41 pages • 1 hour read
Tunes for Bears to Dance To
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Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Each Sunday, Henry and his mother take the bus to their old town, Monument, to visit Eddie’s grave. They never return to their old neighborhood, which Henry’s mother claims holds too many memories. Eddie reflects on the word both of them avoid—“sad.” It’s as if Eddie’s death has wiped out anything good that happened in Monument.
Henry wonders why they bother coming to the cemetery, especially since there is no headstone for Eddie’s grave. His mother promises they will have one when Henry’s father is working again; she also hopes he’ll win at his card games, making a “killing.” Henry thinks Eddie’s gravestone should include a bat and a ball, causing his mother to laugh and agree. After all, Henry reasons, their priest allows markers in the shape of lambs and teddy bears in the children’s section of the graveyard. He learns from his mother that his father is seeing a doctor for his depression and wonders why this was kept a secret from him. He has his own secrets, including how much he misses his friends Leo and Nicky and his bad dreams about an atomic bomb.
Chapter 6 Summary
At work the next day, Henry asks Mr. Hairston what he knows about monuments for a cemetery. After teasing Henry, Mr. Hairston suggests a place that makes such monuments. To Henry’s astonishment, he offers to speak to the owner. Henry murmurs his thanks, having to clear his throat to say the words.
Chapter 7 Summary
The next time Henry visits the craft center, Mr. Levine is at work on a new carved figure. In Yiddish, Mr. Levine asks George if Henry would like to learn wood carving. Henry, who has no visible talent, thinks he won’t be good at it, but George urges him to try. However, as Mr. Levine guides Henry, the knife slips and Henry cuts his finger. Mr. Levine nearly faints at the sight of Henry’s blood and pain.
George says the reason for the elderly man’s distress is that “[t]here is so much evil in the world” (36). He explains that Mr. Levine’s village was turned into a concentration camp by Nazis and its villagers killed, sent to concentration camps, or forced to work. Mr. Levine’s wife and two daughters were sent to Auschwitz, where they died; he and his son were forced to build gas chambers, and his son soon died as well. Mr. Levine alone survived, though he was just “skin and bones” (38). His mental health was very poor, so he must live in the institution while he adjusts. He tips his hat at imaginary prison guards.
Henry connects the story to the newspaper headlines and newsreels at the movies about Hitler’s hatred of Jews. For the first time, the events of the Holocaust seem real to him. George tells him that bringing the village to life is Mr. Levine’s real cure. He is even reconstructing the village bully whom “everybody hated.” He likes to gaze at the village and imagine his life there. The trio sits, looking at the village, until the center closes.
Chapter 8 Summary
Jackie Antonelli has been sending dark looks in Henry’s direction ever since Mr. Hairston refused to hire him. He teases Henry by saying his father belongs in the mental institution, and Henry tries to strangle Jackie in a sudden rage. A uniformed war veteran pulls the boys apart. Henry tells the man his father is “sad but not crazy” (42). At home, Henry’s father tells Henry he is sorry without saying what he is sorry for, and Henry tells him not to apologize. His mother comes home, angry because customers at the diner left without paying and her manager took the money out of her pay. Henry leaves the tenement to escape the sadness inside.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Although the year in which the novella is set is not explicit, the mention of newsreels running with movies, a practice that ended in 1967, indicates that the story is set no later than that time. Henry’s fears about an atomic bomb point specifically to the early 1960s, when American schoolchildren routinely practiced the “duck and cover” shelter method in the event of nuclear war. The novella therefore takes place less than 20 years after the end of World War II, meaning the Holocaust and its horrors are still fresh in the characters’ memories. Henry himself is still an innocent child at this point, but the world’s evil is becoming real for him as he learns about Mr. Levine’s enormous suffering during the Holocaust.
Mr. Levine’s reconstructed village is in part a symbol of that suffering, developing the theme of The Everyday Nature of Evil. After all, its real-world counterpart no longer exists because of the war and accompanying genocide. The role Mr. Levine unwillingly played in destroying his town also subtly foreshadows Henry’s later actions, thus linking the horrors of Mr. Levine’s past to the evil that Mr. Hairston represents. At the same time, the village is a symbol of hope that illustrates how various characters confront The Inescapability of the Past. Cormier contrasts Mr. Levine’s devotion to the toy village with the Cassavant family’s inability to confront their grief over Eddie’s death. The elderly man has suffered more loss and hardship than they have, yet reconstructing his vanished past is his greatest joy. By contrast, the family has tried to forget their past, and so they are deeply unhappy.
Henry’s rage when his neighbor, Jackie, declares that his father is “crazy” prompts him to respond, “He’s sad but not crazy” (42). The words invite another comparison between Mr. Levine and the Cassavant family—specifically, Henry’s father. Both are “sad but not crazy,” but again, Mr. Levine has found a constructive way to deal with his grief, while Henry’s father is paralyzed by his. Of course, Henry’s father is not responsible for the depth of his depression, but his pursuit of treatment implies that he does feel a responsibility to seek healing, if only because his family depends on him.
Complicating characters’ efforts to process their grief is The Inadequacy of Language to express deep emotions. Henry thinks of an “unspoken word” (sad) that describes the family’s experience and reflects on all the secrets he feels unable to tell his mother about. His response to Jackie’s taunts is to fly at the boy in a wordless rage.
Nevertheless, language can be a powerful tool. Cormier once said that he was terrible at writing concrete descriptions, especially of buildings and scenes, so he used simile and metaphor in their place. His use of these devices, and imagery more broadly, in Chapters 5-8 is especially noteworthy. Graves in the children’s section of the graveyard look like “tiny baby’s teeth” (30), inviting readers to visualize the memorialized children. In discussing a possible marker for Eddie’s grave, Mr. Hairston gives a “squeal of a laugh” (33), emphasizing his animal-like qualities. Mr. Levine’s touch as he guides Henry to try woodcarving is “as light as a snowflake” (36). These sensory images evoking sight, sound, and touch allow readers to experience the scenes in which they occur. While the novel suggests that words simply fail to capture certain experiences, Cormier’s stylistic choices imply that figurative language can sometimes convey what more literal expression cannot.
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By Robert Cormier
