46 pages • 1 hour read
Joshua WhiteheadJonny Appleseed
Joshua WhiteheadFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Storytelling through Nested Narrative Structure
Throughout the novel, Whitehead uses a nested narrative structure. He uses this craft technique within the book as a whole, but also within individual chapters. It allows him to follow the sudden shifts and broad trains of thought of the first-person narrator, Jonny. It also provides the opportunity to evoke an oral storytelling technique similar to the stories that Jonny hears growing up from family members. Just as the novel itself is not always straightforward or chronological, neither are his kokum’s stories. Through this literary device, Whitehead suggests a connection between personal identity and narrative forms.
Within individual chapters, Whitehead follows the stream of Jonny’s thoughts as they lead from one story to the next. However, he often returns to the original stories to ensure completion. For example, in Chapter 39, the plot begins with a childhood story about Jonny and Tias camping at Hecla. Jonny’s memory of sweating while camping—“our skin clung to our cotton t-shirts and sweat pooled in our pits and on the curvature of our spines” (188)—reminds him of how other kids used to make fun of him for sweating, which then reminds him of how, in Winnipeg, he often tells strangers he is from a French-speaking part of Canada. This reminds him of the last time he heard French, at a fancy restaurant, and then the plot swerves to tell the story of being at that restaurant. However, after the anecdote about the restaurant has concluded, Jonny returns to finish the emotionally significant part of the camping story.
In the final third of the novel, Whitehead moves between narrative threads. He alternates flashbacks to Jonny’s past—especially his childhood and memories of his kokum with chapters that move the narrative into the present. For example, at the end of Chapter 51, the novel is in the narrative present: Jonny and his mother are in the kitchen after his stepfather’s funeral, making lunch and watching television. They tell each other how much they love one another and how they really feel.
Subsequently, at the very beginning of Chapter 52, the narrative flashes back to “I remember the first time Tias told me he loved me, all I could say in response was ‘Aw, ay-hay’—‘thank you’” (250). Though at the end of Chapter 51, the reader is in the narrative present and almost, chronologically, at the very end of the scope of the story that the novel tells, Whitehead chooses this moment to flashback to the very beginning of the romance between Jonny and Tias. Though Chapter 52 illustrates the beginning of the romance between Jonny and Tias, it also foreshadows its end. Their relationship, like the narrative structure, is elliptical and circular: they come together and fall apart several times over the course of the novel. Because of this, the final falling-apart foreshadows a future coming-together—one that will potentially take place after the novel itself has concluded.
Dreams in Indigenous Cosmogony
Throughout the novel, dreams play an important role in helping characters figure out both themselves and the world around them. Dreams are seen as delivering messages or helping characters interpret decision-making in a new light. The most important dreams in the novel are dreamed by or are about Jonny.
The most pivotal dream that Jonny experiences is about the land coming to life. It’s a verdant day, one where “buds drip a lavender dew and even the rods are golden and erect” (87). A bear comes to him in the dream and has sex with him. Bears are spiritually important in Cree culture. Jonny sees the dream as a healing between himself and the land. His interpretation is that “when I’ve hurt my Cree, well—still, I dream of maskwa” (89). When he feels a spiritual distance between himself and his Cree heritage, the maskwa (bear) helps him find a closeness again. His presence feels charged not only spiritually, but sexually as well; for Jonny, the spiritual and the sexual reinforce and build upon one another.
Near the end of the novel, Jonny’s mom tells him that it’s time to tell him about a dream she had. Her own mother (Jonny’s kokum) foresaw that one day she would have a dream about Jonny, and she told Jonny’s mom to share it with him when she did. She dreams that she and Jonny see men spearfishing on the river, but the men "tell me it’s a space reserved only for men, and then they stop you too when you move even closer” (247). Being excluded from the all-men space validates Jonny's Two-Spirit gender identity. Additionally, Jonny’s kokum is proud of him in the dream: “I see your kokum there in the middle of all those women, chortling” (248). The dream helps Jonny’s mother resolve her relationship with her own mother and find peace in her relationship with Jonny moving forward.
Overall, characters in the novel use the interpretations of dreams to wrestle with major issues they have and figure out a way to move forward. It can also be a way to resolve issues that might not be able to be resolved another way, whether due to the death of another person or due to contradictions that simply seem impossible to otherwise resolve. Jonny uses his own interpretation of his dreams about sexuality and the land to develop a relationship between his sexual orientation and Cree cosmogony. Jonny’s mother uses dream interpretation to negotiate and find peace with her relationship with her own mother after her mother’s death.
Failure in Parenthood
One of the recurring themes throughout Jonny Appleseed is the relationship between parents and their children. Many stories from Jonny’s childhood and adolescence are told as flashbacks in the novel, often as supporting evidence for or context of major events happening in the narrative present. Though there are several relationships important to Jonny in which he and others were successfully parented, by and large the events and circumstances mentioned in the book involve situations and circumstances where others failed as parents and traumatized their children.
The most adequate parent in the book is Frances, Jonny’s kokum. She teaches Jonny many important lessons about Cree heritage. She is also always there for him, providing a place to stay, company, and meals. Her consistency exists in contrast to Jonny's mother, Karen. Though Karen tries, she struggles with substance abuse and is frequently gone from Jonny’s life for days or weeks at a time on benders. She also steals money from Jonny’s school fundraisers and uses their grocery funds to purchase alcohol.
Jonny’s experiences with parenting failures pale in comparison to those of his peers. For example, Tias is traumatized by his adoptive father anytime he expresses femininity. His adoptive father physically assaults and brutalizes him for having long hair (175) and for wearing glitter nail polish (94); he tells Tias things like “How many fucking times I tell you to cut this girly shit, huh?” (94). Tias describes his adoptive father's objection to the expression of femininity through long hair as “My mom liked it a lot, said it looked handsome, but my dad said I looked like a queer” (175). His adoptive father is homophobic and terrified of anything other than the expression of masculinity. Jonny never knew his own father, who died when he was very young, and he wonders whether he never feels a deep connection to masculinity alone because of that loss.
Failures at parenting—both the characters’ failures in the present and their parents’ failures in the past—affect characters’ development. For example, Jordan, Tias’s girlfriend, has her daughter forcibly removed from her by a protective services agency. Jonny describes the circumstances as “she threw a house party one night after her daughter had gone to sleep, but it turns out she did mushrooms and went on a hardcore trip. Family services stepped in the next day and labelled her an unfit mother” (155). Even though other parents in the book do drugs at various times, the agency comes down hardest on Jordan. Her daughter's removal echoes the long history of separating Indigenous families by the Canadian government, from residential boarding schools up until the present day. Her daughter's removal reverberates into the anxiety and fear that both she and Tias feel about her pregnancy, which they plan to keep. The question of how parenting failures echo across generations is a central point of tension in the novel, and a question that the ending poses.
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