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Ray Brower’s Body
Ray Brower’s body represents the inevitability of death and the fragility of life. Even though they know Ray Brower is dead, Gordie and his friends initially treat their journey to find his body as a kind of reconnaissance mission, or heroic retrieval. They are able to behave like this in part because they see Ray Brower as someone completely separate from them, whose unfortunate fate has nothing to do with their own. However, upon seeing the body, Gordie realizes that Ray Brower was a kid very much like him. When he lists all the things that Ray Brower will never get to do, the vivid, mundane nature of the list suggests that these are all things Gordie himself has experienced. He realizes in that moment that he or any of his friends could have been Ray Brower. Ray Brower’s body thus signifies that death can come for anyone suddenly and swiftly. The descriptions of insects and decomposition emphasize the finality of death by demonstrating that in a material way this body has ceased to be Ray Brower.
The Deer
The deer Gordie sees during his night watch represents his emotional side that he must repress in the name of masculinity. The deer is soft and easily frightened, ideas associated with effeminacy. Gordie finds himself unable to tell his friends about the deer, just as he avoids having a painful conversation with Chris after the hailstorm showdown. In both cases, Gordie says he avoids these topics because he claims words would wound, diminish, or otherwise spoil the moment. This parallel suggests that his silence both about the deer and Chris’s breakdown is because of their vulnerability, something men are not allowed to express. Gordie mentions wanting to turn to his memory of the deer when he and his friends feel daunted by how much farther they must walk. At that moment, the deer becomes “no better than a stuffed trophy over the mantle in some guy’s hunting lodge.” Because Gordie needs to summon up toughness and masculinity to fortify himself for the journey, the image becomes distorted into something more manly, but less alive and true to how he’s actually feeling.
The Train Tracks
The train tracks that run through Castle Rock represent the trajectory of a life. The train tracks are a linear road, marking the path of this coming of age journey the boys take together. Gordie describes them as being like the aisle providing the necessary ceremony for an important life event. Notably, train tracks are a fixed path that a train cannot deviate from, a route that the train will repeat regularly. This set and repetitive trajectory mirrors the way that Castle Rock has a normal pattern of life for boys like Gordie and his friends that is nearly impossible to escape. We see this predictable lifepath with Ace Merrill, who drops out of school, gets a job at the mill, and spends his nights drinking at the bar, just as his father did. By following the train tracks to find Ray Brower, Gordie realizes not only that life is fleeting and precious, but that he does not want to be on the Castle Rock track that results in a dead-end life.
