Setting

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While the exact location isn't specified (other than being a city with a population of 135,000), it's likely that the story unfolds in Tarkington's preferred setting, Indiana, possibly representing his hometown of Indianapolis. In depicting Penrod's surroundings, Tarkington illustrates many elements of middle-class life in an early 20th-century Midwestern town, such as Penrod's school, his friends, a carnival, and a school play. Penrod serves as a period piece, capturing the essence of the American Midwest during a time of innocence and national prosperity. Although Penrod aims to be a realistic narrative, today its setting appears almost impossibly idyllic, offering no insight into the modern world.

Literary Techniques

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Tarkington intentionally designed "Penrod" and its two sequels with an episodic structure. Children experience life from moment to moment, focusing on individual events rather than long-term plans. A detailed, long-term plot doesn't align with a child's mindset. Penrod, like most children, is absorbed by the immediate present. Tarkington understood that this episodic style was ideal for serialization. Like many of his works, "Penrod" was initially published as a serial before becoming a book.

His writing targeted not only young readers but adults as well. Some critics have been annoyed by his remarks aimed at mature audiences. Leslie Fiedler, in "Life and Death in the American Novel," criticizes Tarkington for what he calls "heavy-handed cuteness" in his stories for young readers. The humorous observations are sometimes expressed in language that a twelve-year-old might need to look up in a dictionary, and even then, due to Tarkington's occasional use of humorous circumlocution, the meaning might remain unclear. For instance, instead of saying Penrod is spanked, Tarkington writes: "The rite thus promised was hastily but accurately performed in that apartment most distant from the front porch." The stories are rich in humor, but the finest comedy emerges in scenes showcasing Penrod's antics — such as the grand tar fight at the conclusion of the first volume, where most of the children end up looking like performers in a minstrel show.

Literary Qualities

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Penrod is a straightforward novel that doesn't meet the usual standards critics have for a successful literary work. Despite this, it continues to captivate young adult readers. Unlike Huckleberry Finn, it lacks symbolic depth and lyrical quality, and it doesn't convey the psychological intensity found in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. However, Penrod shouldn't be dismissed as mere light entertainment for younger audiences.

Tarkington, who considered Mark Twain his literary mentor, crafted Penrod and its sequels to authentically depict the growth of boys aged eight to fourteen. He believed that a child's journey to adulthood mirrors the progression of human history, from savagery to civilization. At twelve, Penrod is mostly untamed but shows signs that his wildness could eventually be subdued. He presents an "inscrutable" face to the adult world, a necessary skill for a boy who is part con artist and part performer. Tarkington posits that childhood is inherently amoral, with adult values being adopted only gradually.

Understanding the transition of thought from Twain to Tarkington is beneficial for readers of Penrod. Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Tom Sawyer (1876) were penned at the close of the romantic era in American literature, as romanticism began to yield to realism and naturalism. Romanticism isn't about romance or optimistic storytelling; it implies that a story's exterior hints at deeper, underlying turmoil. Realism, conversely, aims to display everything openly, portraying a world often antagonistic to humans. Twain encourages readers to interpret events broadly; for instance, when Huck teases Jim, the runaway slave, about turning him in, the reader understands Huck is grappling with slavery's moral implications. Tarkington, however,...

(This entire section contains 497 words.)

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doesn't think boys develop such insight and instead focuses on their actions. Their thoughts are relevant only as they foreshadow future actions. Realism is grounded in cause and effect, not symbolic or poetic values. Naturalism offers a more scientific take on realism, suggesting that only the strongest survive, while nature eliminates or weakens others. Boyhood is when survival skills are honed, and Penrod's antics with his friends are small tests of their survival abilities.

Nonetheless, Penrod is somewhat hindered by Tarkington's choice to view childhood through an adult lens. He sometimes makes ironic remarks about things that might seem significant to a young person. When he turns Penrod and his friends into figures of amusement, he detracts from the book's strength—its vivid re-creation of childhood. Tarkington structures Penrod and its sequels with an episodic plot, where chapters are loosely connected by events, but the storyline doesn't progress systematically.

Tarkington maintains that children experience life one day at a time, moving from one event to the next, and that a detailed, long-term storyline does not align with a boy's mindset. Penrod focuses on the opportunities of the current moment. Critics claimed Tarkington's plots were episodic, suggesting they were designed specifically for magazine serialization. Penrod, similar to many of Tarkington's creations, generated a significant income for the author when it was first published as a serial before being compiled into a book.

Social Concerns

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The Penrod series centers around a young boy named Penrod Schofield, living in the era just before World War I. In Tarkington's words, this was a time when "the stable was empty but not yet rebuilt into a garage." Today, it's hard for many Americans to picture a time when most families didn't own a car. This makes Penrod and the two subsequent books valuable studies of that period, much like most of Tarkington's novels. The story of Penrod illustrates what it was like to be a boy from 1900 to 1917, similar to how The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951) portrays the mindset of a teenager in the early 1950s.

Additional Commentary

Penrod displays social insensitivity, and contemporary readers may find Tarkington's racist views towards Jews and African Americans offensive. He describes them as "beings in one of those lower stages of evolution." Two African American brothers, Herman and Verman, are consistently mocked, with Tarkington often calling them "darkies." The portrayal of these characters regrettably mirrors their treatment in early twentieth-century American society. This aspect of the novel can be a useful starting point for discussions about the world of Penrod Schofield.

Literary Precedents

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Tarkington acknowledged that Mark Twain's characters, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, served as inspiration for his creation of Penrod. He argued that Penrod was more realistic in one aspect because "Tom and Huck are realistic only in character. [Twain] gave 'em what boys don't get, when it comes to 'plot.'" Inevitably, Penrod is often compared to Twain's characters or to Stephen Crane's youthful protagonists in his Whilomville Stories (1900). While Crane depicted gritty street kids from New York's Bowery, Tarkington found that middle-class neighborhood boys were wild enough to suit his narrative.

Tarkington was also familiar with nineteenth-century boys' books such as Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Story of a Bad Boy (1870). However, he felt their protagonists were too virtuous to represent real boys. His intention wasn't to teach young readers how to be good boys but to portray real boys in credible situations. Hughes and Aldrich created characters who were "little gentlemen," a type Penrod despises. He dislikes them because he realizes that boys labeled as "little gentlemen" are too perfect to be genuine. They are unnatural, and he loses control in the book's final chapters when several friends mock him with that label. Tom Brown, with his Rugby code of conduct, would never behave this way.

For Further Reference

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Fennimore, Keith J. Booth Tarkington. New York: Twayne, 1974. This book offers a superb general overview of Tarkington's life and literary works.

Martine, James J., ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol 9, American Novelists, 1910-1945. Detroit: Gale Research, 1981. An article on Tarkington concludes that the Penrod stories are among his most significant achievements.

Seelye, John D. "That Marvelous Boy— Penrod Once Again." Virginia Quarterly Review 37 (Autumn 1961): 591-604. Offers an insightful analysis suitable for mature readers.

Woodress, James. Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from Indiana. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955. This biography is regarded as the finest study of Booth Tarkington's life.

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