Mortality and Legacy in Life, and Death, and Giants
The Thematic Claim
At its core, Life, and Death, and Giants asks what survives a person after death. The novel’s epigraph, an untitled Emily Dickinson poem, sets the terms: life, death, and giants are “Minor—Apparatus—Hopper of the Mill—,” small moving parts in a vast, indifferent machinery. Fame, Dickinson suggests, is maintained “by Accident that they proclaim.” The thematic claim that follows from this opening is not that death makes life meaningless, but that meaning must be made locally, person by person. Because cosmic recognition is random and impersonal, the lasting legacy is not public fame but the good left behind in children, in stories, and in quiet acts of love. Ron Rindo tests this claim through Gabriel Fisher, an eighteen-pound baby who becomes a giant, an athlete, and finally a dying young man, and through the people who surround him.
Tracing the Theme Across the Plot
Part One: A Mythologized Birth
The prologue establishes mortality as the condition of Gabriel’s entry into the world. In Lakota, Wisconsin, a dying town that values anonymity, teenager Jasper Fisher brings his mother Rachel to Dr. Thomas Kennedy after a prolonged labor. Rachel refuses medical help, and Thomas delivers Gabriel using livestock surgical techniques. The baby is massive: eighteen pounds and twenty-seven inches. Rachel dies almost immediately.
The narrative voice notes that this event will strip Lakota of its obscurity and that Gabriel’s birth story will become mythologized. This is the novel’s first test of the epigraph. A death and a birth happen in the same moment, and the machinery of the mill keeps turning. Rachel’s own legacy is not fame but the child she dies to deliver. Gabriel, in turn, will inherit a story he cannot control. The town’s anonymity, its “freedom to fail,” is already being replaced by a legend. The novel immediately distinguishes between the story others will tell about Gabriel and the actual life he will live, between accidental renown and genuine inheritance.
Part Two: The Vigil and the Death of Gabriel
Gabriel’s death from an inoperable brain tumor, not yet twenty-three, is the novel’s central confrontation with mortality. The Trey Beathard chapter shows the awkward helplessness of watching a giant shrink day by day. Trey, a coach who once pulled Gabriel into football, sits with him at night, reads to him, and listens to Gabriel regret breaking up with Bella. Gabriel’s fame as “Anakim the Amish Giant” cannot protect him. His size, his strength, and his athletic achievements all become irrelevant in the face of the tumor. What remains is relationship: Trey holding water for him, Thomas arranging care, Hannah and Josiah keeping vigil, and Gabriel’s desire to reconnect with Bella before he dies.
The death scene itself, narrated by Hannah Fisher, transforms the natural world into witness. Tens of thousands of fireflies rise in a cloud, settle on Gabriel’s body, and then ascend like “winged cherubim.” Thomas finds feathers from pheasant, turkey, swan, cardinal, crane, owl, and goldfinch, and lays the most beautiful across Gabriel’s chest. Hannah interprets the event as a miracle: Gabriel’s soul, unburdened by his body, ascends to heaven. Thomas offers a scientific hypothesis about insects and curious mammals. The novel allows both readings to stand. Mortality, for Hannah, is not the end of legacy but the release of it into something larger. For Thomas, the mystery remains inexplicable, yet he cannot dismiss what he saw.
Part Three: The Funeral and the Community’s Grief
Gabriel’s Amish funeral, described by Billy Walton, is the novel’s most explicit examination of legacy. The service includes German and English hymns, Charlie’s recitation of “To an Athlete Dying Young,” a eulogy from Coach Beathard, tearful words from Doc Kennedy, and Billy’s coffin joke. The Housman poem is crucial: it praises an athlete who dies before his fame fades, carried “shoulder-high” through the marketplace and then to his threshold. Gabriel’s life echoes that pattern, but the funeral refuses to let his legacy rest on football alone. Doc Kennedy praises Gabriel’s love for people and animals, his uncanny understanding of what they needed. Oliver Edwards sings “Amazing Grace,” and swallows swirl over the crowd. Billy, unable to speak his grief, tells a joke about wanting people to say “Look! He’s moving!” The laughter that ripples through the crowd is itself a legacy: Gabriel’s life gave these people a shared ability to mourn without despair.
