Summary Of The Light In The Forest

Imagine this, you were taken away from your family that loves you dearly and you are given to another family you know nothing about. That is exactly what happens in the historical fiction The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter. The book follows Johnny Butler, a 15 year old boy who was captured by an Indian tribe at a young age. The Indians took Johnny in as a kid of their own giving him the name True Son. He is returned to his original home where struggles about living with his blood family, especially when his Indian family taught him that all white people are unclassful liars and murders. When Trues Son arrives, he is a fish out of water and faces trying to stay true to his Indian culture, yet to survive, he has to adapt to White culture.

True Son is recruited to a war group bent on scalping Whites. When his commander Thitpan is seen carrying a little girl’s scalp after a raid. He boldly says to Thitpan, “I ask you to forget my ignorance. I did not know we fought children.” (162) This is especially important as True Son learned in his youth that only Whites are devilish enough to scalp Women and Children. True Son is conflicted on whether to be proud of his Indian chief or to feel compassion for the little girl who lost her life to True Son’s family. This ignites the biggest psychological issue for True Son, an identity crisis. Feeling less and less like an Indian at heart, True Son hasn’t yet fully turned to the Whites. He’s stuck in a grey area where he doesn’t know who he his and what he stands for. In the middle of True Son’s crisis Thitipan decided to lure a group of Whites on a watercraft to True Son. True Son would act as a drowning boy, in an overall plan to ambush, kill, and scalp the White sailors. This plan pushes True Son into the final stage of grief, acceptance. Through his encounters with his White family and knowing that they’re better than this new Indian general, True Son decides to ruin the ambush by warning the whites of the attack after seeing a young boy that and his mother, who

Go back to your family at the risk of your life? Live alone in exile where you know you’d be safe? Take a harsh journey to a new land where you don’t know anyone? All of these are options that True Son could have chosen, but the author doesn’t tell you what True Son does. Instead the book ends with him standing in a river. One side of the river is where his Indian home was, while the other side is where his White home was. Ending the book in that moment symbolized how True Son’s heart and soul were split in two, feeling so lost where he doesn’t know where to go next, literally and figuratively. Overall, the river symbolizes the grey area of True Son’s identity crisis. I was interested in book struggle since it was so psychological and meaningful. It shares nice lessons such as nobody or family is perfect. The book also dives into many more psychological issues than the ones I’ve exampled here such as Indian segregation. However True Son’s crisis was the topic I was most interested in. I had a lot of fun learning about it in the book, and it was cool being able to delve deeper into it, especially into the psychology behind it. Overall True Son had a clear vision of both his families which he has grown to love, and in turn he had an identity crisis and lost his sight of himself. The only thing that could now save him from his own doing, is a light in True Son’s forest of