Tunes for Bears to Dance To

“They had not left Eddie behind in Frenchtown, after all.”

The Cassavant family has not been able to leave the memory of Eddie behind despite their move to a new town. They are still steeped in grief because they haven’t been able to confront and acknowledge Eddie’s death; his photos are not on display and his trophies are still packed. They have not yet come to terms with The Inescapability of the Past.

“His smile was not really a smile—just as his laughing was not really laughing.”

Mr. Hairston, the personification of evil in the story, is a constant reminder of the theme The Everyday Nature of Evil. He cannot even pretend to care about other people. The grocer’s smile is false, and when he does speak tenderly to Henry, he is at his most manipulative.

“Henry was amazed at how […] insulting he was when they were gone.”

In addition to being a manipulative hypocrite, Mr. Hairston is a racist. He uses offensive words to criticize people’s religion, ethnicity, and appearance. Henry tries to distance himself from his employer for this reason, which undoubtedly contributes to Mr. Hairston’s decision to corrupt the boy by entangling him in a racist scheme.

“I was like a dictator, the way they treated me. I was a dictator. Because I had control over them.”

Mr. Hairston’s fondly recalls the rationing of World War II, when he could force his customers to stand in line for goods that were already in the store. Like his reference to himself as a “dictator,” his nostalgia for WWII invites a comparison to Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany whose ambition to conquer new territories went hand in hand with his hatred of Jews and desire to eradicate them. Mr. Hairston similarly needs to dominate the will of others, including his daughter and his wife. His corruption of Henry will come in the form of forcing him to be complicit in an antisemitic act, as the word choice in this passage implicitly foreshadows.

“He said his prayers every night as the nuns at St. Jude’s Parochial School back in Frenchtown had taught all the students to do.”

Henry is a deeply religious boy who prays often for the people in his life. He especially wants to make sure that his brother Eddie is in heaven, not the “waiting place” called purgatory. Henry’s preoccupation with religion and prayer is one of the reasons why Mr. Hairston targets him for his corrupt scheme.

“‘And deliver us from evil,’ he murmured. ‘Amen.’”

These are the last words of the Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer, which originated in the Bible’s New Testament and is said in every Catholic Mass. “Deliver us from evil” is also one of the novella’s epigraphs. Cormier uses the phrase in conjunction with the theme of the constant presence of evil. In Chapter 3, Henry merely recites a prayer from memory. On the last page of the novella, he will consciously associate the word “evil” with Mr. Hairston.

“Tears blurring his own eyes, […] Henry heard himself saying, ‘I’ve been watching you every day.’”

Tears are a symbol of Henry’s innocence. His tears can build bridges with people he doesn’t know, including George and Mr. Levine, quickly showing them that he means no harm. His tears also reveal The Inadequacy of Language to convey one’s deepest feelings; at other times, Henry cries because words have failed him.

“Henry knew the unspoken word—sad. Too many sad memories.”

The Cassavant family is unable to even speak about Eddie’s death. They have not put up photos of him in the new apartment and haven’t unpacked his baseball trophies. Nor can they talk about the good times they had in their old neighborhood, Frenchtown. Cormier contrasts their inability to acknowledge the past with the joy Mr. Levine finds in recreating his lost village.

“There is so much evil in the world, Henry.”

George Graham speaks these words to Henry after Mr. Levine nearly faints at the sight of Henry bleeding from a cut finger. It is his way of explaining Mr. Levine’s Holocaust experience; Mr. Levine lost his entire family and was forced to work building gas chambers for a concentration camp. The explanation personalizes the Holocaust for Henry. Graham’s use of the word “evil” also explicitly ties Mr. Levine’s experiences to one of the novel’s major themes.

“Even the village bully everyone hated, the fat one with the red jacket.”

Mr. Levine recreates his lost village down to the smallest detail, including the village bully. He has encountered evil firsthand and has chosen survival and goodness as a response. Through Mr. Levine’s example, Henry will aspire to make the same choices after he is manipulated by the evil Mr. Hairston.

“He’s sad but not crazy.”

Henry describes both his father and Mr. Levine as “not crazy.” The repetition invites a comparison between these two important men in Henry’s life. His father is paralyzed with depression over the death of his older son and can barely talk to Henry. Mr. Levine, who lost not only a son but his entire family in the Holocaust, devotes himself to woodcarving and welcomes Henry into his life.

“Henry was uneasy as he resumed his work, as if somehow he had betrayed the old man.”

