41 pages • 1 hour read
Tunes for Bears to Dance To
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Background
Critical Context: New Realism, Naturalism, and Reality
Robert Cormier is renowned for portraying complex moral issues in his young adult literature, often presenting his young protagonists with challenging ethical dilemmas. His work is celebrated for its introspective depth and psychological realism. His classic novel The Chocolate War, published in 1974, is widely considered one of the best novels for adolescents of all time; in a 2004 survey among English teachers, college professors, librarians, and other professionals, the novella received top votes in this category (Claiborne, Jennifer L. and Ted Hipple. “The Best Young Adult Novels of All Time, or The Chocolate War One More Time.” English Journal, high school edition, vol. 94, no. 3, Jan. 2005, pp. 99-102). Another classic Cormier title, I Am the Cheese (1977), also made the list.
Cormier was a newspaper journalist for 30 years and often found inspiration for his fiction in news stories. In an interview with School Library Journal, he expressed his interest in themes of intimidation and the abuse of authority. These themes inform his most famous novels as well as Tunes for Bears to Dance To. He often paints a dark world in which, as in Tunes, the cards are stacked against a young main character who struggles to hold on to their humanity when confronted with evil.
Critics have applied various labels to Cormier’s work. Tunes for Bears to Dance To can be seen as a continuation of a young adult genre that Cormier himself helped to pioneer: New Realism. Begun with the 1967 publication of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, the genre rejected romance and sentiment in children’s fiction and instead chose frank and sometimes dark or controversial language and themes. Cormier’s work has also been described as Naturalist—a genre concerned with how society and other external influences shape individual behavior.
Tunes for Bears to Dance To shares aspects of both genres. Like much New Realist fiction, it depicts a young character confronted by an evil antagonist with a choice between hurting someone he cares for and harming his family’s welfare. Like Naturalist works, it shows how environment shapes character. There is no adult to whom Henry can turn to for help, so he is doomed to moral failure. The author himself rejected such labels, saying in an essay called “Forever Pedaling on the Road to Realism,” “The strange thing is that I am more concerned with reality than realism in the novels I write” (Sutherland, Zena, et. al. Celebrating Children’s Books: Essays on Children’s Literature in Honor of Zena Sutherland. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1981).
Historical Context: The Holocaust and Its Survivors in America
When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, an estimated 9.5 million Jewish people lived in Europe, constituting over 60% of the world’s Jewish population. Most lived in Eastern Europe. In just over a decade, by the end of World War II, two-thirds of Europe’s Jews would be annihilated by Hitler and his Nazi regime in the system of state-sponsored murder called the Holocaust.
Hitler’s goal was to establish Germany, which had suffered great economic difficulties after losing World War I, as a racially “pure” world power. Members of the Nazi Party considered Germans to be a superior race, with the so-called “Jewish race” the most inferior and thus deserving of extinction. Hitler’s desires for territorial expansion and racial supremacy went hand in hand: During the war, Nazis began rounding up Jews in conquered areas and executing them. For greater efficiency, the regime built extermination camps where prisoners could be transported en masse and either killed outright or enslaved as laborers. In Tunes for Bears to Dance To, Mr. Levine survives the Holocaust as a slave laborer building gas chambers, while the rest of his family perishes.
After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the American Jewish community reached out to help resettle Holocaust survivors. Individuals sponsored their relatives, while several American groups helped those without ties to the US to immigrate. Many settled in New York City, but others, like Mr. Levine, settled elsewhere. Life in America presented many challenges for the immigrants, from finding work and learning English to coping with ongoing trauma and raising families without the support of an extended family. In Cormier’s novella, it is unclear exactly when Mr. Levine came to America or how many years have passed since the end of the war. Regardless of the passage of time, he continues to suffer from trauma and speaks very little English. His only salve is to dedicate himself to building a model of the village and people whom he has lost.
Authorial Context: Ties to Cormier’s Life
Robert Cormier was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, a town in north-central Massachusetts, and lived there all his life. In some of his books, including Tunes for Bears to Dance To, Leominster is called Monument, with a neighborhood called Frenchtown. Fitchburg, a town about five miles from Leominster, is called Wickburg. Cormier was of French Canadian ancestry and gives his own background to the novella’s protagonist, Henry Cassavant, who has moved from the fictional Frenchtown to Wickburg at the start of the story. Although Henry’s ancestry is not strongly relevant in the text, he is at one point called a “Canuck” (a slur meaning Canadian) by Mr. Hairston and elsewhere briefly speaks in French.
A practicing Catholic, Cormier attended parochial school, as does Henry. The character’s Catholicism is very relevant to the novella, as he is a deeply religious child who prays often and worries about his dead brother’s soul. His piety is one of the reasons Mr. Hairston decides to target the child with a scheme involving bribery and betrayal.
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