Pax

“The kit had seen a bird and had strained against the leash, trembling as though electrified. And Peter had seen the bird through Pax’s eyes—the miraculous lightning flight, the impossible freedom and speed.”

This is one of the first examples we see of Pax and Peter merging as though they share one consciousness, one mind, and one soul. Pax is the one having the experience in real life, but Peter is experiencing the bird as if he was Pax. This quote indicates the depth of their bond, but also the way their relationship works in this story.

“Pax was startled by the image she communicated to her brother: a cold, howling wind; a mated pair of foxes, struggling with something that reminded Peter of his pen—steel, but with jaws and clamps instead of bars. The steel jaws and the snowy ground were smeared with blood.”

Although, Bristle intends to communicate this memory to Runt, Pax is also able to pick up on the details. Bristle doesn’t use words: this is a psychic transmission of trauma and lived experience. Here, Pax is merging with Bristle’s memory and seeing it through her eyes, but also feeling it as if he were her. He is feeling the howling wind and the clamps, personified as ‘jaws’ which mean death. Bristle views this steel world of human invention in a very primal way: one animal consuming another. This is a device created by humans to ensnare animals and kill them, adding to Bristle’s conviction and belief that human beings aren’t trustworthy. This trauma has become part of who she is and how she sees the world.

“He ate as slowly as he could, watching the sun over the orchard, surprised to find that he could actually mark its sinking movement. How had he lived twelve years and never known about sunsets?”

This passage is significant because it shows Peter leaving his everyday way of thinking behind and becoming truly present. This is a moment where his awareness shifts, and he becomes one with everything around him, finally able to experience the fullness of life. The fact that he never noticed sunsets before this journey shows him coming into greater presence and awareness, indicating personal growth.

“Before she bounded off, the doe sent another look straight at Peter, one that seemed to say, You humans, you ruin everything.”

This passage continues to bring home the theme of human beings destroying the natural world and posing danger to animals who inhabit the wild. It’s also significant because it shows that Peter’s connection to animals goes beyond his relationship with Pax. He has developed enough empathy to feel what the deer feels. This quote furthers the theme of oneness and how we’re all connected to each other through the great web of life.

Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see how is only a broken bone lucky.”

This encounter with Vola shows Peter that everything is relative. For a moment, he believes his quest impossible to fulfil because of his broken leg. In the grand scheme of things, what seems like a huge loss to Peter, would be an answered prayer for Vola. This moment is humbling, because it speaks to the depth of Vola’s loss when she indicates to Peter that she has no leg. This is one of the many times throughout the book that Pennypacker illustrates the atrocities of war.

“And you’re going to do this no matter who tries to stop you? Because it’s the right thing for you, at your core?”

There’s a difference between doing what’s right because someone tells you to, versus doing it regardless of what anyone says because it resonates with your heart and your core truth. This passage asks the reader how to decide when to act and how to decide what’s right.

“The truth, that’s the rule here. Agreed?”

After years of recovering from wartime injuries to her body and psyche, Vola has made a point to only tell the truth, making this another aspect of Vola’s freedom. This line is also significant because Bristle and Gray both describe the phenomenon of humans’ “false acting,” or lying to Pax. Vola chooses of her own free will to tell the truth at all times, setting her apart from other humans in the story.

“Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace.”

This line is particularly important because Vola has been searching for peace all these years, and Peter is looking for Pax, whose name we find out means Peace. We are all looking for peace, especially in the aftermath of war or life’s cruelties. Vola believes that being in the right place and living your true purpose is the ultimate recipe for inner peace.

“You staying out here on the porch. What do you think that makes you? Wild or tame?”

This passage highlights the idea of humans’ inherent connection to nature and the wild, no matter how civilized or “tame” we pretend to be. Over the course of this story, Peter has to learn to balance the “tame” and “wild” aspects of his personality, realizing he isn’t one or the other, but he must embrace both.

“I knew it wasn’t being in the war exactly. It was that in the war, I had forgotten everything that was true about myself.”

Sometimes in a war it’s possible to lose one’s identity because the cause becomes more important than the individual. One can forget his personal truth and who he is on a core, fundamental level. It’s not just the truth we tell other people, but the truth we know about ourselves. This is why telling the truth is so essential to Vola. We have to be true to ourselves, what we really are, and what we really believe.

“‘Suddenly I was desperate to know who he was. Where he’d come from. What he cared about… I realized something then: that even though he was a man, even though he was a different race, even though he had grown up in a different country—we might have a lot in common.’ Then she says ‘Important things, more important than which army had drafted us. Two but not two.’”

This passage shows a commonality of experience that exists beyond culture, personal background, or religion. Because we are all one, regardless of who we fight for or where we are born, and we all have the choice to see the things we have in common with each other.

“Linked with Gray’s final memories, he heard the song of an arctic bird instead of the humans’ shouts. Instead of the ashy haze that hung over them, he saw with Gray a vast bowl of blue sky. Instead of lying on the gritted ground, he tumbled with Gray and his brother kits across a snowy tundra spiked with starry blue flowers. He purred with Gray under his silver mother’s rough tongue, tasted her warm milk, felt the weight of her chin resting over his newborn skull. And then peace.”

This is the story of Gray’s life, beautifully rendered, and again, the reader experiences the merging of two beings, the oneness of memories and stories passed down, through feeling more than direct telling.

“‘Listen, boy, I will see that soldier’s story told the way it should be seen.’ She then elaborates ‘You’re carrying that charm around, it’s the same thing. You’re telling that story of your mother’s for her.’”

