The Underneath

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-25

Chapters 26-50

Chapters 51-75

Chapters 76-100

Chapters 101-124

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Cruelty to Animals

The cruelty of humans towards animals is a theme that shapes and drives the plot. In the exposition, the narrative reveals that the calico cat was abandoned on the side of the road by the family who used to own her. Appelt condemns the intentional or inadvertent cruelty of humans, emphasizing that a creature who has been loved and then forsaken is the loneliest of all things: “There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road” (1).

Similarly, Ranger’s owner, Gar Face, treats him with appalling cruelty, chaining him to the house in anger after inadvertently shooting him during a hunt: “There had been no apologies on the part of the man, just a swift kick in the side from his steel-toed boot, a kick that burned as hot as the bullet lodged in his leg” (24). Gar Face’s indifference about shooting Ranger is clear in his choice to also kick the dog. Ranger’s function to Gar Face as a mere tool, rather than a creature with an emotional experience, is clear in his choice to tie up the hound and neglect him: “[Gar Face] chained [Ranger] to the post, useful only as an alarm, as a hound who bayed when animals came too close, a dog trapped in a twenty-foot circle. That’s what Ranger had become, nothing more” (24). Ranger’s sadness and loneliness at his life, neglected on a chain, is characterized in his song, which speaks of his desperation and isolation: “Can’t you see I’m tryin’? Can’t you hear my cryin’? Can’t you see I’m all alone?” (10).

Anecdotes about Gar Face’s life reveal that his penchant for cruelty toward animals started when he was a young boy. When he trapped and starved a rat, he “embraced the darkness” and “he kept [the rat] there, hidden, watched it slowly die from hunger and thirst” (12). Later, “he laughed” as he watched his mother hold her dead pet bird after it drank from the bird bath that he “laced with rat poison one evening while she slept” (13). Appelt uses Gar Face’s cruelty toward these helpless animals, which is hyperbolic in its viciousness, to characterize him as a sinister antagonist.

Narrative tension builds when the vulnerable family of cats takes residence under Gar Face’s house in the forest. Both the calico mother cat and Ranger “knew that Gar Face would not take kindly to kittens” (41). Confirming their worst fears, Gar Face seizes Puck and his mother, shoves them in a sack, and throws them in the creek to drown them: “They were flying through the air, spinning, he closed his eyes and held on to his mother, spinning through the air until […] water all around” (78). Gar Face’s “hard and cruel” laughter as he does this illustrates that he enjoys the power he feels in harming others: He enjoys Ranger’s distress and enjoys drowning the cats (although, unbeknownst to him, Puck survives).

At the close of the story, Ranger, Puck, and Sabine are freed from Gar Face’s cruelty and from humans in general when the Alligator King eats Gar Face, and the dog and cats start a new and happy life in the forest as a family.

The Importance of Family

The family formed by the calico cat, her kittens Puck and Sabine, and Ranger is a testament to the immense power of love and the sense of purpose, completeness, and happiness it brings. Ranger and the mother cat are drawn together through loneliness; the cat identifies the inherent sadness in Ranger’s song because she shares this emotional experience: “If she could bay, her song would be the same” (11). Ranger, too, recognizes their immediate affinity and connection: “Here was someone who understood his song” (16). They touch noses: “She touched his brown nose with her small pink one” (16), which symbolizes their newly formed familial bond. The unlikely pairing of the cat and dog brings each animal the company and love which they each yearned for; both were treated cruelly by the human owners who were supposed to love them and keep them safe.

Ranger’s love for the calico cat extends to her kittens, Sabine and Puck: “Ranger watched over his cat family like the pharaohs watched over the Nile, like the stars watched over the sleeping Earth, like the beach watched over the sea” (32). These similes denote the immensity of Ranger’s devotion. These forces of nature, like Ranger’s love, are eternal and unchanging. The sound and feeling of the cat’s purring comes to symbolize love and family for Ranger: “Ranger had not realized how much he needed this sweet, friendly sound. How much he needed someone to settle in next to him” (30). For Ranger, the cats bring him purpose and fill his days with love, whereas he was previously solitary and depressed. Ranger’s absolute devastation when the calico cat and Puck are taken further demonstrates his love for them: “He could not cry out loud. But tears splashed onto his silky ears” (86).

