[For this year’s
July
4th series, I’ll be AmericanStudying cultural representations of
the Revolution and its era. Leading up to a special post on Hamilton!]
On three
groundbreaking historical novels that reflect the evolution of young adult
literature.
1)
Johnny
Tremain (1943): Esther Forbes’ Newbery
Medal-winning novel follows its title character from his life in 1773 as a
14 year old silversmith’s apprentice (a career cut short when he suffers a
debilitating hand injury early in the novel) through his gradual connection to
the Sons of Liberty and participation in the Boston Tea Party (among other
events), building to a climax set against the April 1775 battles of Lexington
and Concord. Although Forbes creates Johnny’s 1770s Boston with depth and
nuance, there’s never any doubt that the Sons are on the right side of history,
a thread that likewise climaxes in the novel’s concluding section with a moving
speech from James Otis
(whom the other Sons had often dismissed as an insane old man) about the Revolutionary
sacrifices that will be necessary and appropriate so “that a man can stand up.”
Johnny Tremain is, let’s say, a
Revolutionary historical novel for the Greatest Generation era.
2)
My
Brother Sam is Dead (1974): James Lincoln Collier and Christopher
Collier’s Newbery
Honor-winning (and National Book
Award nominated!) novel offers a far more murky and (often) dark vision of
the Revolution. The narrator, Tim Meeker, is torn between his loyalist father
and Continental Army soldier brother in the early years of the Revolution;
while we might expect transformations or reunions from a young adult novel,
instead Tim’s father is abducted by pirates and dies of cholera on a prison
ship, one of Tim’s friends is decapitated by the British, and Sam is eventually
executed by the Continental Army (for stealing cattle, a crime for which he had
been framed). This is a world where not only are loyalties divided and choices
uncertain, but death and brutality seem to await regardless of what choices one
makes; when Tim reveals in the conclusion that he has been writing the book
from 1826, his survival seems to be the novel’s version of a happy ending. My Brother Sam is Dead is, let’s say, a
Revolutionary historical novel for the Vietnam War and Watergate era.
3)
The
Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox
Party (2006): M.T. Anderson’s National
Book Award-winning novel, the first in a two-volume series (the second, The
Kingdom on the Waves, was published in 2009), is the story of a
uniquely talented African American slave in Revolutionary Boston who finds
himself and his mother used (and she killed) for social and medical experiments
on race, escapes slavery and joins the Continental Army, and eventually (in the
course of the series) joins the British forces in Virginia instead due to his
opposition to American slavery. The novels wed Gothic tropes (Octavian’s Boston
home is very much a Gothic haunted house, for example) to revisionist histories
(his Massachusetts slaveowners are in league with Virginia planters to pursue
their racist agenda, complicating our narratives of both American slavery and
the Revolution), with the result a historical fantasy that imagines a far
different nation and world than either of the prior novels had. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
is, let’s say, a Revolutionary historical novel for the multicultural and Obama
era.
Next
Revolutionary representation tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Revolutionary representations you’d highlight?
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