Sometimes, even when someone has died or is no longer with us, we tell the story of our time with them, or we tell their story. We do this to keep the connection alive. Just because the person is gone doesn’t mean their legacy is gone too. Stories are a way that we preserve legacies, whether their memory manifests in a bracelet, a marionette, or a book. We tell stories to commemorate those we’ve loved or those who have touched us. Sometimes, the story is bigger than the person themselves. The story of Sinbad is one of freedom, the story of the Phoenix is one of rebirth and resurrection—both stories transcend the individuals who tell them and appeal to the greater truths of mankind.

“My friends and I used to play war at that mill! We said it was the perfect place for an ambush. We played war!”

This passage shows that, as children, we don’t fully conceive of the horrors of war, so we make war a game. All the while we are oblivious to the truth of what war really means and what it does to people. The cost of war is a prevalent theme in the novel. Peter refers to an earlier time where he was ignorant of the atrocities of war, and now he recognizes the horror of this game.

“His seven year old fury. A wildness he couldn’t control. The exhilarating fright of that wildness.”

Peter believes he can control or suppress certain aspects of himself, particularly his fury. He doesn’t want to be like his father or the other adults that give into anger and create war. He associates anger with “the wild” and being out of control.

“‘I don’t think that’s going to work out. You’re human and humans feel anger,’ Peter says, no not him, it’s too dangerous. Vola throws her head back and laughs ‘Feelings are all dangerous. Love, hope! Ha! Hope… you talk about dangerous, eh? No, you can’t avoid any of them. We all own a beast called anger. It can serve us: many good things come from anger at bad things.’”

Instead of villainizing anger, Vola teaches Peter that anger is a positive emotion and good things can come from it. More than that, our emotions are what make us human—we need to feel them and honor them, however scary they may appear.

“Wait, you know when you’re on the field and you know what you’re supposed to do, and you’re ready? When the game’s about to start and the glove turns into part of your hand, and you know you’re exactly where you should be? That feeling, do you think that’s peace?”

This exchange between Peter and the shortstop brings the reader back to the idea of peace. It also echoes what Vola says to Peter earlier—“Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace” (102). This line shows that Peter has internalized Vola’s teachings and is applying them, but also that this intrinsic peace has been a part of him all along; something he’s known in his core.

“The world was his. He could travel through it and he could feed himself on its bounty whenever he wanted. He was part of it all, free. But not alone.”

This passage is another example of “two but not two” or the experience of oneness. Pax is a distinct creature, but he also inherently connects to all of nature. He is “part of all of it” and “not alone.”

“How many kids this week, he wondered, had woken up to find their worlds changed forever, their parents gone off to war? How many friends had had to say goodbye? How many kids went hungry? How many pets had they had to leave behind to fend for themselves. And why didn’t anybody count those things?”

Though many people talk about the larger costs of war, like the death of soldiers and civilians, no one brings up smaller things. Like the way kids feel losing their parents or the way pets feel losing their owners. These are the smaller costs of war, but they are just as profound.

“He wished he could tell them that he knew how it felt to have the one person who had loved you and taken care of you suddenly vanish. How the world seemed dangerous after that.”

In this moment, Peter takes responsibility for leaving Pax behind and again feels oneness, kinship, and empathy with the natural world.

“What hurt most to look at was the water. The last time he’d been here, he’d dived into the pool at the base of the gorge. The water had been so sparkling and clear that he’d been able to see the pale green shafts of the reeds, the iridescent scales on the trout, and even, when he looked up, the sheer blue nets of dragonfly wings last skimming the surface. He might have been swimming through liquid diamonds. Now muddy boulders clogged the river and the pool was a dull brown ring. The broad flat of the river was half its usual breadth. Mud flats near the banks, caking to dry clay, smelled of death.”

This passage juxtaposes the land that Peter remembers in the past with nature as it is in the present—reeking of death. What was once vibrant and alive, “sparkling and clear” is now “muddy” and “dull.” The land itself has undergone a complete transformation. Pennypacker writes this passage to describe devastation to the earth in this specific war, but greater details about the war never appear in the book because this war could be any war. Furthermore, destruction of the land is something human beings have the moral authority to weigh in on, as we are all creatures of this earth.

“Peter remembered Vola asking him which side his father was fighting on. Peter has answered her, stunned that she would even have to ask. ‘The right side’ he’d added indignantly. ‘Boy,’ Vola had said, and then ‘Boy!’ again, to make sure she had his attention. ‘Do you think anyone in the history of this world ever set out to fight for the wrong side?’”

Vola reminds Peter that everyone who fights in a war has a reason that they believe their side is “right.” Though someone else’s reason may seem wrong to us, or the people may appear different, no one puts their life on the line if there isn’t a higher cause that someone genuinely believes is right and worth fighting for. In that way, we all act from the same motivation.

“What did it matter anyway? A fox had been going about its life here, and some humans had obliterated that life—wasn’t that enough of an outrage?”

This passage is poignant because, in this moment, Peter is bearing witness to the horror of war. Instead of normalizing the experience, like so many do, Peter has a true heart-centered reaction. An innocent creature lost its life because of a struggle it was in no way a part of. Its sacrifice and loss of life was at the hand of human beings. Though no one else seems to be outraged by the death or disfigurement of animals, here, Peter refuses to be numb. He finally embodies Vola’s wisdom: that anger is an important emotion and a catalyst for change.