Johnny Tremain
Esther Forbes (1943)
“A proud, gifted apprentice silversmith burns his hand, loses everything, and finds himself — just as Boston ignites into revolution.”
Character Analysis
The novel's central transformation. Johnny begins as genuinely gifted and genuinely insufferable — his pride is not false modesty, his talent is real, and both make him incapable of learning anything from anyone. The burned hand strips him of the only identity he has, and the long recovery is a search for what remains. What remains, Forbes argues, is a person who can choose — who can pick a cause, offer himself to it, and follow where it leads. By the end, Johnny is not great in the way he imagined greatness in Chapter 1. He is something more useful: he is willing.
Direct, proud, occasionally aggressive. His speech becomes more measured as the novel progresses.