70 pages • 2 hours read
Kate DiCamilloBecause of Winn-Dixie
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
India Opal Buloni, the narrator, begins to tell the story of finding her dog. She was sent to the Winn-Dixie grocery store by her father, whom she calls the preacher, to get some basic groceries. Halfway through the trip, the store manager and other employees fly into a panic over a dog that has gotten loose in the store. They demand someone take the dog to the pound, but Opal likes the dog. She thinks it is cute with a good disposition: “It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a dog who has a good sense of humor” (12). She claims the dog, makes up a name for him—Winn-Dixie, the first thing that comes to her mind—and Winn-Dixie follows her outside. She inspects the dog and finds him in bad shape. Clearly, he does not belong to anyone.
Chapter 2 Summary
On the way home, Opal explains her name to Winn-Dixie. She was named India, after the country where her father was a missionary, though her father calls her by her middle name, Opal, because it is his mother’s name, and he loved his mother very much. She also explains that Winn-Dixie must behave, because she and the preacher live in an adults-only trailer park, and the manager has made an exception for her. Opal finds her father in their trailer, working on his sermons. She has a strained relationship with her father: “My daddy is a good preacher and a nice man, but sometimes it’s hard for me to think about him as my daddy, because he spends so much time preaching or thinking about preaching” (13). Opal asks if she can adopt Winn-Dixie, a “Less Fortunate” (16), and after Winn-Dixie places his face lovingly on the preacher’s lap and stares into his eyes, the preacher agrees.
Chapter 3 Summary
Opal goes to work cleaning up Winn-Dixie using a hose, baby shampoo, and her own hairbrush. She tries to brush his teeth but fails—he sneezes every time she opens his mouth. As she washes Winn-Dixie, she talks to him. She feels connected to Winn-Dixie because both are essentially orphans: “‘See,’ I said, ‘You don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old’” (21). She tells Winn-Dixie that she knows almost nothing about her mama but is afraid to ask because it makes the preacher sad. Winn-Dixie stares into her eyes. When Opal presents the new and improved Winn-Dixie to the preacher, she asks the preacher if he will tell her 10 things about her mama, one for each year she’s been alive.
Chapter 4 Summary
The preacher and Opal sit on the couch, and the preacher tells Opal 10 things about her mama. They include her penchant for gardening, love of stories, and inability to cook. He also tells Opal that “she hated being a preacher’s wife” (28) and that “[she] drank. She drank beer. And whiskey. And wine. Sometimes she couldn’t stop drinking” (29). He also tells Opal her mother loved her very much. Opal writes each item down a list and reads them back to Winn-Dixie to memorize them. She believes that if she memorizes each thing, she will recognize her mother if she ever sees her, so she can stop her from leaving ever again.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Loss and loneliness appear in this section, as Opal reveals the struggles of her recent and more distant past. Opal feels a connection with Winn-Dixie even this early in the novel, hours after they first met—in part, this is because of Winn-Dixie’s winning smile; Opal also feels connected to Winn-Dixie’s status as an orphan.
Opal refers to Winn-Dixie as a “Less Fortunate” (16) to persuade the preacher to take him in; though this is partially a joke, this is also how Opal sees herself. Opal is deeply lonely, having left behind all her friends in her old town of Whately. She only has the preacher to keep her company, but he is committed primarily to his work. Opal feels the loss of her mother acutely, and in this way, she feels akin to Winn-Dixie, who has no family before she adopts him. She tells him, “You don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old” (21).
Opal’s grief is also clear when she asks the preacher to tell her about her mother, and then proceeds to memorize that list. Opal hopes the list will help her know her mother, as if knowing her might bring her back.
Related Titles
By Kate DiCamillo
