The Light In The Forest True Son Character Traits

In the novel, The Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter, a white frontier boy raised by Indians is returns to colonist life. Captured by the Lenni Lenape Indians, young John Butler, later renamed True Son by his adoptive father, spends over a decade living happily with the tribe and being cultivated as a strong, upright young Indian. But when the tribe is forced to surrender their white prisoners, True Son becomes fiercely resistant to the ways of the colonist people whom he must now call family. Although challenged by hardship and adversity, he eventually comes to understand who he is and where he truly belongs. Throughout the story, True Son proves himself to be a bold, dignified, and altogether very principled young man. In the

For instance, he displays principled habits when he explains to his white relatives how conscientiously he refrains from swearing and how as an Indian, he always treated his parents with unremitting love and respect. True Son later proves his principled character by feeling regret for escaping back to his people and deserting Gordie, his small, white brother. When he does reach his beloved Lenape, he discovers that they plan to avenge the death of another young Indian, Little Crane, by declaring war on the whites. Bloodthirsty and hungry for revenge, True Son disregards his sense of right and wrong. His unyielding appetite to take action is checked when he spies that one of the Indian warrior parties has returned with the scalp of a child. True Son, feeling distressed, questions his leaders sincerely, saying, “Then the very young of the whites are our enemies too?” (161) After this turning point in his morality, he is stationed on the bank of a river to wait for a colonist boat to pass, in order that he may deceive its passengers to come to shore, where the Lenape lie in wait to ambush them. As a loaded watercraft approaches, True Son, hoping to gain fame for his act, keeps up the charade, until the last second, when he suddenly warns those on the ship by shouting, “It’s an ambush!” (168) As a result, the tribe bitterly considers True Son a traitor.