payment page
Toughness and Masculinity
“The Body” is a coming-of-age story, and for Gordie, growing up and leaving childhood behind involves defining himself as a man. Life in Castle Rock only allows for a narrow expression of masculinity, involving stoicism, bravery, and strength. In their conversations and interactions, Gordie and his friends desperately fear being considered a “pussy,” a word with effeminate connotations, and therefore try to avoid showing any weakness. For example, Teddy, who has multiple disabilities, recklessly refuses to acknowledge any of his limits, as if to prove that he is as strong as the other boys. When Gordie and Chris refuse to tell authorities who beat them up, their peers view them as having “comported [themselves] like men.” However, established toughness gives characters a little more leeway to express their true feelings. Because everyone already acknowledges that Chris is tough and strong, he is able to break up fights instead of starting them, or even acknowledge that the woods can be frightening at night without anyone questioning his masculinity.
Embracing this type of masculinity is not without cost. Because of the emphasis on toughness and physical strength, Chris deals with backlash from friends and family for pursuing more advanced classes in school. They consider intellectual pursuits to be feminine behavior. Additionally, the pursuit of masculinity limits Gordie’s writing. When Richie first finds Gordie’s stories, he judges them as acceptable to show to their friends because they deal with violence and gross humor instead of emotional topics or poetry. In “Stud City,” Gordie only hints at Chico’s anguish instead of writing those emotions nakedly on the page. Gordie’s avoidance of emotions in his writing carries over into his relationships with his friends. He is unable to have difficult or emotional conversations because he doesn’t want to appear weak or effeminate. Even as an adult, he cannot talk about Chris’s death with his wife because he doesn’t want to cry in front of her. For Gordie and his friends, growing up involves self-imposing limits on their emotions and intimacies.
Unhealthy Relationships
Over the course of “The Body,” Gordie comes to realize that close friendships can sometimes hold a person back from achieving their goals. In a rare moment of concern, Gordie’s father expresses doubts about Gordie’s friends because they aren’t high achievers. He recognizes that Gordie’s time with these friends means that he, too, will have no incentive to achieve. Chris brings up this issue explicitly after Teddy and Vern’s disappointing reaction to “Lard Ass Hogan.” He begs Gordie not to squander his gift for writing out of loyalty for Teddy and Vern. Chris’s intervention causes a shift in how Gordie views Teddy and Vern. He dreams of them as corpses dragging Chris down to the depths of a swimming hole. Their transformation into corpses is not merely him callously dismissing them as dead weight. Instead, this image recognizes that they intend to follow a dead-end path. They will drop out of school and become juvenile delinquents like Ace Merrill’s gang. The only way for Gordie to leave Castle Rock is to stay in school, resisting this dead-end path and anyone who encourages him to stay on it.
This theme also echoes in the tragic loyalty of Gordie’s friends toward family members who abuse them. Teddy idolizes the very father who burned his ears and disabled him. When Milo Pressman insults Teddy’s father, Teddy is incensed, escalating an already tense situation. Teddy’s hero worship for his father also leads him to put all his hopes on a military career, an impossible goal that will only lead to disappointment and pain. After Eyeball Chambers beats Chris up to the point of sending him to the emergency room, Chris takes steps to avoid Eyeball getting arrested. His loyalty to his family means that he protects them instead of himself. Gordie processes his feelings about these misplaced loyalties in “Stud City” by exploring Sam’s relationship with Virginia. Virginia manipulates Sam, using him as a weapon against Chico. Sam’s attraction to and love for Virginia means he’s unable to see that their relationship is hurting him, keeping him from being the father he should be. In all these cases, love or loyalty keeps these characters from acknowledging the true harm in these relationships, perpetuating a toxic cycle.
Mortality and Lost Potential
Throughout “The Body,” Gordie must come to terms with the fact that death is inevitable, random, and unfair. At the beginning of the story, he has recently lost his older brother, Dennis, who by all accounts was kind, smart, and hardworking. Even though everyone adores Dennis and believes in his potential, he still dies in a car crash that wasn’t his fault. In the aftermath of Dennis’s death, Gordie is plagued by the mental image of Dennis’s corpse saying that Gordie should have died in his stead. Gordie’s fears suggest a belief that life is something to be earned, that Dennis’s death is tragic because he was a great person. However, upon seeing Ray Brower’s body, Gordie is immediately struck by all the parts of childhood and adolescence that Ray Brower will never get to experience. His list involves ordinary events, such as eating too much Halloween candy. The mundane nature of this list demonstrates how Ray Brower’s death is sad because of Ray Brower’s youth, not because he was special. Ray Brower does not have to be an exceptional kid for his death to be tragic.
The journey to find Ray Brower’s body also highlights the random nature of death. Death can strike as suddenly and surprisingly as it did to Dennis. When braving the trestle bridge, the boys have no way of guessing if or when the train will pass, nearly causing their deaths. In discussing Teddy’s reckless behavior, Chris reflects on how only sheer luck allows him to catch Teddy’s hair when he climbs dead tree branches. Gordie’s own last name, Lachance, also reflects this idea that much of what happens in life is up to chance. As an adult, Gordie ponders the significance of being the only member of the gang who was spared a “goocher” during the coin flip. Just as the outcome of the coin flip is random, so is who lives and dies. Although Teddy’s death comes as no surprise to anyone, Chris, having managed to get into college, unfortunately crosses the wrong people. “The Body” portrays life as fragile and therefore precious. Indeed, after seeing Ray Brower’s dead body, Gordie approaches his life with more purpose, working to escape Castle Rock.
