“In the shadowy light of the stronghold everything seemed possible.” — Bridge to Terabithia
Time: When does the story take place?
Bridge to Terabithia is a contemporary novel, meaning it was written about the current time period. Since it was published more than twenty-five years ago, however, it is not contemporary
to today’s readers. We can see that the story is set in the mid-1970s in a number of ways. One of these is through a comment about the “recent” Vietnam War, which actually ended in 1975. Also, during the 1960s and 1970s there was a great deal of protest against the United States’ involvement in that war. People who supported the war sometimes called those who opposed it “peaceniks.” This is a name that some of the children in the book call Miss Edmunds. “Hippie,” another name Jess’s mom and some of the children call Miss Edmunds, also places the book in the 1970s. “Hippie” is a word that was commonly used at that time to describe a person who did not dress and act as most people did, and Miss Edmunds definitely stood out from the rest of Jess’s community. Jess notes that the kids “make fun of Miss Edmunds’s lack of lipstick or the cut of her jeans,” which made her different from the other women—female teachers or parents—they knew. Comments about fashion help show when the story takes place. We learn that Miss Edmunds was the only female teacher at Lark Creek Elementary who wore pants. Today it is common for women to wear pants, but at the time the book was written, it was still unusual, especially outside of big cities.
Place: Where are we?
The book is set in a fictional rural Virginia town. Paterson created the town, which she calls Lark Creek, based on her memories of living and teaching sixth grade for one year in rural Lovettsville, Virginia. “I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place,” Paterson has said. What is Lark Creek like? It is a rural, poor, and, in many ways, a narrow-minded place. It is also a place containing great physical beauty, for those willing to see it. Paterson establishes the rural setting in a number of ways. She begins the book with Jess running in his family’s cow field. Milking the cow is one of Jess’s chores. Another is picking beans from the bean patch and helping his mother can them. These are all activities that take place in a rural setting. The author tells us more about the rural setting when she describes Jess’s father’s long ride back and forth to Washington, D.C., where he works digging and hauling all day. Mr. Aarons’s ride is so long because the family lives in the country, many, many miles from the city. While rural places are not always poor, that is sometimes the case. As Jess tells Leslie, “You can’t make a go of a farm nowadays, you know. My dad has to go to Washington to work, or we wouldn’t have enough money. . . .” When Leslie tells him that money is not a problem for her family, Jess is surprised. “He did not know people for whom money was not the problem.”
It is clear that money is a problem for Jess’s family. His house is so small that Jess shares a bedroom with his two younger sisters. Jess’s worn sneakers, his one pair of corduroy pants, and his lack of boots show the reader how tight money is. When Jess draws, he uses whatever paper and pencils he can get hold of. But he dreams of more. “Lord, what he wouldn’t give for a new pad or real art paper and a set of those marking pens.” As Christmas approaches, the stress of not having enough money puts a strain on the entire family. Jess worries about what he can give Leslie: “His dad had told him he would give him a dollar for each member of the family, but even if he cheated on the family presents, there was no way he could get from that enough to buy Leslie anything worth giving her.” Most people in Lark Creek are as poor as the Aaronses. The lack of money in the town is evident at Jess’s school. Lark Creek Elementary is so crowded that Jess’s class of thirty-one students is jammed into a small basement room, music is held in the teachers’ room, and there is no gym. In addition, the school is short on supplies, “especially athletic equipment, so all the balls went to the upper grades at recess time after lunch.” That’s why Jess and the other lower-grade boys take up running during recess: It’s a sport that doesn’t require any special equipment. Paterson shows us Lark Creek’s prejudices when she tells us how angry Jess’s father was when Jess told him he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. “Bunch of old ladies turning my only son into some kind of a—,” he said. And even though he stopped on the word, “Jess had gotten the message. It was one you didn’t forget.” Jess’s family and schoolmates are just as narrow-minded about his friendship with Leslie as they are about his love of drawing. His older sisters call Leslie Jess’s “girl friend” and his mother says that she is sure Jess’s father is “fretting that his only son did nothing but play with girls, and they both were worried about what would come of it.” Jess and Leslie cope with the narrowness of the world around them by creating their own imaginary kingdom, where they are king and queen. They build Terabithia’s stronghold in the woods beyond the creek behind Leslie’s house. While the woods are there for all to enjoy, only Jess and Leslie seem to appreciate their beauty and magic. “As a regular thing, as a permanent place, this was where he would choose to be,” Jess thinks of the spot where they build their stronghold. “Here where the dogwood and redbud played hide and seek between the oaks and evergreens, and the sun flung itself in golden streams through the trees to splash warmly at their feet.”
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