Saving Shiloh

“Sometimes hope seems out of human hands entirely.”

Saving Shiloh is, in part, a story of Marty’s growth from childhood innocence toward adult moral awareness. This is one of the important themes in the text, and this quote is an example of Marty’s growing awareness of the world around him as his relationship with the troubled Judd Travers deepens and becomes more complex. For all Judd’s faults, Marty has empathy for him and wants to have hope that Judd can turn his life around. The text will continue to explore the challenges of maintaining hope in someone who often disappoints those around them through their actions and words.

“I’ll bet you anything Judd’s great-great-great-great-grandaddy was somebody who’d been in jail.”

This quote uses repetition to emphasize Marty’s belief in Judd’s troubled lineage. At this early juncture, Marty is still inclined to believe that Judd is irredeemable and that his bad qualities are a direct result of his ancestors, a cycle that goes back many generations, as emphasized by the repeated use of the word “great.” Ironically, as his moral awareness deepens, Marty will later view Judd’s legacy of generational trauma as a reason to believe that he is worthy of redemption.

“I have to take two of his paws and hug. He’s shaking already, but I hold him tight so he’ll know he belongs to me. […] Judd puts out his hand and strokes Shiloh on the head. He’s still awkward about it, but he’s learnin’.”

This early interaction between Shiloh and Judd connects to the theme of The Gradual Process of Rebuilding Trust. Shiloh’s evident fear makes it clear that he has not yet forgiven Judd’s mistreatment of him. Marty has to physically drag Shiloh out from his hiding spot to say goodbye to Judd, who shows that he is trying to earn Shiloh’s trust back when he pats Shiloh on the head. Marty makes sure to mention that the interaction is stilted and awkward, but it is an indication that Judd has the potential to make amends.

“Man oh man, life is more complicated than I thought. One decision after another, and no matter which way you lean, there’s an argument against it.”

Marty tells his father that he wants to become a vegetarian due to his distaste for hunting, and his father’s series of follow-up questions complicates Marty’s worldview. This quote illustrates the theme of Moral Complexity as an Expression of Maturity, as Marty is quickly learning that doing the right thing is not as straightforward as he once believed. If he commits to vegetarianism, then he must give up not just meat but also other kinds of animal products, which complicates his commitment. Marty is learning that there are challenges to all sides of an argument and that when it comes to making moral decisions, there are not always clear right and wrong answers.

“I’m thinkin’ how when a man wrecks his truck and leg both, and almost loses his job—his life, even—he’s sunk about as low as he can get. Dad says either he’ll hate himself so much he’ll decide to change, or he’ll hate the way other folks feel about him, and turn that hating onto them.”

Marty worries about the possibility of Judd’s redemption in the wake of his accident. This also illustrates Redemption as a Collaborative Effort, as the community ostracizes Judd even before his accident due to his alcoholism and animal abuse. Despite Judd’s faults, Marty fears that Judd will only further isolate himself from others, therefore retreating deeper into his negative habits. To make amends and achieve redemption, he needs a community willing to give him a chance.

“That’s the way folks feel about Judd, see. They remember how he was—and maybe still is, far as I know. His meanness to dogs and people, the way he cheated and lied. When you’ve done all the things Judd did, how do you get folks to start trusting you? It’s true he might be tryin’ to change, but the tryin’ part still needed a lot of work.”

This quote highlights The Gradual Process of Rebuilding Trust. As much as the town ostracizes and isolates Judd, he has earned their distrust through his past actions: He has cheated, lied, and hurt people and animals. These qualities are not easy to forgive, especially when Judd is still unwilling to do the “tryin’ part” to seek forgiveness.

“‘Well,’ he says at last, ‘I sure know how it is to feel cornered. Know what it’s like to feel trapped.’”

One of Marty’s major goals throughout the text is to help Judd and his dogs. This is one of the first signs of Judd’s ability to empathize with others, as his own past experiences of childhood abuse at the hands of his father have helped him understand the feeling of being trapped or cornered. This quote also points to the often-cyclical nature of abuse: Judd experienced abuse in his past and therefore enacts similar abuse on his dogs, perpetuating the cycle of harm and mistrust.

“I see pretty quick that whether Judd done it or not, the feelin’s going against him.”

This quote personifies the community’s continued rejection of Judd. The tide of public opinion takes on a physical quality in this quote, as Judd can hear from those around him that the town wants to condemn him for the murder of the man from Bens Run, whether he did it or not. It illustrates the power of groupthink, and Marty’s statement that “the feelin’s going against him” creates an image of a wave of public scrutiny and rejection sweeping Judd away before he can redeem himself.

“I’m wondering what it’s like to have everybody suspecting you of a crime you didn’t do—just when you’re tryin’ to be better. Maybe you think, what’s the use? If everybody figures you’re bad, might as well go ahead and be bad.”

