The Body

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.”

At the beginning of the story, an adult Gordie reflects on the difficulty of expressing critical truths with words alone. Language is a human construction that is lacking when used to describe feelings like love or to ask questions about existential fears. Words are smaller than the messages they convey. 

“That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

Gordie often hesitates to tell or show people his stories. Even when they’re good, he knows that he can’t control how people will react or how they might interpret his work. When he tells a story to someone who doesn’t understand why it matters so much to him, he regrets telling it at all. Chris encourages him to write everything down because he knows how important it is for Gordie to share his work. 

“You guys want to go see a dead body?” 

Vern casually proposes the adventure that becomes the end of the boys’ childhood. A morbid adventure, it reveals the boys’ immaturity and naiveté because rather than reporting the corpse’s location to the police, they go to see it. They think only in terms of excitement—and the fame that finding the body might bring them.