57 pages • 1 hour read
Gary PaulsenWinterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 1994A 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.
Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Interior”
After leaving McGrath, Paulsen and the team begin the 700-mile journey through the Alaskan interior, bound for the Bering coast. Paulsen notices the sled is dragging and stops to clean dog feces off its runners. Despite this unpleasant task, the segment is going smoothly. Paulsen is feeling confident and enjoying “the harsh beauty of the woods” (203).
This lull in the tension is short-lived. The wind picks up dramatically, reaching “70, 80 miles an hour” (206), the temperature drops, and a swirling snowstorm makes continuing impossible. Paulsen has no choice but to camp out with the dogs in the middle of the wilderness.
When he awakens, Paulsen encounters another musher who has camped near him. The man shares doughnuts with Paulsen and suggests they “convoy over to Iditarod” (209), a ghost town that is the eponym of the race. Paulsen recalls thinking what a nice guy the man seemed to be but then reveals that the doughnut man later turned out to be a murderer.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Don’s Cabin”
Paulsen and the team arrive at Don’s Cabin, an old trapper’s hut that is not an official checkpoint. Outside the cabin, Paulsen witnesses a man kick a dog to death. The killer is the same man who shared doughnuts with Paulsen earlier.
The dog’s murder outrages Paulsen: “I saw hate, self-hate, hate and rage and such savagery that I drew back and suddenly understood Nazis and rabies and rape and pillage and My Lai and the death camps” (216).
Paulsen reports the man at the next checkpoint. When another musher corroborates Paulsen’s account of the incident, the dog killer is disqualified from the race and barred from the Iditarod for life.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Shageluk”
Paulsen and the team get a break crossing from Iditarod to Shageluk. They enjoy good weather, a “running moon at night” (219), an encounter with a herd of caribou, and a brief visit with a female musher.
In Shageluk, a nine-year-old boy brings Paulsen a big bowl of moose chili. The boy says his father thinks the mushers are crazy, but then he tells Paulsen that he plans to run the race when he turns 18. The boy gives moose chili to all the mushers who arrive at the checkpoint.
Chapters 14-16 Analysis
Despite hardships, it appears that Paulsen has completely embraced his new identity—as someone who loves dogs and the outdoors to the extent that he now prefers them to the comforts of home: “I had come to love running dogs as much as I loved the dogs themselves; had come to love the harsh beauty of the woods” (203). In fact, at the start of his journey across Alaska’s interior, he describes how comfortable and satisfied he is with his situation. Earlier thoughts of quitting have vanished completely: “But here, now, was everything I needed, everything I was; the sled, food, fifteen good friends—or fourteen friends and Devil, as it happened—all that I had become” (203). Besides, he makes some sound decisions in these chapters; the first is his decision to stop and camp out when the storm hits.
However, he and the reader also learn that not everyone on the trail shares his love and respect for the dogs that make the Iditarod a reality. After the dog’s murder, Paulsen takes his cross-species empathy to a new level by describing how the killing affected his dogs, not just him: “The screams of the dog and the man’s brutality had affected my team as well and they had pulled to the side in fear and I think loathing—certainly I felt that—and I pulled the hook and left then” (217). Paulsen also proves his musher credentials when he reports the incident at the next checkpoint—another good decision.
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