In an effort to view Judd’s situation with empathy, Marty seeks to inhabit Judd’s point of view. This exercise in empathy, putting himself in Judd’s shoes and viewing the situation from his perspective, increases Marty’s worry about Judd. He fears that Judd may choose to further isolate himself from the community, refusing to seek redemption or improve himself, because of the town’s thorough rejection of him. This quote illustrates the importance of Redemption as a Collaborative Effort. When the community deems someone permanently unacceptable, that belief perpetuates harm and isolation, rather than opening pathways for understanding, reconciliation, and redemption.

“‘You know,’ I say, ‘the way I hear it, the happiest dogs make the best hunters.’ ‘Don’t know about that,’ says Judd. ‘My pa always said to keep ’em lean and mean.’ Can’t help myself. ‘Maybe your pa wasn’t always right,’ I say.”

Marty and Judd use dueling idioms to illustrate their differing worldviews. Marty tries to convince Judd, in a subtle way, that if he treats his dogs better, they will be happier, thus yielding better hunting results. Judd retorts that “the leaner and meaner” a dog is, the better the hunter. These quotes illustrate the two characters’ opposing worldviews at this point in the text, and Marty’s final statement, that perhaps Judd’s father was not always right, implies that Judd’s father was wrong in the way he treated his family as well. The “lean and mean” dogs serve as a metaphor for Judd, whose father abused him as a child, resulting in an ongoing cycle of negative relationships in Judd’s life. By questioning Judd’s father, Marty suggests that Judd can achieve redemption and that he does not have to resign himself to being the person his father made him into through his abuse.

“I am stretching the truth so far I can almost hear it snap. Don’t even know a man in Little.”

Marty uses a spin on the familiar idiom “to stretch the truth” in this quote to emphasize how far his willingness to engage in dishonesty for the greater good. In this case, Marty desperately wants to produce a solution that will give Judd’s dogs a better life and allow Judd to prove himself to be a worthy dog owner. Marty often wonders whether there is a moral difference between “fibbing” and “lying.” In this case, he tries to convince Judd that the fence will no longer be available by telling an untruth: that a man in Little wants it even though no such man exists. He hopes to encourage Judd to take the fence this way, and this idiom shows that while Marty is lying for the ultimate betterment of Judd and his dogs’ lives, he still feels somewhat uncomfortable doing so.

“All I am trying in this world to do is make life a little easier for Judd Travers’s dogs. What do I get? Trouble up one side and down the other. Bet he did kill that man from Bens Run. Judd’s got enough meanness in him to do most anything.”

This quote contains an example of hypophora, when a speaker asks a question and follows it up with an answer. Hypophora is generally used in literature to emphasize something, as is the case in this quote. Marty asks what he “gets” from trying to help Judd and his dogs and responds immediately with “trouble up one side and down the other,” which emphasizes the frustration that he feels in the moment. The question indicates Marty’s current resentment toward Judd, even going as far as to tell himself that Judd could be the murderer after all, despite his earlier commitment to helping others in the community become invested in Judd’s redemption.

“‘It’s all because of you,’ I tell him, knowing all the while I’d do it again, even so.”

This quote illustrates The Gradual Process of Rebuilding Trust. When Marty feels hurt by Judd’s refusal of the offer to help him build a fence, he begins to resent having anything to do with Judd. For a moment, this even includes Shiloh, his beloved dog. In this moment, Marty struggles to view anything having to do with Judd in a positive light, and he goes as far as to lay blame on Shiloh for starting this ongoing connection. Immediately, however, Marty’s true nature wins out, and he realizes that he would go through all this again to have Shiloh with him, which speaks to the pure and strong nature of their bond.

“What do I care what happens to Judd? I ask myself. What do I care what happens to his dogs? I am turnin’ myself inside out to be nice to a man who hasn’t an ounce of kindness in his whole body, and who’s probably a killer, too.”

Marty’s use of rhetorical questions throughout the text illustrates the development of Marty’s moral compass and beliefs. These questions that Marty poses to himself shape his understanding of Judd . Marty acknowledges that Judd has faults, and at different points in the text, he even believes that he is capable of murder, yet these rhetorical questions bring Marty to the understanding that he believes in the possibility of redemption, even for someone as seemingly far gone as Judd. Marty’s rhetorical questions illustrate his innate empathy and maturation throughout the text.

“But once you get a reputation, it follows you around like your shadow. That’s what Mom says, anyway.”

This quote employs a simile, comparing Judd’s reputation to his shadow to emphasize that Judd’s reputation in town will be difficult for him to overcome. Like a shadow, Judd cannot escape the way that people in town remember his past harmful behaviors.

“Why don’t I wish Judd would be found guilty? Why don’t I wish he’d get sent to jail? David’s right. It sure would solve a lot of problems, just like that. I wonder why I been trying so hard to take his side?”

