Imagination
into Bridge to Terabithia. Without imagination, life can be pretty
dreary, which is how Jess’s life is before he meets Leslie. Until
she arrives in Lark Creek, Jess’s only imaginative outlet is
drawing. But when Leslie arrives, she uses her imagination, and
encourages Jess to use his, to create a magical new world where
the two of them can be themselves and so much more.
“He grabbed the end of the rope and swung out toward the other
bank with a kind of wild exhilaration and landed gently on his
feet, taller and stronger and wiser in that mysterious land.”
This imaginative kingdom is not only a place where Jess and
Leslie are taller and stronger, it is also a place where fears are
forgotten: “Between the two of them they owned the world and no
enemy . . . could ever really defeat them.”
When Leslie dies, Jess wonders if the magic is lost, but discovers
that it isn’t—it is still inside him. And it is inside May Belle, too,
though she may not be aware of it until Jess shows it to her: “He
put flowers in her hair and led her across the bridge—the great
bridge into Terabithia—which might look to someone with no
magic in him like a few planks across a nearly dry gully.”
Fear
Fear and learning to accept one’s fears is another important
theme in Bridge to Terabithia. Before he becomes more selfaccepting,
Jess is ashamed of his fears. He is afraid to befriend
Leslie, and when he finally does, he is angry at himself for having
waited. “He smiled at her. What the heck? There wasn’t any
reason he couldn’t. What was he scared of anyhow? Lord.
Sometimes he acted like the original yellow-bellied sapsucker.”
When Jess listens to Leslie’s scuba diving essay, “he could hardly
breathe,” because he can’t swim and is afraid of the water. Again,
he is ashamed. “Lord, he was such a coward. . . . He was worse a
baby than Joyce Ann.”
And when the creek bed fills with water, Jess becomes afraid to
cross it to get to Terabithia. “For Jess the fear of the crossing
rose with the height of the creek.” He doesn’t know what to do.
“It wasn’t so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was
afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid.”
Jess refuses to let fear get the better of him, though. He decides
he’ll ask Leslie to teach him to swim come summer. “I’ll just
grab that old terror by the shoulders and shake the daylights
out of it.”
But Leslie dies before he can ask her. And Jess wonders if she
was scared. “Did you know you were dying?” he wonders. “Were
you scared like me?”
When May Belle tries to follow him over to Terabithia and nearly
falls in the creek, Jess rescues her. When May Belle tells him she
was scared, he tells her it’s okay. “Everybody gets scared
sometimes, May Belle. You don’t have to be ashamed.”
And as Jess looks to the future, he seems to be more at ease with
his fears. “As for the terrors ahead—for he did not fool himself
that they were all behind him—well, you just have to stand up to
your fear and not let it squeeze you white.”
Caring for others
Another theme in Bridge to Terabithia relates to the importance
of caring for others. We see it especially when Leslie finds Janice
Avery crying in the bathroom, and Jess wants to do something
to help her. “Lord, what was the matter with him? Janice Avery
had given him nothing but trouble, and now he was feeling
responsible for her.” Despite Leslie’s initial reluctance, Jess talks
her into going back into the girls’ room to try to help Janice.
Miss Edmunds also shows the importance of caring for others.
She does this by paying special attention to Jess, encouraging
him in his artwork, and taking him to the National Gallery and
the Smithsonian.
May Belle shows how much she cares when she tries to follow
Jess to Terabithia, even after he hit her in the face. “I just wanted
to find you,” she tells him, “so you wouldn’t be so lonesome.”
Giving
The value of giving and giving back is another theme that runs
through this book. One of the first and most natural places we
see this giving is at Christmastime. Jess wants to give Leslie
the perfect gift. “It was not that she would expect something
expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much
as he needed to eat when he was hungry.”
Jess does find the perfect gift for Leslie—a puppy. And she gives
him a wonderful gift of paper, brushes, and paint in return.
We also see the value of giving when Jess goes over his budget to
give May Belle the Barbie that she wants for Christmas. Later,
when Jess thinks about doing something nice for Mrs. Myers, he
tells the reader, “Sometimes like the Barbie doll you need to give
people something that’s for them, not just something that makes
you feel good giving it.”
When Jess realizes all that Leslie has given him, he feels that he
must find a way to reciprocate. “It was up to him to pay back to
the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in
vision and strength.” One way he does this is by building a bridge
and leading May Belle into Terabithia.
Death
Another important theme in Bridge to Terabithia is death. Jess
must learn to accept his best friend’s death, despite feeling that
“Leslie could not die any more than he himself could die.”
Jess reacts to the news of Leslie’s death with shock, selfishness,
anger, and grief. At first, Jess does not believe his father when he
tells him that Leslie has died: “No! I don’t believe you. You’re
lying to me!”
When Jess goes to see Leslie’s parents, he finds himself filled
with conflicted emotions. He feels briefly elated to think “he was
the only person his age he knew whose best friend had died. It
made him important.” He feels annoyed at all the adults crying
around him: “They weren’t crying for Leslie. They were crying for
themselves.” And he feels angry, angry that Leslie’s parents
brought her here in the first place.
Jess is also angry at Leslie. “She had tricked him. She had made
him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then
. . . she had left him stranded there.” He flings the paper and
paints she had given him for Christmas into the creek, crying
out, “I hate her. I hate her. I wish I’d never seen her in my whole
life.” When his father pulls Jess onto his lap and tells him, “Hell,
ain’t it,” Jess finds it “strangely comforting.”
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