Further illustrating Ranger’s love, he sacrifices himself to keep Sabine safe; Gar Face grabs Sabine, intending to use her as bait for the Alligator King, but Ranger bites Gar Face, causing him to beat Ranger savagely and opt to use Ranger as alligator bait instead. Ranger willingly makes this trade, illustrating the selfless nature of his love and his undeniable status as Sabine’s father despite their belonging to different species. Likewise, Sabine illustrates her love for Ranger when she lies with him by the bayou as Ranger waits for the Alligator King to take him: “She purred to him as hard as she could [...] she licked the side of his soft face, licked the blood off his nose, she put her nose next to his nose” (286). In these actions, Sabine tries to convey her adoration to Ranger, her adoptive father: “She loved him as hard as she could. With all her might, she loved Ranger” (286).

Love for one’s family can turn sour, however, as illustrated in Grandmother Moccasin’s cruel deceit toward Night Song, motivated by her “hunger to have her daughter all for herself” (155). Instead of deriving happiness and contentment from seeing the happy life her daughter created with Hawk Man and their daughter, Grandmother Moccasin felt jealous and angry, illustrating the way that her love had twisted into feelings of bitterness and betrayal. Grandmother learned the hard way that enacting vengeance has a price; she brought sorrow to herself, to Night Song, and to Night Song’s family. The next time she’s presented with the choice to either break up a family or assist them (when she comes across Ranger, Sabine, and Puck), she chooses love, as evident in her choice to break Ranger’s chain, freeing him: “Grandmother, who had spent a thousand years in a jar, had finally chosen love” (308).

The Mystery and Power of the Forest

The forest around Little Sorrowful Creek is characterized as both immensely powerful and mysterious through vivid imagery, which conveys the sensory experience of stepping into the dense and waterlogged forest: The piney woods are “wet and steamy,” and the sky is visible only in “small blue puzzle pieces, blocked by the ancient trees” (17). The forest is riddled with “sluggish bayous and tumbling creeks” filled with “the venomous crew” of snakes, crawdads, turtles, and alligators (17). The forest is impenetrable and unmappable, further contributing to its aura of mystery: “There are no maps of this forest, so thick are the woods, too thick for any cartographer to measure or survey” (64). It’s characterized as a “forgotten forest” where “no one keeps time. No one except the trees” (26).

The trees are depicted as the powerful observers of the forest who watch and remember all: “It’s the trees who keep the legends” (82). In addition, the trees are moral arbiters of right and wrong who occasionally chose to intervene in the events of the lives of the people and animals of the forest. The trees willingly provide homes for those who deserve it: “Ash the old loblolly pine and it will talk about how it offered up one small den for one small cat” (112). Puck is deserving of help, so a tree helps him. Later, the old pine tree feels Puck’s desperation to rejoin his family and intentionally fells itself across the creek to allow him to cross to the other side: The tree “let go of the soggy earth that had held it all these years and leaned over” (267). The trees also choose to use “their own ancient magic to stir up the Zephyrs of Sleep” (66) to let Hawk Man and Night Song slip away together. The trees do so because they “know love for the rare wonder of it, so they are champions of it and do whatever they can to help it along its way” (99). Similarly, the trees watch over Ranger, Puck, and Sabine as they sleep, releasing the Zephyrs of Sleep to prevent any other animals from harming them. The trees judge the inherent goodness of these characters and therefore assist them. On the other hand, the trees critically judge those who are cruel, such as Gar Face: “What do you call someone who throws a mother cat and her kitten into a creek, who steals them from the hound who loves them, a hound twisting at his chain wailing, who never even looks back? [...] The trees have a word: Evil” (85). Gar Face’s death in the ferocious jaws of the Alligator King signals the forest’s inherent power.

Reflecting the forest’s inherent power are the sinister and mysterious animals who live there, such as the 100-foot Alligator King and Grandmother Moccasin. Both of these animals are mythical in their proportions and ages; each has lived for more than 1,000 years. The Alligator King’s terrifying power is evident in his manner of easily killing animals who stray too close: “He simply grabbed the victim by the throat, snapped its neck, and dragged it to the brown water” (27). Similarly, the ancient Grandmother Moccasin is a formidable hunter: “Her lethal jaws, like scissors, snapped her prey in half” (104).