Tunes for Bears to Dance To

Cormier’s Tunes for Bears to Dance To puts a boy in the center of a dysfunctional family under the reader’s magnifying glass. Henry is a young boy of eleven who has been touched by tragedy at a young age. When the book opens, Henry is in the midst of mourning the passing of his older brother. His father has stumbled into depression, and his mother is forced to take up waitressing to support the family. Henry himself is no stranger to hard work. He’d taken up working for a local grocer until he broke his leg and the struggling family had to rely on his mother’s income to survive. To the reader, Henry’s father’s depression seems somewhat understandable given it was a hit-and-run driver that took his son’s life.

Eventually, the memory of his dead brother Eddie is too much. It also takes its toll on the rest of the family, and the family decides to relocate. In the new town, Henry befriends an old Holocaust survivor, Mr. Levine. In his possession is a small replica of his hometown before it was ravaged by the Nazi regime. When the carving is completed, Levine wins an award for the artwork, which is to be displayed in a prominent location where the entire town can view it. It is around this time that Henry expresses a desire to purchase a headstone for his brother’s grave. He meets one Mr. Hairston, the proprietor of the local supermarket, who agrees to give Henry a job. The boy soon realizes that Hairston’s act of kindness is not without an ulterior motive. Through their interactions, the reader discovers that Hairston is one of the prominent villains of the story. Cormier gives the reader a front-row seat as Hairston dishes out nasty remarks to Henry about the customer that come into the story. Much of the commentary has to do with where they come from and their physical defects. Hairston is “evil incarnate,” the personification of everything tragic Henry had suffered in his life. The reader further discovers that Hairston was awful to his family. It was often noted that he was abusive to his wife and children, seeming to take pleasure in their distress. Although Henry doesn’t quite get the full scope of Hairston’s malicious behavior, Cormier ensures that the reader picks up on it.

The culmination of Hairston’s treachery is realized when he blackmails young Henry, telling him that he will be able to keep his job, if only he agrees to destroy old Mr. Levine’s sculpted village model. As if this were not bad enough, Hairston reveals to Henry that he has connections in the Principal’s office, as well as with his mother’s boss. If he doesn’t comply, Hairston will have his mother fired, and will destroy Henry’s reputation at school. However, if Henry agrees to Hairston’s demands, he will see to it that Henry’s mother receives a promotion with higher pay and will allow him to keep his job at the supermarket. In an effort to isolate his family from the chaos in which Henry finds himself, he tells no one of Hairston’s ultimatum. Revealing his predicament to his parents will only make matters worse. So, he decides to deal with the situation on his own. The moment of truth comes, and Henry is still unable to make up his mind. At the art center where Levine’s sculpture is displayed, Henry hides in a storage closet, taking a mallet with him just in case he decides to go through with the heinous act. He falls asleep in the closet and wakes up to find the art center deserted. In the room where the sculpture is displayed, Henry holds the mallet above his head, ready to bring it down and obliterate Levine’s work of art. Yet, at the last minute he decides against it.

In that brief moment, with the mallet hoisted above his head, Henry hears a rodent scurrying somewhere nearby. He accidently drops the tool and smashes a portion of the sculpture. On the way home that evening, he runs into Mr. Hairston, who finally provides a motive for wanting Levine’s artwork destroyed. “Because he is a Jew”, Hairston says, commenting that the damaged sculpture will give Levine something more with which to occupy his time. Henry expresses that he no longer wants the rewards Hairston offers for completing the task, but the old grocery owner insists, saying that the reward was just as vital as the act itself.

Here, the author uses the situation with Hairston to illustrate the boy’s lack of innocence. Cormier plants seeds throughout the novel that set the stage for the transformation of Henry’s worldview. From the death of his brother and his father’s spiraling depression to the encounters with Hairston, Cormier’s narrative is a metaphor for a series of unfortunate events that are often responsible for robbing a young person of their innocence.

As the novel concludes, Henry has found a certain measure of confidence within himself. He once again visits Mr. Levine who does not seem in the least bit bothered by the damaged art. He continues working on the village despite the damage. Everyone just assumes the damage was done by troublemakers looking to cause a ruckus. Henry is never able to get the tombstone for his brother’s grave. Instead, he places his brother’s old baseball bat and ball on the grave as a marker. And in this way, Cormier finishes a novel that is as much as lesson of endurance and perseverance as it is a think piece about the unexpected trials of growing up, and how the struggles of life are no respecter of persons.