In relationships between younger brothers and older brothers, it is not unusual for the younger brother to look up to the older sibling, especially if they are looked down upon by them. It puts them in a very vulnerable position, and they find themselves unable to make their own choices rather they would follow their brother’s lead. In “the Stone Boy,” Arnold as the younger brother is seen following Eugie’s lead, looking up to him, trying to be like him in as many ways as possible. But when his brother is shot, he finds himself without a role model.
A number of people, especially the uncle and the sheriff, say that Arnold is overly rational, and that is why he did not come back to the house straight away. However, it’s more likely that as a 9-year old boy who just lost his idea of who he should be was lost, confused, and anything but rational. Arnold’s first hesitation is that he might get in trouble, a completely irrational thought. It is far more likely that he was unable to move on without a cue from his brother. After all, he watched Eugie’s habit of ‘offering silent praise unto himself’ with a sort of reverence, wishing he would be just like Eugie when he reached that age. And like Eugie, Arnold would undress in the dark, a habit he dropped after Eugie’s death. So with no cue to do otherwise, he decides to pick peas before leaving for his home. This turns out to be a decision that will haunt him for life.
Finding himself the black sheep of the family, and perhaps even finding himself unworthy of following in Eugie’s footsteps as he had done before, he chooses to do everything differently than Eugie. For instance, he gets undressed in a completely different way that night, and in the morning, he chooses to bring the cow and her calf home in a very un-Eugie way.
In addition, not enough consideration is given to the fact that Arnold is only nine years old. By most standards, that would put him in the fourth grade, but he is expected to act a very different, more responsible and mature age. Maybe this is because now he is the oldest son, a responsibility that was thrust upon him unwillingly. But whatever the case, he is only a nine-year old boy. The one line that really emphasizes the lack of thought on Arnold’s behalf in this respect is when his uncle says, ‘If we’d of shot our brother, we’d come runnin’ back to the house, cryin’ like a baby.’ That line compares the actions of an inexperienced, scared, little boy to a more experienced, smarter (if only by experience) man.
These people who are supposed to represent acceptance and protection are doing everything but accepting and protecting. An uncle is a family member that is supposed to be the next closest thing to a father for a young boy, a source of knowledge and advice that he might feel uncomfortable asking from his father. But by rebuking Arnold in such a way, it is like closing another door in his face. His brother was his first source of advice, but now he is no longer there. His father was too upset to be approached, and his uncle as a final alternative responds to Arnold in a most malicious way.
And the maliciousness of everyone else present is shocking. Nobody tries to talk to Arnold, understand how he feels, but they are all too preoccupied with belittling him and making him feel worse for an accident he will come to hate himself for. With his uncle’s belittling, he will convince himself that he was acting rationally, and that he is not as good of a person. Eventually, he may even come to blame himself for the death in the first place. After all, he was holding the gun. The rejection he feels from his mother that night is also going to change his life. After she turned him away, he blamed his own lowliness for the rejection instead of her emotions. She may have been too tired and upset to talk to him, but that decision to wait until morning is a decision that may haunt her and Arnold for life.
This is not unlike from the decision Arnold made to keep picking peas, so seemingly insignificant of a choice at the time but so unchangeable all the same. Would it have been so hard to set aside her own emotions to talk to her living son and console him in his time of fear, self-doubt, and loss of guidance and confusion as to where to go instead of cursing in the name of her dead son? But for some reason, his acts as a nine-year old are called into question more quickly than any of his elders’ similar decisions, even though he only hurt himself.