57 pages • 1 hour read
Gary PaulsenWinterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 1994A 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.
Key Figures
Gary Paulsen
Gary Paulsen was an American writer who specialized in fiction for children and young adults, including many stories set in the wilderness. He entered his first Iditarod race in 1983, just over a decade before he documented the experience in Winterdance. In the book, he portrays himself as a persistent, but sometimes clueless, novice who repeatedly admits his lack of knowledge about sled-dog running and the Iditarod race. In fact, Paulsen’s humbleness sometimes verges on lack of self-confidence. However, he always pushes himself forward and continues to pursue his dangerous and difficult venture.
The protagonist frequently resorts to self-deprecating, gallows humor in describing dangerous mishaps. This sense of humor allows Paulsen not to take his many stumbles too seriously, so they never overwhelm him to the point of making him quit. For example, when he makes a wrong move in approaching his most aggressive dog, Devil, Paulsen writes, “Devil popped me as I reached for him, drew a little blood, but it was less than usual and I thought we might be getting on friendlier terms” (76).
By casting himself as an underdog, Paulsen entices readers to root for him in what he has depicted as a nearly impossible undertaking. He encounters one gargantuan obstacle after another, often caused by his own inexperience or ignorance about dog sledding, yet he continues, and he comes across as brave and steadfast when he picks himself up from the ground and stumbles on to the next checkpoint. Even though he has little chance of winning the race as a rookie, his underdog status makes his merely finishing the Iditarod appear as a marvelous accomplishment.
His love for the dogs inspires Paulsen to keep going when enormous obstacles tempt him to ponder quitting. For instance, when he and the team plunge down Dalzell Gorge’s rocky chute, knocking him unconscious, Paulsen seriously considers quitting. However, then he shines a headlamp on his lead dog, Cookie, who is staring at the trail, standing straight and ready to go: “She—they would run. It was their race as much as it was mine. […] I didn’t have the right to quit” (187).
Paulsen is also not too proud to accept help and advice from others he meets along the trail. His humble attitude and openness to learning results in his emerging as a true musher.
Ruth Paulsen
Paulsen’s wife, Ruth, is the realist in their relationship. Her practical approach—thinking out the consequences of actions more thoroughly—contrasts with Paulsen’s more impulsive persona. For example, when Paulsen decides to use an old bicycle to train the dogs, Ruth suggests he just hook up Cookie and one or two other dogs. When Paulsen hooks up five dogs to the bicycle, Ruth asks, “Don’t you think you might have rather more dogs than you need?” (64). Ruth turns out to be right as the first training session ends in disaster, with the bike bouncing on top of Paulsen. Paulsen writes, “I should have listened to her,” adding, “She was reason, logic, sensibility” (63). In fact, Ruth’s more logical approach often tempers Paulsen’s instinct to just wing it.
However, Ruth shares Paulsen’s sense of humor. She frequently finds the funny side of Paulsen’s minor calamities with the dogs. When Paulsen hooks the dogs to an old car and they bolt out of the yard “like a horizontal bungee jumper” (81), Ruth finds the spectacle hilarious. Paulsen writes, “I had one image of Ruth bent over holding her stomach, laughing, near collapse, and then I was out of sight and springing down the road trying to think of a way to stop” (81).
Ruth is very supportive of Paulsen’s dog-sledding ventures. In fact, it is Ruth who brings up the topic of the Iditarod race when she asks, “You’re going to run the race, aren’t you?” (54). Paulsen is not thinking about the race at the time, but when Ruth asks about it, he realizes he wants to run it.
Ruth accompanies Paulsen on the long road trip to Alaska. Once the race is about to start, Ruth expresses trepidations about the dangers of the trail. However, she does not try to talk him out of it.
Cookie
Cookie is the lead dog of Paulsen’s team. She has a special relationship with Paulsen, which grows closer as the book progresses. Before the race, she spends time in the house with Paulsen and Ruth while the other dogs stay in a backyard kennel.
During the race, Paulsen relies on her, and her instincts save Paulsen and the team from disaster on more than one occasion. At the start of the race, Paulsen and the team get lost in Anchorage because of Paulsen’s bad decision to put another dog in the lead. When he puts Cookie back in the lead, she gets the team back on track: “Cookie put her nose down and suddenly hung a left into some trees, around a sharp turn and I saw sled runner marks and we were back on the trail” (146). Cookie also saves the team from the thin ice of Norton Sound when she signals danger with her tail: “If she was confident about things it hung straight down and to the rear, and the height it went up was in direct proportion to what she perceived as risk” (243).
Paulsen usually uses human terms in describing Cookie because of her people-like qualities. He refers to Cookie as “a dear friend” and “a sister in some ways” (137). Cookie likes to be petted and to gaze at sunrises. “Cookie turned to watch the day come (I never saw her sleep through a sunrise)” (173), Paulsen writes. She also smiles.
Devil
Devil’s personality is the opposite of Cookie’s. He can’t stand to be touched and wants to eat the other dogs, although he settles for eating skunks. Devil is one of three northern sled dogs that Paulsen buys in Canada for the race. He describes the three as “huge, gray-sided, yellow-eyed meat eaters” (62).
Devil is by far the meanest of the three. He tears up his kennel and almost rips Paulsen’s face off during the ride home from Canada. He bites Paulsen on more than one occasion. It seems as if Devil is sent to tempt Paulsen into giving up on the Iditarod. However, the progress that Paulsen makes in tempering Devil’s irascible attitude—albeit in small increments—is also an indication of his strides toward mastering dog sledding and taming the wilds of Alaska. When Paulsen goes out to sleep with the dogs in the kennel, he says “hi” to Devil. He’s surprised when Devil wags his tail. However, that’s as far as the bromance goes. When Paulsen tries to pet him, he growls. Despite his aggressiveness, Devil turns out to be a good runner. “Devil might bite me, might kill other dogs, but by god, he pulled and would die pulling and that was a kind of love,” Paulsen says (212).
In addition, Devil’s antics serve as comic relief in the book. For example, at one point, Devil inexplicably warms up to Ruth: “[. . .] Devil was so sweet. I unharnessed him and he licked my hand…” (70). However, Paulsen sees an ulterior motive: “A preliminary taste, I thought. Just checking for flavor” (70).
Related Titles
By Gary Paulsen
