How To Eat Fried Worms

“‘What d’ya mean, it’s not fair?’ said Joe. ‘Nobody said anything about where the worms were supposed to come from. We can get them anywhere we want.’ ‘Not from a manure pile,’ said Tom. ‘That’s not fair. Even if we didn’t make a rule about something, you still have to be fair.’”

To the four boys, $50 is a lot of money, and, even as the worm challenge begins, they start to argue about the rules. It’s a game where a slight mistake—forgetting to eat the day’s worm until 12:01 the next morning, for example—can be grounds for declaring a winner. None of the boys want that to happen to them, but they aren’t above making it happen to the other team. Tom also presents the key debate of the novel when he says that you have to play fair, even if the rules don’t specifically define what “fair” is in that context. Both teams constantly walk this line, often overstepping into territory that is utterly unfair and, despite Tom’s early admonition, using the lack of rules in their favor.

“He glopped ketchup and mustard and horseradish on the night crawler, squeezed on a few drops of lemon juice, and salted and peppered it.”

Billy must be brave to eat his first worm. This one is especially large. To help himself with the gruesome task, he pours plenty of sauces over the night crawler and manages to choke it down, slice by slice. By covering the worm in condiments, Billy tries to avoid the reality of eating a worm, but this is a challenge he’ll have to learn to face head on in order to navigate it successfully.

“I just taste ketchup and mustard mostly. But it makes me feel sort of sick. Even before I eat it. Just thinking about it.”

It’s not the worm that tastes bad, Billy says, it’s the idea of eating a worm that tastes yucky. In this way, Billy falls victim to the persuasive powers of his mind. In order to eat all 15 worms, he’ll have to learn to control his own thoughts and use them to his advantage. This scene is his first step toward doing so.

“And we’d roar round and round the classroom while Mrs. Howard knelt among the overturned desks and chairs, sobbing helplessly into her hands, and then rhum-rhum out the door and up the hall, thumbing our noses at the monitors. Brackety-brackety-brackety up the stairs, stiff-arming tacklers, into Mr. Simmons’s office—up onto his desk! Broom! Broom!—a backfire into his face, and zoooom! out the window as he topples backward in his chair in a hurricane of quiz papers and report cards. And then, crunch, landing on the driveway, we roar off down the highway to Bennington and join the Navy so Mrs. Howard and Mr. Simmons and our parents can’t punish us.”

Tom raises Billy’s spirits by imagining outrageous ways they’ll ride the minibike Billy will earn from eating worms. Tom keeps it silly to make Billy laugh and forget his queasiness. It’s also representative of their yearning to be free of all the rules handed down by parents and teachers. The style of Tom’s narrative is representative of the whimsical and onomotopeioa-heavy style Rockwell often utilizes.

“Trout, salmon, flounder, perch,

I’ll ride my minibike into church.

Eel, salmon, bluegill, trout,

Wait’ll you hear the minister shout.

Clam, flounder, tuna, sucker,

Look out here we come, old Mrs. Tucker.

Lobster, black bass, oyster stew,

There goes New Orleans, here comes Peru.”

Tom’s flawed-but-amusing ditty helps pump up Billy’s enthusiasm for the third worm and diverts Billy’s attention from the ugly truth. This scene amplifies the childlike silliness of the narrative, but it also points at their more adult-like visions of worldwide travels and escaping the everyday.

“Joe went on with his story: how his mother had been carried upstairs to her room; how the doctor had come, shaking his head; how his aunt had sobbed, pulling down all the shades in their house; how that morning his mother had finally come downstairs for the first time leaning on his aunt’s arm, pale and sorrowful; how…”

Joe tries to scare Billy with a made-up story of pain and death from eating worms. Its over-the-top theatrics mark the story as fictional, as well as offer a nod to Joe’s flair for the dramatic. While this story is intended to scare Billy, it does the opposite, revealing to the boy the extent to which is friends will go to make him lose the bet. This realization only strengthens his resolve.

“Look, said Billy to himself, staring down at the fried worm on the plate. Be sensible. How can it hurt me? I’ve eaten four already. Tom was just scared. He’s like that. He eggs other people on, but he never wants to do anything himself.”

Sometimes the best coaches can’t do what they teach. Tom is good at urging Billy forward on his quest to eat 15 worms, but when offered his own worm to eat, Tom runs away. Billy is left to be his own coach and to cheer himself on, developing a sense of independence and self-sufficiency. This gives Billy the strength to continue, with or without Tom.

“Joe, suppose I lose? My father’ll never let me take the money out of my savings account. I know he won’t. You think I’ll lose, Joe? Huh? Huh? Joe, tell me. Give it to me straight. Joe, I got to know. I can’t sleep.”

Billy isn’t the only one worried about the bet. True, Billy’s pride is on the line, and that’s very important, but if Alan loses, he’ll have to confront his angry father over the lost $50 from his savings. With the staccato sentences and repetition, Rockwell communicates Alan’s anxiety to the reader.