This sentence foreshadows Henry’s impending destruction of Mr. Levine’s miniature village. Mr. Hairston is in the midst of setting Henry up for moral corruption, so he shows interest in Mr. Levine’s toy village in order to gain Henry’s trust. Henry is heartened by his employer’s interest and describes the village with enthusiasm, but he intuitively understands that something isn’t right.

“The stairs creaked as she climbed them, like the sound of her wounded bones.”

Cormier mentions bones at several points in the story. Eddie dies with his “neck broken like a chicken bone” (7). When Mr. Levine’s concentration camp is liberated he is “only skin and bones” (38). Earlier in Chapter 10, Doris is walking “as if her bones would come apart” (48), and here her bones are “wounded.” All these reminders of death are associated with acts of evil: a hit-and-run accident, Holocaust atrocities, and child abuse.

“He had no words to describe a thing of such beauty.”

Words often fail the story’s characters, regardless of whether they are feeling joy or sorrow. Cormier has established the inadequacy of language with the first epigraph, from which the novella takes its title. He makes the point that while humans may aspire to high goals, language can never truly express them and can even make a mockery of them.

“‘This village,’ the giant said, ‘will be a reminder to everybody about what happened during the war. But also about survival. And how good can overcome evil.’”

The relatively minor character George Graham summarizes the novella’s major thematic point: Evil is present in the world, but goodness is a choice one can make in the face of it. The toy village is a symbol supporting this theme, as Mr. Levine has chosen to respond to his past suffering by recreating his lost village. Moreover, through his toy village, he befriends Henry at a time when the child is isolated and lost. As this quote suggests, choosing goodness is also part of what allows Mr. Levine to be a survivor—of the Holocaust, Mr. Hairston’s racism, and Henry’s accidental destruction of part of the village.

“I want you to take the hammer and smash the old man’s village. Smash it, break it.”

With these words, Mr. Hairston reveals his evil plan for Henry. Cormier uses the blunt words “smash” and “break” to shock the reader as much as Henry is shocked and to ensure that the reader, like Henry, understands the symbolic importance of destroying something that means so much to Mr. Levine. Ironically, Mr. Hairston goes on to say that destroying the village will give Mr. Levine the “pleasure” of rebuilding it, which is more or less what happens.

“Henry listened, dumbfounded, to the grocer’s horrible words, made all the more horrible by his tender, gentle voice.”

It is not just words that fail the characters; the way in which they speak can also fall short of conveying their true intent. Mr. Hairston is at his most manipulative here as he tells Henry all the bad things that will befall him if he fails to destroy the toy village.

“Think of all the good things and then the bad things.”

Cormier repeats the words “good” and “bad” throughout the novella to highlight the related theme and to frame the choice Henry must make in the starkest of terms while heightening tension. The words reappear as Henry hides in the craft center’s warehouse, wondering if it’s such a “bad thing” to smash the toy village given all the “good things” that would happen if he did. Cormier shows the enormous pressure Henry is feeling as he starts to think like Mr. Hairston.

“The figure was Mr. Levine, his cap flying from his head, running frantically, looking up in horror as Henry raised the hammer.”

The dream creates suspense about whether Henry will destroy the toy village. It also indicates that Henry knows the village doesn’t just represent Mr. Levine’s past; in destroying it, he may also destroy his fragile, elderly friend. At the same time, he is so preoccupied with Mr. Hairston’s demand that it haunts his nightmares.

“Can you follow orders? Whether you like them or not?”

These questions, which Mr. Hairston asked Henry when he interviewed the boy, take on new meaning as Henry contemplates his employer’s request. They also emphasize the novella’s association between the Nazis and Mr. Hairston, as many participants in the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes would later claim they were “just following orders” from their superiors.

“I didn’t want to do it. But he had done it, after all.”

Moral ambiguity surrounds Henry’s destructive act. While fright at seeing the rat caused Henry to drop the mallet, he did go so far as to swing the weapon. Henry now faces the most important choice of all in the context of the story: how to respond to the bad thing he has done.

“You see, Henry, you are like the rest of us, after all. Not so innocent.”

Mr. Hairston speaks the truth with these words, although not in the way he intends. He means to criticize Henry by telling the boy that he is flawed and motivated by self-interest. In the context of the novella broadly, however, the words suggest that Henry, like most people, is inevitably flawed but strives to be good.

“Henry avoided the word he wanted to use. How could he tell the girl that her father was evil?”

Henry’s empathy for vulnerable people like Doris and Mr. Levine highlights his basic morality throughout his ordeal. Although Henry now knows Mr. Hairston is evil, he can’t bear to say this to Doris, who believes her father loves her. His kindness signals the path that he is going to choose.