70 pages • 2 hours read
Kate DiCamilloBecause of Winn-Dixie
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Friends and Family
Opal discovers the true value of friends and family when she moves to Naomi and finds herself alone for the first time in her life. She says to Winn-Dixie: “You don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old” (21). Opal’s idea of friends and family, and the loss and loneliness she associates with those relationships, troubles her from the beginning of the novel. Winn-Dixie coming into her life teaches her how to welcome people in, despite those losses.
Opal struggles to understand the meaning of friendship, and how to forgive people their pasts and their idiosyncrasies, for much of the book. She is not friends with anyone her own age, finding Amanda Wilkinson “pinch-faced” and the Dewberry boys ignorant and rude. Opal’s adult friends, Otis and Gloria and Miss Franny, help her discover the power of forgiveness, particularly when it comes to friendship. Gloria reminds Opal, “But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now” (96). Opal sees flaws in those around her, rather than strengths—it is only in learning that everyone has flaws that she is able to truly forgive and find empathy.
The preacher sums up the idea of friendship and love through hardship in his blessing at Opal’s party. He says, “Dear God […] thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other” (153). Opal learns how to embrace this philosophy over the course of the book and finds alleviation from her own suffering in her ability to love others.
Loneliness and Loss
As in life, every character in Because of Winn-Dixie is struggling with some kind of loss, hardship, and loneliness. This is a focus of the book, as Opal learns that grief is a natural part of life and is inextricable from the joys of living. Even Sweetie Pie Thomas, at five years old, understands loss and loneliness—she yearns for a dog, but cannot have one, and so she feels that yearning acutely each time she is around Winn-Dixie.
The Littmus Lozenge offers symbolic representation of the idea of loss and grief in the novel. In the Littmus Lozenge, the sweet flavor of candy is inseparable from an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Opal describes it: “I didn’t go to sleep right away. I lay there, and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out” (126). Every character who tastes a Littmus Lozenge tastes that sadness, though it reminds them of different things—the preacher and Opal think of Opal’s mother, Gloria thinks of her own mistakes, and Otis thinks of being in jail.
Opal’s growth over the course of the novel can be tracked in relation to her perspective on loss and loneliness. She begins the novel obsessed with the loss of her mother and believes that she is alone in that grief. She is surprised to learn that her grief is shared with everyone she meets—as Gloria says, “I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart” (134). Even people whom Opal thinks could never have experienced loss, like young Amanda Wilkinson, carry their own grief. Opal finds empathy and compassion in that knowledge, and the way loss connects her to those around her.
Ultimately, Opal comes to terms with her grief when she accepts that loss is a part of life. It allows her to feel compassion, and to fully experience the joys of the world. She says to the ghost of her mother, at the end of the novel, “I’ll still think about you, I promise. But probably not as much as I did this summer” (178). While her grief is inextricable from her, Opal knows that it does not define her anymore.
Seeing With the Heart
Seeing with the heart is a phrase borrowed from Gloria, who is going blind—she says to Opal during their first meeting, “You know, my eyes ain’t too good at all […] so I got to rely on my heart. Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so I can see you with my heart” (66). Seeing with the heart is a way of understanding a person through character alone—it has nothing to do with how a person appears on the outside.
Opal learns how to see with the heart through lessons Gloria teaches her, as she learns how to love, how to forgive, and how to empathize with others. The most notable lesson in seeing with the heart comes when Opal is afraid of Otis, because he went to jail. She wonders if she should be wary of him, but Gloria corrects her. Gloria shows her the mistake tree, which symbolizes every bad thing she’s ever done. Opal is shocked, unaware that someone as wonderful as Gloria could have done so many bad things. Gloria uses this to explain to Opal, “[…] you got to remember, you can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now” (96).
Forgiveness is a central tenant of seeing with the heart. The preacher, Gloria, and Miss Franny push Opal to forgive the Dewberry brothers, who seem rude and ignorant, but turn out to be kind and understanding. Opal is shocked that two people who could seem so cruel have the capacity for goodness inside them—when she sees them with her heart, she discovers their complexity, and is better able to love them.
Ultimately, seeing with the heart allows Opal to forgive Amanda for being a know-it-all. Opal thinks at the party, “I was surprised at how glad I was to see Amanda. And I wanted to tell her I knew about Carson. I wanted to tell her I understood about losing people, but I didn’t say anything. I was just extra nice” (147). Opal is also better able to understand the preacher and his fears, and to forgive her mother for the mistakes she made that drove her away from her family. By seeing with the heart, Opal acknowledges the complexity of what it means to be human; the mistakes we make, the love we carry, and the connection that binds us all together.
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