In the novel, Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls is a story of Billy, a farm boy in Oklahoma, and his two hunting dogs Old Dan, and Little Ann. The overall genre of the novel is Autobiographical Fiction as it depicts the life of Billy throughout his numerous adventures in the first person point of view, however still determined to be none realistic or based on true story events. The theme of the story can be visualized as either perseverance and nature. These can be seen as the dogs hunt other creatures, facing many challenges, as well as at the end of the novel, nature turns against them leading to the sudden, and hostile death of the two dogs. To summarize the foremost important parts of the novel, Billy was a young, coming of age boy living on his father's farm in Oklahoma. Billy’s dream was always to have a dog, however the presence of their poverty was foreseen as his father could not comply with enough money to afford a dog. Billy, determined to make his dream come to life, worked day and night, selling fruit, and helping with whatever impractical tasks that could assist his cause, eventually obtaining enough money to buy a dog. Billy had bought the two dogs, and quickly began training and coon hunting with the dogs, learning through success, and countless mistakes to give himself and the dogs not only an unbreakable bond, but the willingness to complete any given task. As the plot develops an accident occurs during their daily routines causing one of the dogs to get badly injured while defending Billy from a mountain lion. The next day this dog dies, leaving Billy and its sibling heartbroken, leaving the second dog to lose her will to live, dying just a few days after. This event always depicts the message of faith, as the dogs simply could not live without each other, describing how their life was not complete. Building off this, the novel was entertaining, making it a hard to put down book, yet receiving a ⅘ rating due to its lack of collectiveness throughout the plot, and deep senses of foreshadowing which can be immensely powerful to a story, however it revealed the plot to being a composingly predictable story. The overall mood of the novel that Wilson Rawls displays is how far love can go in a hostile environment, here this being shown as the death of the dogs alludes to the indian tale of the red fern growing amongst the graves of the dogs, relaying only the presence of an angel, could cause this outspoken occurrence. All in all, this book was a pleasure to read for those who wish for lighter, more loving stories, those of which do not have the best outcomes, but always a happy ending.
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