61 pages • 2 hours read
Three-Inch Teeth
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Themes
The Dynamics Between Humans and Nature
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, and animal death.
Human-animal conflict is at the heart of the novel, exploring questions about what constitutes “normal” animal behavior and which lives—human or animal—matter more. While the novel is firmly on the side of Joe Pickett in that the lives of humans cannot be risked to “save” wildlife, it also shows how human and animal interests are sometimes difficult to balance. The narrative also blurs the boundaries between humans and animals, illustrating the fluid dynamics between humans and nature.
The novel’s setting brings humans and animals into close proximity. In some ways, the human characters behave as if their relationship with nature is straightforward, with humans exercising dominion over the natural world. Hunting, for example, is considered useful to keep the populations of certain animals in check and also provides livelihoods to outfitters who guide hunting expeditions. Joe states a preference for those who hunt for food, as opposed to those who hunt for trophies, but knows that even trophy hunting is permitted. The men who hunt a black bear sow, mistaking her for a grizzly, are let off with a citation, while the bear who is hunting humans is marked to be killed, suggesting that humans are in an uncomplicated position of power over animals.
There are other characters in the novel, however, who question this assumption of human domination and try to enforce a more equal dynamic between humans and the natural world. The main proponents of this view in the text are the Mama Bears, the wealthy animal rights activists who try to sabotage Joe’s mission to hunt down the rogue grizzly. Joe believes that most urban Americans, like the Mama Bears, tend to anthropomorphize animals, partly because they are disconnected from nature to a degree that they have stopped understanding it. Joe argues that it is dangerous to sentimentalize animals, portraying nature instead as “brutal, bloody, and completely ruthless” (78).
The novel also suggests that the dynamics between humans and nature are sometimes more ambiguous and complex than either the wardens or the Mama Bears are willing to admit. Tisiphone’s attacks on humans may have been the consequence of her cubs being run over by a negligent driver, which implies that humans are as much a threat to animals as animals are to humans. Further, the fact that a biologist like Jennie Gordon and a game warden like Joe are wrong about the behavior and identity of Tisiphone indicates that even experts do not fully understand animals. Nate Romanowski, who allies himself with the wilderness, believes that humans are incapable of acting beneficially on behalf of animals since “altering the balance of nature result[s] in disaster and unintended consequences” (49).
Three-Inch Teeth thus depicts the dynamics between humans and nature as complex and multifaceted. As the characters struggle to solve the grizzly attacks and to find a common outlook on their role in nature, the novel suggests that the boundaries between human and animal life are not as clear as they first seem.
The Persistence of Evil and the Resilience of Good
Two arch-villains from earlier in the series return in Three-Inch Teeth, Alex Soledad and Dallas Cates. As Cates and Soledad team up to enact a spree of murderous revenge, the novel’s main conflict becomes the cat-and-mouse game between the two men and their intended victims. In exploring the contrasts between Cates and Soledad’s crimes and the moral actions of Joe and his friends, the text examines the persistence of evil and the resilience of good.
Villainous characters seek each other out, finding common ground only in their desire to harm and destroy others. Soledad began an email correspondence with Cates, while Cates tracks down his ex-cellmate, LOR, to utilize his sadistic skills. Even Bobbi Johnson shows a propensity for aligning herself with questionable people since she is the one who established contact with Cates. Despite their close association, however, these characters lack genuine emotional bonds with one another. Cates does not have a sincere romantic interest in Johnson and speaks with disdain about both Soledad and LOR. The members within the group seem intent only on using one another to further their own ends and are quick to degrade or clash with each other whenever something goes awry. The text thus suggests that these antagonists are incapable of forming meaningful relationships.
Cates and Soledad also objectify people to the point of rendering them expendable, such that killing someone becomes almost routine. An example of this is Soledad’s murder of a schoolgirl to draw police officers away from the scene of Hewitt’s attack. Soledad refers to the murder as a “diversion serious enough to pull all those cops straight off the golf course” (245). The reference to the murder as a “diversion” indicates the moral corruption of Soledad. Similarly, Cates beats and ties up the llama-raising couple just because they now live in his former home, with Soledad later murdering them in cold blood. Although the couple is not on the “enemy list,” they are treated with the same violent contempt as the people whom Cates and Soledad originally planned to murder. The senselessness and randomness of their violent attacks reinforces how morally bankrupt these antagonists are.
Nevertheless, the nihilism of evil is also balanced by the resilience of love, friendship, and community. Characters like Joe, Marybeth, and Sheridan do not give up in the face of evil; rather, they fight it and stick together despite their circumstances. Sheridan steels herself against the horror of Liv’s death and takes Kestrel away from the scene to save her, and her parents eagerly welcome the toddler into their home. Marybeth builds a blanket fort to comfort the child even as a pack of murderers heads toward their home. Joe tries his best to maintain order even in situations of extreme provocation, such as when he tries to convince Nate not to murder Cates.
These small moments of warmth and solidarity form a bulwark against bleak forces. As the novel ends, Joe is still doing his job while Marybeth and Sheridan support one another and care for Kestrel, indicating that good resists evil in every way it can.
The Tensions Between Revenge and Justice
Cates explains to his girlfriend, “We both deserve justice, and we’re going to get it” (60), before setting in motion his plan to target his enemies. Cates’s definition of justice involves killing every person who he believes “destroyed” his family. Thus, what Cates conceives of as “justice” is really revenge, exposing the tensions between revenge and justice.
Cates is consumed by revenge because he believes that he has the right to violently kill anyone he holds responsible for his family’s downfall. He makes constant references to the destruction of his family, citing the deaths of his father, mother, and brothers as if to commit them to memory. He also actively looks for new targets, which suggests that revenge can quickly spiral out of control. Apart from his list of six archenemies, Cates quickly adds CO Winner to the list. He even seeks vengeance against the llama-rearing couple who bought his old home, as he believes that they have also contributed to the end of not just his family but his way of life.
Cates is not the only character consumed with revenge. Clay Sr. wants revenge on the grizzly for killing his son, and Nate seeks to end Cates for his murder of Liv. Even the bear Tisiphone, or 413, wants a mother’s revenge against the people who killed her cubs. Revenge is so strong a force that even relatively positive characters like Nate cannot resist it. Nate becomes transformed by grief and revenge after he sees Liv dead. Joe notices that Nate’s face is now a “blank white mask […] his eyes […] rimmed with red […] his pupils […] sharp black pinpricks” (306). Even when Joe begs Nate not to kill Cates, Nate ignores Joe and fires the jaws of Zeus II on Cates. Thus, revenge once again acts as an unconquerable force, creating more and more destruction.
By contrast, justice is a means of trying to uphold moral and legal norms to break violent cycles, which is what Joe tries to favor in the novel. He tries to mediate between Clay Sr. and the Mama Bears when things are at risk of getting too heated, and he defends the importance of handing Cates over to the police even though he understands Nate’s rage. Joe is haunted by the fact that he used less-than-ethical means to secure Cates’s conviction, as he realizes that while trying to get Cates imprisoned was a laudable aim, bending the rules to do so was not. In imprisoning Cates through less-than-just means, Joe put his family and community at risk by inspiring Cates to feel victimized and bent on revenge. Three-Inch Teeth thus suggests that while the lines between revenge and justice are not always clear, justice is the only way to avoid endless cycles of vengeance and violence.
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