42 pages • 1 hour read
Forrest CarterThe Education of Little Tree
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “A Night on the Mountain”
Two rival whiskey-makers from the city, Mr. Slick and Mr. Chunk, come to the cabin looking for Granpa, who is already at the still to protect it from anyone who might want to try and find it. Little Tree offers to guide the two men to Granpa, and they pay him a dollar for the work. However, realizing that they want to take advantage of Granpa, Little Tree guides them to the top of the mountain rather than to the still, because he knows that Granpa will easily find him there. When Granpa does, Little Tree tells him about what the two men have been saying. That night, Granpa sets a trap for the men. He scares them into wasting their bullets and leaves them alone on the mountain with no experience and no way to get back to town. The next morning, for good measure, Granpa sends Little Tree back to Granma, who prepares the men a special preparation of boiled fish with roots that cause bowel movements. Eventually, Granpa and Little Tree guide the two men off the mountain, and the men leave, furious at the treatment they received.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Willow John”
Every Sunday, Granma, Granpa, and Little Tree dress in their best clothes and walk to church, which is a mile past the store where they sell their whiskey. They regularly meet up with Willow John, a man in his 80s who says little but expresses his emotions with his eyes. (Little Tree and Willow John first struck up a friendship when Little Tree put a bullfrog in Willow John’s pocket during a church service. While the preacher did not appreciate it, Willow John’s eyes glimmered more than they had in years.) After church, Granma, Granpa, Little Tree, and Willow John always have lunch under a nearby pine tree and share news about the mountain.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Church-Going”
The townspeople take their religion very seriously and often attend debates about what the Bible says is the correct way to live their lives. Both sides can and will use the Bible to defend their position. The preacher makes the situation worse by riling up the people and asking them to confess everything they’ve done wrong in front of the entire congregation.
Granpa is not a religious man because he believes that religion takes the blame off the self and places it on someone or something else. However, there are several Bible stories he does enjoy, though he mixes up details and combines multiple stories together while telling them to Little Tree. His message still comes through, however, because Little Tree “kins” Granpa and hears what he wants to say even if Granpa does not say it clearly.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Mr. Wine”
Little Tree and his family have a regular visitor whom they call Mr. Wine; his real name is longer, but none of them can pronounce it. He fixes clocks regularly, and he teaches Little Tree about math and the importance of having values. He and Little Tree develop a quirky friendship; Mr. Wine pretends that he can’t find certain items, and Little Tree helps him to find them. Granma and Granpa are in on the act and will not help Mr. Wine so that Little Tree can instead. The last time Mr. Wine visits, he gives Little Tree a coat intended for a grandchild who has outgrown it in the year it took to make it. The coat fits Little Tree perfectly, and Little Tree does thanks Mr. Wine for the coat.
Chapters 14-17 Analysis
Whenever challenges strike Little Tree on the mountain in these latest chapters, the boy is often alone without the direct aid of his grandparents, and he must use his wits to solve problems on his own. Because he is now Coming of Age, he must prove to his grandparents that he can apply their many life lessons and become a successful individual away no matter what problems might arise. For example, when rival whiskey-makers come to see Granpa, Little Tree must use his knowledge of the mountain and of nature, as well as his deep connection with his grandparents, to develop a crafty plan to protect their whiskey-making business. His intimate understanding of the mountain landscape becomes especially prominent as he misleads the men to the top of the mountain, trusting that his grandfather will find him there. However, the men do not have Little Tree’s survival training and fear the wilderness, so they make many mistakes that cause them injury where Little Tree does not. When Little Tree meets up with Granpa, the work is mostly done, and the men have worked themselves into a frenzy already. Granpa only adds a few touches that make them suffer an even more challenging night than they would have under Little Tree’s plan. When the conclusion of the chapter sees the men heading indignantly back the way they came, it is clear that Little Tree has successfully combined the many lessons he has learned to protect his family and the business in which he takes pride.
When Carter introduces Willow John, a family friend with whom they regularly attend church, Little Tree uses the unorthodox method of placing a frog in Willow John’s pocket to build a connection with the man and develop a kinship. Thus, the frog becomes symbolic of the odd ways in which people become friends. With its whimsical tone, this chapter demonstrates that there is no rhyme or reason to the moments that form mutual friendship and understanding. As the novel progresses and Willow John’s friendship becomes crucial to securing Little Tree’s safety and well-being at the climax of the story, this chapter also gains significance in its demonstration of the ways in which vastly important relationships are often begun with incidental, offhand incidents just like the bullfrog in Willow John’s pocket.
With Chapter 16, “Church-going,” Carter pays just as much attention to larger societal systems as he does to individual connections, for this section of the novel puts organized religion in the spotlight and highlights Carter’s perceptions of the problematic nature of organized religion. It is significant that the church services function in direct opposition to all the lessons that Little Tree has learned on the mountain in his path to adulthood. Based upon the behavior of the church-going crowd, it soon becomes clear that even the church itself casts stones at others instead of accepting them and emphasizes people’s faults without allowing for individual goodness. When the details of the original Bible stories become confused as they are passed on by word of mouth, Carter also implies that even the church’s original source material may carry some unreliability. This dynamic is further emphasized as Granpa tells Little Tree inaccurate Bible stories that are a conglomeration of his favorite parables, and it is equally significant that the moral of Granpa’s improvised “Bible” story is that not all people close to Little Tree can be trusted. This idea contradicts some lessons that Little Tree has already learned, but he takes the message to heart and strives to pay closer attention to the situations and people he encounters.
The last chapter of this section has one more important lesson to teach before the climax of the novel places Little Tree under a final difficult test that will determine whether he has matured or not. With the introduction of Mr. Wine who stops by the cabin regularly and fixes clocks, Carter injects several different implied messages into the narrative. Mr. Wine encourages Little Tree to solve problems by creating imaginary problems for the boy to fix; one example of this is Mr. Wine “forgetting” where his glasses are so Little Tree can help him by finding them. The surface message that Mr. Wine presents is a message that it is more important to do good in the world than it is to make money. However, on a deeper level, Carter uses the character of Mr. Wine to represent another societal flaw: that of people who create imaginary problems that other people must bear the burden of solving. Carter’s commentary throughout the novel draws on the understanding that most of the problems people have are of their own making, and others must then find ways to solve those made-up problems. Although the helper may feel a rush of virtue and goodness for having helped, it does not negate the fact that the problem was not truly a problem beyond the perception of the individual who made it so.
