Because of Winn-Dixie — Chapter 14

About This Passage

This passage is one of the most quietly devastating pieces of writing in the book, and it deserves close study because it accomplishes a major emotional movement entirely through what it does not say. The first sentence establishes the practice: Opal holds Winn-Dixie during thunderstorms. The second sentence elaborates the practice through polysyndeton ('held on to him and comforted him and whispered to him and rocked him'), creating a slow, devotional rhythm that imitates the patient care it describes. The third sentence is the small reveal: there is another reason too. The fourth sentence delivers the reason in the most withholding form possible: 'so he wouldn't run away.' DiCamillo never states what the unspoken connection is. The reader has to supply it from memory of the first thirteen chapters — the absent mother who left when Opal was three. The withholding is the point. By refusing to spell out the connection, DiCamillo forces the reader to make it themselves, and the made connection is more affecting than a stated one would be. The phrase 'run away' is also doing work: it is the same phrase the book has used about the mother's leaving, and the repetition is the only signal the reader needs. Notice also the four verbs in the second sentence — 'held,' 'comforted,' 'whispered,' 'rocked' — each one a separate small action of care. The polysyndeton turns the list into a litany, and the litany rhythm tells us that Opal has done these things many times. The repetition is the texture of devotion. Copying this passage teaches a writer how to deliver an emotional revelation through withholding rather than statement, and how to use rhythm to render the slow patience of care.

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter in no more than four sentences. Then identify the central question the chapter is inquiring into beneath its surface plot, and defend your reading.

Discussion Questions

1. DiCamillo uses polysyndeton in the sentence 'I held on to him and comforted him and whispered to him and rocked him.' Analyze the choice. What is the writer trying to make the reader feel through the repeated 'and,' and how does the rhythm relate to the emotional content of the act being described?
2. Miss Franny's fits are never given a medical name. DiCamillo could have specified epilepsy, mini-strokes, or some other condition. The refusal to medicalize is a craft commitment with implications for how the chapter wants us to think about illness. Is DiCamillo claiming that medical labels reduce people, or is she making the more modest claim that for the purposes of this chapter, the diagnosis is not what matters?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide