Rab’s musket represents both Rab and Johnny’s coming-of-age. From the moment Rab begins drilling with the Minute Men in Lexington, he desperately wants a better musket. He has an old gun intended for shooting ducks at close range, but because he has a weapon that’s technically functional, he’s ineligible to get a gun from the networks supplying under-armed Minute Men. Rab’s desire for a better gun—one that’s capable of shooting another person, potentially taking another person’s life—is something the novel characterizes as adult and grown-up. In contrast, at this point, though Johnny wants Rab to have a better gun so that Rab can protect himself, the idea that Rab would use the gun inflict violence upon others (or suffer violence himself) disturbs Johnny. Johnny’s apprehensive attitude toward violence shows that he is immature and still a boy. Correspondingly, when Rab does finally get his musket, he symbolically comes of age. However, the circumstance surrounding his coming-of-age suggest that undergoing this transition isn’t something to be taken lightly: the British soldier whose musket Rab gets, Pumpkin, is killed by a firing squad for deserting the British army. Coming of age during wartime, the novel suggests, comes with steep consequences.
Johnny discovers much the same thing at the end of the novel when he, too, comes of age. As Rab dies of wounds he sustained at the Battle of Lexington, he tells Johnny to take his musket. Once more, the novel shows how coming of age comes with steep consequences. In this case, Rab must die for Johnny to be able to take ownership of the weapon that will make him a man. And yet, Rab’s sacrifice shows Johnny that his coming of age will serve a larger purpose: with the musket, Johnny can continue fighting for what Rab believed in, ensuring that future generations of boys won’t have to make such sacrifices to make the transition to adulthood.
Rab’s Musket Quotes in Johnny Tremain
Rab, for instance, all that spring had been going to Lexington once or twice a week to drill with his fellow townsmen. But he could not beg nor buy a decent gun. He drilled with an old fowling piece his grandsire had given him to shoot ducks on the Concord River. Never had Johnny seen Rab so bothered about anything as he was over his inability to get himself a good modern gun.
‘I don’t mind their shooting at me,’ he would say to Johnny, ‘and I don’t mind shooting at them… but God give me a gun in my hands that can do better than knock over a rabbit at ten feet.’
‘Rab! How’d you do it? How’d you get away?’
Rab’s eyes glittered. In spite of his great air of calm, he was angry.
‘Colonel Nesbit said I was just a child. “Go buy a popgun, boy,” he said. They flung me out the back door. Told me to go home.’
Then Johnny laughed. He couldn’t help it. Rab had always, as far as Johnny knew, been treated as a grown man and always looked upon himself as such.
‘So all he did was hurt your feelings.’
‘Each shall give according to his own abilities, and some’—he turned directly to Rab—‘some will give their lives. All the years of their maturity. All the children they never live to have. The serenity of old age. To die so young is more than merely dying; it is to lose so large a part of life.’
‘I’ll never forget it. He said… so a man can stand up.’
‘Yes. And some of us would die—so other men can stand up on their feet like men. A great many are going to die for that. They have in the past. They will a hundred years from now—two hundred. God grant there will always be men good enough. Men like Rab.’
‘Will it be good enough to hold this gun?’
‘I think I can promise you that.’
‘The silver can wait. When can you, Doctor Warren? I’ve got the courage.’
‘I’ll get some of those men in the taproom to hold your arm still while I operate.’
‘No need. I can hold it still myself.’
The Doctor looked at him with compassionate eyes.
‘Yes, I believe you can. You go walk about in the fresh air, while I get my instruments ready.’
Rab’s Musket Symbol Timeline in Johnny Tremain
