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Chris was the biggest, toughest guy in our gang, and he could always get away with saying things like that. Teddy, on the other hand, would have gotten his ass ragged off if he even hinted he was afraid of the dark.
Gordie, as narrator, explains Chris in this way after Chris acknowledges that sleeping in the woods at night is scary. As pre-teen boys, Gordie and his friends attempt to establish their masculinity by putting on brave, stoic fronts. However, because Chris’s toughness is never in question, he’s able to express some weaknesses, such as fear, without calling his masculinity into question. It’s clear that all four boys are afraid of the woods, but Chris is the only one able to say it aloud, giving the others permission to feel their fear, if not express it.
Nobody knew exactly what had happened, but everybody understood that we’d had a pretty serious run-in with the big kids and comported ourselves like men.
This quotation describes the reaction of Gordie and Chris’s classmates after they are severely beaten by Ace Merrill and Eyeball Chambers. The other kids consider Gordie and Chris’s refusal to turn to the adults for help as being worthy of respect, and their stoicism and ability to take pain as impressively masculine. Notably, Gordie and Chris receive this recognition after the quest for Ray Brower’s body, demonstrating how the journey has been a rite of passage into not just adulthood, but manhood.
I drove out of town, parked, and cried for him. Cried for damn near half an hour, I guess. I couldn’t have done that in front of my wife, much as I love her.
In this quotation, Gordie describes his reaction to hearing about Chris’s death. Even as an adult man, Gordie cannot allow himself the vulnerability of crying in front of his wife because he’s worried it will make him effeminate. Ironically, at other times in the story, the boys cry in front of each other in moments of weakness. However, Gordie cannot cry in front of his wife, implicitly because he believes she needs him to live up to a tough image of masculinity. Gordie’s view of masculinity denies himself the possibility of shared vulnerability in his marriage.
