent presence of evil in the world. All the grief the characters experience is the result of evil done to innocent people. Nevertheless, the novel suggests that goodness is a choice one can always make in the face of evil.
Henry’s family is in mourning because the older son, Eddie, was struck dead by a car that “sped away and was never seen again” (8). Cormier’s language emphasizes the callousness of this hit-and-run driver, who offers the novel’s first taste of evil: Eddie’s neck is broken “like a chicken bone” and he dies sprawled in a gutter (7). The simile and the treatment of his body suggest that the driver who killed Eddie failed even to recognize him as a human being. Henry is then exposed to Mr. Hairston’s vicious, racist language, and he witnesses the bruise on the face of Mr. Hairston’s daughter, Doris. Soon after, George tells Henry, “There is so much evil in the world” (36), explaining that Mr. Levine lost his home and his entire family in the Holocaust.
At first glance, the casual callousness of the driver seems unrelated to the more premeditated acts of Mr. Hairston or the Nazis. What unites them is that the people who perpetrate them do not seem outwardly monstrous; they are simply “normal” people. This suggests that everyone has the capacity for evil, whether spurred by a desire for power, contempt for others, or simple self-preservation. It is the last of these that Mr. Hairston plays on when he bribes Henry to destroy Mr. Levine’s village. Henry is not an immoral person, but concern for himself and his family makes him feel as though he has no choice but to comply with Mr. Hairston’s wishes.
Though Henry does not intentionally destroy Mr. Levine’s village, the experience nevertheless constitutes a fall from moral purity. In the worst betrayal of the story, Mr. Hairston reveals that his intent was simply to corrupt Henry, who thinks, “He didn’t want me to be good anymore” (94). The cost of complicity with evil for Henry is his loss of childish innocence. However, this is not the same thing as being corrupt. Rather, in recognizing and confronting evil, one can always choose goodness. This is what Mr. Levine’s toy village symbolizes; as George explains, it shows how “good can overcome evil” (64).
Goodness does win out in the story. Henry’s father recovers somewhat from his depression, Mr. Levine continues working on his village, and Henry redeems himself by promising to stay connected to Doris after his family moves away. At the story’s end, Henry prays for forgiveness for Mr. Hairston. With this ending, the story shows that goodness doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it is the best response and choice one can make in the presence of evil.
The Inescapability of the Past
The characters in Tunes for Bears to Dance To deal with their past suffering in different ways, and Cormier deliberately contrasts their experiences to show that it is best to both remember the past and confront it. The Cassavant family tries to run away from their grief over Eddie’s death by moving, but as Cormier shows, they are unsuccessful because they have not forgotten (and should not forget) Eddie. Mr. Levine, by contrast, remembers the best parts of the past and uses these to cope with his sadness. Finally, Mr. Hairston, the story’s antagonist, remains trapped in the past and so cannot grow as a character.
Nearly the first thing the author reveals about Eddie is that although he has been dead for nearly a year, he remains “a presence” in the lives of the Cassavants. While they have moved from Monument to Wickburg, they haven’t left Eddie behind. Instead, Henry’s brother’s death has merely “obliterated all the good times” they had in Frenchtown (27). It isn’t until the family realizes that it was wrong to try to forget Eddie that they can move past their grief and return to Frenchtown.
Mr. Levine is still struggling to survive in America; that he tips his hat to imaginary concentration camp guards and nearly faints at the sight of blood reveals how much the past continues to haunt him. Nevertheless, as he carves his little village, which represents the best memories of his past, he can smile and bond with Henry. George, the director of the craft center, calls the village Mr. Levine’s “real cure,” as it brings everyone he has lost to life again. Thus, although Mr. Levine is scarred by the past, he can also find strength in it. This is the same conclusion the Cassavants eventually reach.
Mr. Hairston, in contrast, can never get over the days of wartime rationing, when he’d make people wait in line for food for no reason. He loved being able to control them and continues to lord his power over his family. Readers can hope that Doris will be able to stand up to her father, perhaps with Henry’s help. However, Mr. Hairston seems unlikely to change, because his memories only fuel his false beliefs.
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