Dimensions in Time: A Critical View of Historical Fiction for Children
It should be no surprise, if Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes, finds its way into the upper "rare" stratosphere of literary excellence. Lauded ever since it first appeared, it continues to be read and regarded as a fine historical novel. It is a book much praised, but it has not, as far as I know, been critically examined. (p. 139)
Basically, the story is one of character development, of a boy's struggle with his feelings of inferiority and worth, his attempts to find a place for himself, his problems about establishing relationships with people. It is almost as if he were a symbol of his time: a boy with promise and great natural ability but shackled by a sense of shame and inferiority. Aside from these symbolic values, this boy has the character and attitude of his own time, when men and boys were expected to make their own way…. He is not described as showing these traits and qualities of the times; he actively displays them. Although he is a boy of all ages in his teasing and carefully guarded tender feelings, he is a boy of his time. In our day and age, such a boy would be sent to juvenile hall.
But in those days, Johnny was needed and soon came to be valued for his courage, just as he came to find values for which to fight and by which to live. In a time of growing, the boy grew in answer to needs greater than his own. The answer to the question, "why time?", is apparent in this novel. This boy is of the time, bred, illuminated, and developed. Although presented in far greater precision than a symbol, he does have symbolic value.
Place comes alive sensuously with the first sentence, the first paragraph…. Miss Forbes brings Boston awake at the same time that the reader plunges into a sense of place—smelling, breathing, hearing, seeing. The novel has base in this way, from start to finish; never is skillful use of place merely a garnish or a layer in a sandwich. Speech and clothes and manner of behavior are all of a piece, but not an undifferentiated piece. (pp. 139-40)
This book does not merely deal with another time and place; it is impregnated with these elements. And the hero, in working out his destiny, is under the same inevitable compulsion that people in the past have always appeared to feel. There was no other way. Yet, during the telling, as during the actual happening, nothing seemed certain, nothing seemed inevitable…. There is a sense of the meaning of life, of creed and ethics, of human behavior…. Paul Revere's heroism was accepted casually with believability, credibility, coming through the illumination of small detail. One instance is the description of Revere's ride to Portsmouth, before his famous ride. The weather was bad that night:
From the lowering December sky handfuls of snowflakes were falling, but as soon as they came to earth they turned to ice. It was a bleak, bad, dangerous day for the long ride north.
Revere's wife was in bed, recovering from having borne another child. She rapped on a windowpane at Johnny to come and get a note her husband had almost forgotten, a note about his sick grandmother with which to allay the suspicions of the British soldiers.
In this way, Esther Forbes brings about what Hilaire Belloc [in One Thing and Another] calls "the resurrection of the past" by the use of sudden illumination, proportion, and imagination:
… upon the discovery of the essential movements and the essential moments in the action; and upon imagination, the power of seeing the thing as it was; landscape, the weather, the gestures and the faces of the men; yes, and their thoughts within.
Wonderful as Miss Forbes' work is, it is not a work which can be neatly pigeonholed as "suitable for children." It is "suitable" for anyone who wishes to read a good story of this period. The excitement of the times is used to its fullest extent in building plot interest; the boy's involvement in the Revolution is so intrinsic a part of the plot that reading about Johnny Tremain becomes reading about the American Revolution. If any book can be called a prototype of all that historical fiction should be, this book merits that appellation. (pp. 140-42)
Carolyn Horovitz, "Dimensions in Time: A Critical View of Historical Fiction for Children" (originally published in The Horn Book Magazine, June, 1962), in Horn Book Reflections: On Children's Books and Reading, edited by Elinor Whitney Field (copyright © 1969 by The Horn Book, Inc., Boston), Horn Book, 1969, pp. 137-50.
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