This quote is another example of Marty using rhetorical questions to interrogate his moral development. Marty has struggled with Judd for a long time, rescuing Shiloh from Judd’s abuse, and yet he still wants to stick up for Judd and encourage him to get better and turn his life around. This quote shows that Marty ultimately does not believe that anyone is beyond redemption, an important theme in the text. Even someone who has done as much harm as Judd deserves dignity and respect.

“Once you know what happened to someone as a little kid, it’s hard to think of him as one hundred percent evil. If Judd’s the way he is because of what his dad done to him, though, maybe his dad was that way on account of what his dad done, and maybe the grandpa was that way because his father…When’s it going to end?”

This quote echoes Marty’s earlier assessment that Judd comes from a long line of bad men, showing that Marty’s understanding of morality has developed. With maturation, Marty can contextualize Judd’s actions within the larger scope of his life: Judd suffered abuse from his father, who perhaps suffered similar abuse from his father, in a long line of men who did not know how to address their problems without fists. The final line, “When’s it going to end?” is a rhetorical question but one that Marty seeks to answer by helping Judd. Whereas initially Marty saw Judd’s lineage of violence and trauma as a reason to write him off, now he sees it as precisely why Judd deserves redemption. Marty believes that he can interrupt that cycle and end it.

“It’s such an awful thought I can feel the sweat trickle down my back. Sometimes a thought comes to you that you just can’t help, but you don’t go to jail for thinking!”

An important relationship in the text is Marty’s fraught relationship with his younger sister Dara Lynn. Marty and Dara Lynn often clash, and as Marty becomes more mature, he increasingly struggles with Dara Lynn’s often-immature actions. In this scene, Marty imagines Dara Lynn falling into their grandmother’s grave, buried alive by dirt. Despite his annoyance with Dara Lynn, Marty has a physical response to the idea, showing that he does still love his sister. The quote is also an example of foreshadowing, as later in the text, Dara Lynn will almost drown after falling into the river, nearly bringing Marty’s dark vision to life.

“To hear me tell it, Judd was part Paul Bunyan and part Jesus Christ, doin’ all kinds of hero and wonderful things. No one says a bad word against him this time, but I don’t hear no kind word for him, either.”

This quote is an example of hyperbole, as Marty compares Judd’s plowing out the neighborhoods’ driveways to the actions of the mythical Paul Bunyan or the miracles of Jesus Christ. The comparison is humorous, but it also serves to illustrate Marty’s fervent wish to turn the tide of public opinion toward Judd’s redemption. Marty’s use of hyperbole leaves his peers at an impasse: No one is able to speak a word against Judd, but he has not demonstrated enough change to truly win the town over.

“Then I see that all I’m doing is thinking of things he wasn’t doing. I was short on things he did.”

This quote shows Marty learning the lesson that trust and forgiveness are harder to come by than he once thought. Marty struggles with the fact that the community remains distrustful of Judd even though he is no longer drinking and driving and abusing his dogs. Marty learns, in this quote, that people win trust not through the mere absence of an undesirable action but with actions that show meaningful change, which Judd has yet to produce.

“Can’t say I see a huge change in the way he treats his dogs, but I see some. He don’t cuss at ’em like he used to, and I don’t see him kick ’em. Now and then he’ll reach out to pet one of ’em, but they always shy away a little when he does that. Guess it’s the same with animals as it is with people—takes them a long time to win back trust.”

This quote illustrates The Gradual Process of Rebuilding Trust. It points out that true change is incremental: Judd is not a changed man overnight, but he is taking small steps to improve his relationships with his dogs. Judd’s relationships with his dogs mirror his relationships with everyone in town: People remain wary of him even though he is working on giving others reason to trust him.

“It’s as though all the anger and meanness that dog’s felt for Judd all these years is right now comin’ up out of his mouth.”

This descriptive phrase illustrates the severity of the dog’s attack. Such a severe description—years of anger and resentment toward Judd housed in the dog’s mouth—emphasizes the intensity of the dog’s anger toward Judd and therefore the intensity of the bite. It contrasts the accidental nature of the attack’s precipitating event and encourages the readers to feel empathy for Judd: He was truly trying to do something to make his dogs’ lives better, and yet his past mistakes continue to cost him dearly.

“‘Thank you, Judd.’ I’d say more if I could, but I’m all choked up. I just give him a hug with my one free arm, and strangest of all, Judd hugs me back. It’s a sort of jerky, awkward hug, like he hadn’t had much practice, but it’s a start.”

After Judd saves Shiloh from the creek, Judd exchanges an awkward hug with his once-nemesis. This point of contact between the two illustrates a metaphorical bridging of the gap that once existed between them. The description of Judd’s hug as “jerky” and “awkward” illustrates that the bond is still uneasy and new, but the act highlights the gradual process of rebuilding trust—Judd and Marty have established a strong foundation upon which to build a future in which the conditions for trust to thrive are possible.