The burial follows at the Cemetery of Peace. Gabriel is buried beside his mother Rachel, opposite his brother Jasper, with only a fossil-bearing limestone to mark the grave. The plain marker is a deliberate rejection of monumental fame. What matters, the novel suggests, is not the size of the stone but the community that files past the body, speaks, sings, and remembers.
Part Four: Thomas Kennedy’s Departure
The final chapter belongs to Thomas Kennedy, who has been haunted for years by the fear that he will leave “no substantial legacy at all.” Middle-aged, childless after five miscarriages, he imagines himself vanishing within two generations: “the repetitions of an unremarkable life.” But the novel undercuts that fear. Thomas delivered Gabriel, gave him books like The Yearling, taught him to care for animals, and welcomed his family into his home. He becomes the town’s quiet center of care.
After his mother dies, Thomas scatters her ashes from a borrowed kayak on Lake Michigan. He then sells his house to Bella, Gabriel’s widow and the mother of his son Raphael, for ten thousand dollars below asking. The real estate agent protests; Thomas says simply, “That’s okay. I’ve got enough.” On an October morning, at seventy-one, he drives west toward a rustic cabin on the Missouri River, feeling that his life is just beginning. His legacy is not a monument but a living chain: Bella will raise Raphael knowing his great-grandparents and all the people who loved his father. Thomas carries with him the book of Emily Dickinson poems Hannah gave him, and her words: “It is the good we leave behind us that makes a life worth living.”
Character Connections
The theme of mortality and legacy runs through nearly every major character.
- Gabriel Fisher is both the giant and the fragile human. His body becomes famous, but his real legacy is the love he inspires and the son he never lives to raise.
- Hannah Fisher buries an infant son, a grown daughter, and two grandsons. She moves from zealous faith to humble maturity, recognizing that her failures yielded empathy, friendship, and an opened mind. Her legacy is the wisdom she passes to Thomas and the continuity she finds in Raphael.
- Thomas Kennedy fears he will be forgotten, yet his acts of kindness echo through Gabriel, Bella, Raphael, and even the animals he heals. His departure is not an escape from legacy but an embodiment of it: he carries the good he has done into a new life.
- Billy Walton proposes to Stella in his pajamas after hearing of Gabriel’s death and is accepted. His joke at the funeral is an act of love, a refusal to let death have the final word.
- Josiah Fisher and Hannah Fisher represent the continuing chain of generations. Their great-grandson Raphael is proof that Gabriel’s life continues.
- Trey Beathard learns that legacy is not trophies or wins. His vigil at Gabriel’s bedside is more important than any game he ever coached.
Symbol Connections
The novel’s symbols reinforce the theme with remarkable consistency.
The Emily Dickinson poetry serves as the epigraph’s lens. The poem “Immortal is an ample word” challenges Hannah when she reads it in her mother’s hidden book. Mother had underlined the lines about Heaven’s “marauding Hand”: if not for the promise of immortality, earthly life would already be heaven enough. The poem troubles Hannah because it suggests that the hope of heaven is simultaneously a gift and a burden. Legacy, like immortality, can be a weight as well as a comfort.
The fireflies appear first at Gabriel’s death, when they form a blinding column of light and lift his soul upward. They return at the end of Hannah’s chapter, when she, Bella, and Raphael catch fireflies together, a ritual of “gentle light and continuity.” The fireflies connect death to ongoing life: what rises from one body can still glow in the hands of the next generation.
The feathers Thomas gathers after Gabriel’s death are another symbol of what survives. Birds molt, feathers are shed, and yet each one is beautiful and particular. Thomas lays the iridescent mallard feather, the turkey feather, and the whooping crane feather on Gabriel’s chest. In this context, feathers suggest the lightness of a soul released from a heavy body, and the way beauty persists after loss.
