46 pages • 1 hour read
Joshua WhiteheadJonny Appleseed
Fiction | 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.
Symbols & Motifs
Bears
Bears are symbols of strength, vitality, and self-reliance. They are important symbols in Indigenous culture because they are part of both the natural and cosmological worlds. In the novel, the symbol of the bear represents the tension—and eventual resolution—of Jonny's intersectional queer and Indigenous identities. It evokes both the gay male identity of “bear,” which is a strong, husky gay man, as well as the spiritual significance of bear cubs to the Cree culture. Bear cubs represent belonging; in one passage, as a child, Jonny hangs back after baseball practice while the rest of his teammates jump on top of each other like bear cubs. In one of Jonny's more significant dreams, he is “topped” (receives penetrative sex) by a bear (animal). The bear is Jonny’s clan, and thus the symbols is tied to his sexual and Indigenous identities.
Additionally, bears recur in the novel in relation to Big Bear, or Mistahimaskwa, a historically important Cree leader who resisted Indigenous displacement. When Jonny is in Peguis and on the reservation, Jonny is terrified of coming across a real bear.
Apples
The symbol of an apple contextualizes the narrator's moniker, Jonny Appleseed, as well as the eponymous historical character. When the children sing about Jonny Appleseed at church camp instead of about a Indigenous folk hero, it symbolizes how white culture has attempted to supersede and erase Indigenous culture. And when Jonny leaves the reservation for Winnipeg, his stepfather calls him an apple: a derogatory term for being Indigenous (red) on the outside and white on the inside.
The protagonist’s name is ironic because the historical Johnny Appleseed was an American missionary. Johnny Appleseed’s real name was John Chapman, and he was pioneer in the late 18th and early 19th centuries who became known for his fanatic conservationism, which involved traveling across the colonies planting apple trees. Among his travels, he preached the Gospel to Indigenous peoples in America as a self-appointed missionary of the Church of the New Jerusalem. By some accounts, Chapman’s missionary work was successful, and he gained acceptance in Indigenous communities, but this information is not substantiated. Whitehead’s choice of Johnny Appleseed as the central image for the protagonist shows the complex relationship between fact and fiction and white colonialism and Indigenous culture in the novel.
Water
The motif of water in recurs throughout the novel with various symbolic connotations. Jonny refers to water as a mentor and playmate during his childhood. Water often represents mystery and emotions, and it appears in Jonny’s spiritually significant dreams, which undergird the ways Jonny is situated at the nexus of the natural and the erotic worlds. He imagines the Red River as being very much like his own body, whether he’s in the bath or walking around Winnipeg. Water can be gentle and comforting or frightening and chaotic, and these attributes characterize the way Jonny relates to his sexuality and personal relationships. Near the end of the novel, Jonny comes to understand his mother and his grandmother’s complicated relationship through talking about a dream that he had where he fishes in a Peguis river. This motif supports the theme of Dreams in Indigenous Cosmogony.
