Saving Shiloh

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal cruelty and death and physical abuse.

Redemption is an important theme in the text, as Marty and the other community members of Shiloh witness Judd Travers’s character arc as he progresses from isolated outcast to hero. Judd does not come by his redemption without assistance, however, and the text implies that redemption is something that people can achieve only in concert with others. Judd achieves redemption in part due to his own actions, but it is through the help and compassion of Marty that Judd is able to pull himself out of his cycle of negative habits and win back the trust of the community.

At the beginning of the text, Judd has lost nearly all good will in the community following a drunk-driving accident: 

[W]hen a man wrecks his truck and his leg both, and almost loses his job—his life, even—he’s sunk about as low as he can get. Dad says either he’ll hate himself so much he’ll decide to change, or he’ll hate the way other folks feel about him, and turn that hating onto them (23). 

Marty worries about which path Judd will choose: whether he will change for the better or lean into his ostracization.