The goat appears throughout Gabriel’s life, first through his early animal care and later as a connection between his rural Amish upbringing and his athletic career. The goat is an earthy, stubborn, ordinary creature, the opposite of monumental fame. Its presence grounds Gabriel’s legacy in the everyday work of caring for living things.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel refuses to resolve mortality into a single comfort. The epigraph suggests that giants are minor apparatus, that even the grandest human life is a beetle at the candle. And yet Gabriel’s short life touches nearly every corner of the earth. Thomas reflects on the strange paths human lives take, and how the short life of a really tall young man changed his corner of Wisconsin. The contradiction is intentional: the universe may be indifferent, but human love is not.
Hannah and Thomas embody this contradiction in their final conversation. Thomas describes the deathbed vision as the biggest hatch of fireflies he has ever seen, a natural event explainable by a field guide. Hannah answers, “Well, I like my conjecture, as you would say, better than yours.” The novel does not force a choice. It allows the miracle and the insects to coexist, just as it allows grief and laughter to share a funeral.
Legacy itself is treated with suspicion. The alderman who wants to buy Gabriel’s shoes for a tourist display is refused. His enormous clothes are folded, his prosthetic legs donated, his bed dismantled. The family understands that preserving a life is not the same as displaying it. Fame made Gabriel “Anakim the Amish Giant,” but that name was accidental, a story the world told. The novel insists that real legacy is narrower and deeper: a child who carries your name, a friend who remembers your kindness, a teacher who sells you his house at a loss so your son can grow up surrounded by people who loved you.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the Dickinson epigraph frame the novel’s treatment of mortality and legacy?
The epigraph lists “Life, and Death, and Giants” as “Minor—Apparatus—Hopper of the Mill,” suggesting that these grand forces are small parts of an indifferent cosmic machine. Fame, Dickinson says, is maintained “by Accident.” The novel then tests this view: public renown may be accidental and impersonal, but the good people leave behind in each other is not.
2. What role does “To an Athlete Dying Young” play at Gabriel’s funeral?
Charlie recites the Housman poem, which remembers an athlete who dies before his fame fades and is carried “shoulder-high” through the marketplace. The poem honors Gabriel’s brief athletic glory, but the funeral as a whole expands his legacy beyond sports. Doc Kennedy’s eulogy focuses on Gabriel’s love for people and animals, and Billy’s joke reminds the mourners that laughter and friendship are also part of what he left behind.
3. Why does Thomas Kennedy feel his life is “just beginning” at seventy-one?
Thomas spent years believing he would leave no substantial legacy, since he had no children and considered his work unremarkable. But by the end of the novel he has delivered Gabriel, cared for the Fisher family, given his home to Bella and Raphael, and carried Hannah’s wisdom into the world. The feeling that his life is beginning is not denial of death but acceptance of it: he is finally free to live the next chapter without fear of being forgotten.
4. What do the fireflies symbolize in both Gabriel’s death and the novel’s ending?
At Gabriel’s death, tens of thousands of fireflies gather around his body, rise together, and carry his soul upward in a column of light. The image suggests that death releases something beautiful rather than destroying it. In the final Hannah chapter, she catches fireflies with Bella and Raphael, turning the same symbol into a ritual of continuity. The fireflies connect the miracle of death to the ongoing life of the next generation.
5. Why do Gabriel’s family refuse the alderman’s offer to buy his shoes?
The alderman wants to put Gabriel’s shoes on tourist display, turning his life into a curiosity. The family instead dismantles his bed, donates his prosthetic legs, and folds his enormous clothes. They refuse because Gabriel’s legacy is not his size or his fame. It lives in his son, in the memories of the people who loved him, and in the quiet acts of care that surrounded his short life. Selling his shoes would reduce that legacy to merchandise.