Johnny Tremain

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This Monday’s Memory focuses on the book of which I was thinking when I first had the idea for this new weekly feature (backdated due to technical difficulties).
Title: Johnny Tremain
Author: Esther Forbes
Publication Year: 1943
Pages: 256
Genre: Fiction, Children’s
Count for Year: 60

How I discovered

I’ll be honest (as I usually am here as Dwight Yoakam sings “I tell the truth ‘cept when I lie”) I don’t remember when I first came across this book. I know it was when I was in elementary school between fourth and sixth grades, I’m going to hazard a guess. I only know when I did, it was forever burned into my memory and was the first book of which I thought when I created this new feature Monday’s Memory.

The setup

Fourteen-year old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper, the Boston Observer, and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events shaping the American Revolution from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington.

– from a description from Random House

When I first read this book, I remember thinking that my being able to listen in on those secret meetings of the Sons of Library was cool (I watched a lot of Happy Days with the Fonz, what can I say?) and reading this book again more than 20 years later, I still think that was the “coolest” part of the book. I was struck by this particularly when Johnny was in a meeting with Sam and John Adams, Paul Revere and Joseph Warren and one man asked, “But there must be some hope, we can still patch up our differences with England. Sir, you will work for peace?”

Sam Adams said nothing for a moment. He trusted these men about him as he trusted no one else in the world.

“No. That time is past. I will work for war: the complete freedom of these colonies from any European power. We can have that freedom only by fighting for it. God grant we fight soon soon. For ten years we’ve tried this and we’ve tried that. We’ve tried to placate them and they to placate us. Gentlemen, you know it has not worked. I will not work for peace. ‘Peace, peace, and there is no peace.’ But I will in Philadelphia play a cautious part– not throw all my cards on the table– oh, no. But nevertheless, I will work for but one thing. War — bloody and terrible death and destruction. But out of it shall come a country as was never seen on this earth before. We will fight…”

However, it wasn’t just the “stars” of the pre-Revolutionary War that spoke here, but also the “sidekicks” such as the lesser known James Otis. After this impassioned speech by Adams, he asks what it is for which they fight and then answers after a rambling speech (Otis suffered from mental illness, historians believe):

We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills…we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.

Now putting aside the arguments for or against if this makes sense (my wife is reading Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, which questions those high-flung words “freedom” “liberty” for which men fight), in the context of the book, I believe this statement “only that a man can stand up” is the central theme of the book. After having his hand burned in an accident as a silversmith’s apprentice, Johnny could give up on life, but instead he stands up not only to his own fears to become a horseboy for the paper and messenger for the Sons of Liberty, but also to those who would keep him from his true identity as a member of a family named Lyte even after they accuse him of being a thief and reject him. Then, in the end, of course, he stands up for his country.

My final analysis: Still as good when I first read it, if not better, especially after reading that Forbes received the Pulitzer Prize for history for Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. No wonder the book seems so real. 5/5.

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Tags: book reviews, Books, children's classics, Esther Forbes, historical fiction, Johnny Tremain, Monday's Memory