Tuesday 29 April 2014

Did Henry intentionally smash Mr. Levine's village in "Tunes for Bears to Dance To"?

In the young adult novel Tunes for Bears to Dance To, Henry's horrible employer at the local grocery store, Mr. Hairston, blackmails him into agreeing to smash up Mr. Levine's village in exchange for Henry being able to keep his job and receive the headstone for Eddie, Henry's deceased brother whose death prompted the family's move in the first place.

Mr. Hairston also tells Henry that destroying the village will result in Henry's mother receiving a promotion and a pay raise, while failing to destroy it will get his mother fired and ruin his reputation at school. 


Henry feels backed into a corner and does not think he can share this information with his mother. Thus, he hides out in the art center's storage room with a mallet in hand, eventually dozing off to sleep while he considers what he should do. When he wakes up, he walks to the village display and raises the mallet over his head to smash it. 


In the process of doing this, Henry decides that he will not smash the village after all; however, a rat scares him and causes him to accidentally drop the mallet on the village. Thus, although Henry initially planned on intentionally destroying the village to save his and his mother's job and to receive the headstone, the actual physical act of destruction was unintentional. 

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