Tornado

As Pete begins his story, he uses vivid sensory detail and language to describe the morning on which a tornado brought Tornado to the family. The morning passed “slow and scary” (6) after Pete’s mother suggests that she has smelled a storm. The use of vivid language about Pete’s mother sniffing the air and the alliteration of slow and scary emphasize the importance of the day in question. In both the present timeline of Chapter 1 and Pete’s narrative in Chapter 2, Byars emphasizes a mixture between fear and normalcy. Both the narrator and Pete are afraid at the prospect of a tornado but have experienced the phenomenon before. Byars again emphasizes the Resilience in the Face of Natural Disaster theme of the novel. While tornados are terrifying, and Pete remembers shivering when his mother sniffs the storm, the family members try to look for the best in the situation, particularly Pete’s father.

In addition to characterizing Pete as a young child, this section of the novel characterizes the personalities and dynamics among Pete’s other family members. Pete tends to fight with his younger brother, Sammy, which is why their mother doesn’t want them to play the card game War. Sammy becomes frustrated because he is losing and throws his cards down, suggesting that he can be a sore loser. Pete’s mother is characterized by her ability to sense the storm, in the detail with which Chapter 2 opens: “At breakfast that morning, I remember my mother looked up from the stove, took a breath, and said, ‘I smell a storm’” (6). This passage both introduces a detail that characterizes Pete’s mother and foreshadows the storm. Smelling a storm suggests an uncanny ability that increases the ominous tone of the chapter. Other than Pete and Tornado, the character who is characterized in the most detail within Pete’s stories is his father. Pete’s father is prone to finding the good in things and uses humor to cope with difficult situations. He notes that he is surprised to be alive after the tornado rips the roof from the house and then says that they needed a new roof anyway after the storm has ripped it off. In Chapter 3, Pete’s father initially says that he can’t watch the card trick for long but then stays to help Pete practice it. This suggests that he is perceptive and devoted to his children. He is defined throughout the novel by his persistent optimism in both small and significant matters. When Pete says that Tornado knows half a card trick, Pete’s father says that “half a card trick’s better than none” (17). Overall, Byars provides details about Pete’s family to characterize their family unit and give an idea of what Pete’s day-to-day life was like in childhood.

This section of the novel also begins to characterize Tornado and his importance to Pete and the family. Tornado is an example of resilience because he is literally brought by the storm, his doghouse having been picked up by the funnel cloud. Throughout the novel, tornados function as a symbol of change and the unknown. In the instance of Tornado’s arrival, the change is a shocking but positive one. Byars also introduces the novel’s theme of The Power of Human-Animal Bonds. Pete feels an immediate affinity for Tornado, trying to coax him out of the doghouse and worrying about the dog when he won’t come out. Pete’s father and Tornado seem to reach a formal agreement at the end of Chapter 2 when “my daddy put out his hand. Tornado put out his paw. They shook like two men striking a bargain” (12). This section of the novel thus begins to clarify Tornado’s importance to the family, his function as a symbol of resilience, and his role in Pete’s childhood experience.

Byars characterizes the setting throughout the novel as simple and functional. The farm environment is important to both the way of life and the novel’s setting, with barns functioning as an important detail of the landscape. In Chapter 2, the setting is described only in relation to the tornado’s destruction: 

Outside, the yard was not our yard anymore. The tree with the tire swing was laid flat. The tops of all the pine trees had been snapped off. A doghouse I had never seen before was beside the well. A piece of bicycle was here, the hood of a car there. I stepped over somebody’s clothesline that still had some clothes on it (8). 

The passage is important because it uses the setting to demonstrate the contrast between childhood and destruction, particularly the detail that the tire swing tree has been flattened. Again, Byars builds on the Resilience in the Face of Natural Disaster theme. The passage also suggests the suddenness of the tornado disruption. The detail of the clothesline with clothes still on it suggests the immediacy with which daily life can be interrupted by disaster. This passage suggests the fragility of both humans and the spaces in which they live in the face of natural disasters. It also demonstrates the sense of community and shared experience as pieces of other people’s yards have been transported to Pete’s home.