“And then he felt something cold on his ankles and looked under the tablecloth and there were two more of the huge worms wound around and around his ankles. And then he felt something weighing down his arm and he looked and there was another worm wound around his arm, glaring hungrily at him with its bloodshot eyes […].”

The worms, combined with all the scary talk from Joe, give Billy nightmares. In literature, dreams are often utilized to explicitly communicate the concerns or symbolic experiences of the protagonist to readers. In Billy’s case, the worms in his dreams—like the worms in real life—weigh him down and threaten to derail his goals. Rockwell uses the dream sequence to communicate to readers the mental weight of Billy’s worm-eating experience.

“And then his father said, ‘You’re sure? These weren’t little ones. These were nightcrawlers.’ Pause. ‘And no long-range ill effects?’ Pause. His father laughed. ‘A bet, I think.’”

Billy overhears his father talking on the phone with Poison Control and learns that worms are harmless to eat. From now on, Billy won’t be afraid of worms and he won’t believe Joe’s claptrap about their dangers. This will shift the advantage strongly toward Billy; his chances of winning just jumped. This scene also establishes Billy’s father as a voice of reason in the novel.

“Billy gulped it triumphantly, serene, untroubled. By the door Alan glowered, his mind racing: He’s gonna do it, he’ll win, what’ll I do? Fifty dollars.”

 Now that he’s learned from real medical experts that eating worms can’t hurt him, Billy’s no longer afraid to complete the contest and win the bet. Alan and Joe don’t know this, so they’re mystified that Billy suddenly seems so calm about worms. The two boys must dig deeper and find new ways to frustrate Billy.

“After a while Joe said, ‘Anyway, I was right. If Billy’d eaten it, it would have been cheating. But he didn’t, so it’s not. The bet’s still on.’”

Joe’s great strength is arguing his way out of a jam. He and Alan try to slip two worms into Billy’s ninth worm-eating task, but when Billy realizes the trick, Joe nimbly avoids repercussions through his mental acuity. It’s often Joe’s swiftness on his feet and lawyerly perspective that helps him and Alan continue in their hijinks.

“She read: ‘Alsatian Smothered Worm: dredge the worm with seasoned flour. Saute in three tablespoons drippings until browned. Cover with sliced onions, pour over one cup thick sour cream, cover pot closely, and bake in a slow oven until tender.’”

While Alan and Joe are away and Mrs. Forrester monitors her son’s worm-eating challenge, the family stumbles onto a series of fancy ways to prepare worms. Joe’s attempt to involve Billy’s mom was meant to sow conflict and reduce Billy’s chances of winning the bet, but the gambit backfires when she becomes happily involved in the project. Shortly she’ll work up a worm dessert as well.

“You know how he loves to eat. You ever seen him refuse something to eat? By the time we start home he’ll be bloated, drowsy, belching. Remember the last time? When his father took us? He was asleep by the time we hit Peekskill. Your father’ll carry him in from the car; his mother and father’ll put him to bed; next morning he’ll wake up—TOO LATE! You’ve won! Fifteen worms in fifteen days! He missed a day!”

The two conspirators, stumped by Billy’s refusal to quit eating the worms, have turned to darker methods. This scheme might even be legal by the rules of the bet: They won’t stop Billy from eating a worm because Billy, overeater that he is, will gorge himself, fall asleep of his own accord, and simply forget about the worm until it’s too late. This scene demonstrates one of the internal conflicts at the core of the novel: Billy’s tendency to overeat. The willingness of his friends to take advantage of Billy’s weakness, about which he is clearly sensitive, is indicative of their friendship and the ways in which they’ll mistreat one another.

“‘Alan Phelps and Joseph O’Hara,’ shouted Tom, ‘have forced us to wake you all up so that you may now witness, ta-ratta-ta-ratta-ta-ratta-ta-ta: THE EATING OF THE THIRTEENTH WORM!’”

Alan and Joe’s plan to stuff Billy so he sleeps through the 13th worm fails, and their complex trickery serves as a turning point in the novel. Before, Billy and Tom were committed to fighting fairly and adhering to their moral code, even when Alan and Joe overstepped that line. But after this latest ploy—perhaps because of its callousness in playing on Billy’s weekness, or perhaps because of how close they came to success—Billy and Tom are now willing to play dirty. They do so in this scene, where they implicate Alan and Joe in the eyes of the entire neighborhood. The bet has now gone public, and all the parents know about it.

“‘Hello. We’re Alan Phelps and Joseph O’Hara. We’re the reason you were waked up in the middle of the night last night, and we’re sorry.’ Breath. ‘You’ll be happy to know our parents have punished us we can’t look at television or have any dessert for a month and our allowances have been taken away for two weeks we promise that it will never happen again.’”

