When Peter Met Pax
It is in this sequel that imagery is put to great effect to describe the origin story of the friendship between Peter and Pax. The memory of that fateful day is tied up with a “penance” that Peter formulates for himself: recalling in vivid detail the thing he did and then the thing he should have done. The thing he did makes for a much less disturbing reading experience:
“Peter closed his eyes. He visualized the afternoon when he’d found a dead vixen by the side of the road. He went over all his steps in detail: picking up her stiff, muddy body; carrying it away in search of a place to bury it; noticing the sandy spot beside a stone wall and scraping out a shallow grave with his boot…He had reached in and lifted the live kit—a male, a little dog fox. He’d curled it snug against his chest, where it had filled a hollowness he hadn’t known he was carrying. But now, for the penance, he spliced in a different scene: the thing his dad told him he should have done.”
Opening Scene
Imagery comprises the greater part of the book’s opening scene. The context setting up the present day efficiently fills in some of the gap between the original tale and this sequel. It also gives insight into the current status of Pax’s state of existence:
“Pax ran. He always ran—nearly a year after he’d last been caged, his muscles still remembered the hex wire. This morning the running was different, though. This morning the fox ran because below the hard, matted forest floor, below the crusts of snow that remained in the deepest pine-shades and below the wafers of ice lacing the puddles, he smelled it: spring. New life surging up —up from the bark and the buds and the burrows—and the only possible response to up was go.”
The Marshmallow Incident: Peter
Something that happened when Peter was younger and had first adopted Pax has continued to haunt him throughout his young life. Alluded to up to now, Chapter 20 kicks off with Peter’s recollecting the incident in a much more detailed way that brings his version of the story vividly to life through the use imagery:
“For his eighth birthday, his dad had taken him camping, and had allowed him to bring Pax. The weekend had been great, but the last night, sitting around a fire, Peter had made a mistake: he’d laid a marshmallow down to cool beside him, and Pax had snatched it up. Peter had wrapped the young fox’s burnt snout in a wet T-shirt quickly, but afterward he’d felt so terrible that he told his father he thought he didn’t deserve to have a pet.”
The Marshmallow Incident: Pax
Interestingly, Peter’s perceptual recall of this traumatic incident has just been recalled at the end of Chapter 19 through the perspective of the victim. Pax’s recollection of that night does not quite square perfectly with Peter’s version, but it does align quite nicely with the alternative perspective offered by his father to soothe Peter’s guilt:
“His boy’s father had built a fire, and...the humans had held sticks over the coals, and a warm, sweet smell—strange but appealing—had arisen from their white tips and Pax had watched Peter and his father eat the good-smelling white tips. Tempted, Pax had darted in and snatched up a stick Peter had laid on a stone beside him. He had yelped, surprised by how hot the marshmallow was, smeared over his snout. And his boy had leaped up, stripped off his shirt and soaked it in the stream, then held the cool cloth over Pax’s muzzle, soothing him and hugging him. Pax had felt safe and loved.”