Alan and Joe’s humiliating speech, repeated over and over to all the neighbors on the day following Billy’s triumphant public worm-eating stunt, is supposed to put an end to the matter—at least, that’s what Alan’s father expects. Alan and Joe resent this turn of events, and, as Billy’s impending victory approaches, they’re getting more desperate and angry, not less. The toneless repetition of the apology, indicated through the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences, underscores the two boys’ lack of genuineness and shows the reader that they are not committed to ending the war.

“‘You know what you are?’ said Alan, his nose almost touching Billy’s. “You’re a bastard.’ ‘And you’re another,’ sneered Billy through clenched teeth. ‘And a cheating, lying, dirty, snot-nosed, cheating, lying one.’”

The bet has gotten out of hand, and the boys resort to insults. The use of “bastard,” a true curse word, amplifies the seriousness of the argument, and coming from Alan, represents the lengths to which he is willing to go. But Billy’s follow-up is more childish and innocent. Together, they represent the boys’ place on the cusp of young adulthood.

“‘You couldn’t lick a flea.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Yeah.’ Spiffle! Whack! Thump! ‘Someone’s choking! No fair!’ Thwomp! Gouge! Joe crawled off behind a tree, nose bleeding. Womp! ‘He’s pulling hair!’ ‘He’s scratching!’ Twist! Tsiwt!”

The boys’ anger boils over, and the fight erupts quickly and violently. The author makes the battle more vivid by scattering the words all over the page, which makes visual the conflict as it careens around the yard. Although they formerly upheld fairness and honor, those concepts have gone out the window, and the boys are willing to break all the rules of a fair fight—hair-pulling, scratching—to win

“‘You tried to cheat,’ said Billy. ‘That wasn’t cheating. We were just trying to trick you.’ ‘Yeah, but before that. When you glued the two worms together. That was cheating.’ ‘You would have cheated, too, if you’d been losing.’”

The boys negotiate a peace treaty. They begin to understand that what each side regards as cheating, the other side considers legitimate weapons in the battle to win the worm bet. It’s a moment, rare in life, where people can see their opponents’ point of view. The conflict is by no means over, but there’s a glimmer of light at the end of their tunnel of discord. It also raises the question of the motivation behind cheating: Is it the result of a lack of morals, or would anyone cheat when faced with a loss?

“Mrs. Forrester, as your friend and family phisician, I would strongly recommend that your son William eat no mere worms until I return on Thursday from New York City and ca n give him a thurough examination.”

The typos give it away: This is a letter written not by Billy’s family doctor but by Joe and Alan as part of their ongoing conspiracy to trick Billy into defaulting on the worm bet. The many glaring typos in the letter prove the writer, though bright and ahead of his grade, hasn’t yet received the 24 years of education required of doctors. The letter represents the lengths to which Joe and Alan are willing to go to win, as well as the wits of Joe and the ways in which his mind helps their cause.

“Billy threw back his head, lowered the worm…Alan charged around the door! leaped on Billy’s back! flung him to the ground! punching! yelling!…jumped up! grabbed Billy’s feet! dragged him bump-bump-bump across the rough chaffy floor to the tool closet! bundled him inside! slammed the door! locked it!”

Even at the last moment, Alan can’t bear the thought of losing the bet, so he tries to prevent Billy from finishing the final worm by locking him away. With one-word sentences, exclamation points, and onomotopeia, the passage is chaotic and fast-paced, inculcating the reader in the dramatic scene. Rockwell frequently uses these techniques to communicate the feeling of a scene and further immerse the reader in the story. It’s also fun to read and keeps young audiences engaged.

“Twice. Twice he’d won and then something had happened. And now he was going to lose? After all he’d gone through? Nightmares, fights, thinking he’d been poisoned? All for nothing? He kicked the bed.”

Billy is grounded because of Alan’s bad behavior, something Billy deeply resents. As he recalls the many trials he’s lived through during the contest, he also reminds the readers of those events. Listing them all here together, we clearly understand the sheer weight of the entire experience. 

“‘Too glate!’ Billy yelled, still chewing. ‘Too glate! I gwin!’ He disappeared from the window…a door slammed inside the house, a trampling on the stairs…he burst out the kitchen door…a flying leap off the back steps. He rolled, scrambled up, yelling, ‘I win! I win! I win!’ grabbed Tom’s hands. They danced round and round and round, Pete cavorting beside them. Joe and Alan slunk off through the bushes.…round and round and round…Billy’s mother laughed and went into the kitchen.…round and round and round…till they collapsed on their backs in the grass. ‘I win,’ gasped Billy to the blue, cloudless sky. ‘I win.’”

Despite all the ways Joe and Alan try to prevent Billy from eating the 15 worms—even getting him grounded so he can’t get to the final worm—Billy manages to do it. In Billy’s sheer joy at winning, we understand that it is not an achievement with which he is familiar. In winning the bet, Billy has not only proven that he can eat worms, he’s proven to himself and his friends that he is capable, confident, and brave, traits they didn’t associate with him before.