Teenaged Johnny is an orphan; his beloved mother died about two years before the novel begins, about the time that Johnny began his silversmith apprenticeship with Mr. Lapham. However, the novel’s major subplot has to do with Johnny attempting to figure out where he fits into his family. His mother always told him that they’re part of the wealthy, powerful Lyte family—and Johnny has a silver cup with the family crest on it to prove his lineage. However, Johnny soon discovers that even though his mother’s story ultimately ends up being true, Johnny’s lower class prevents him from being believable—Merchant Lyte not only drags Johnny through court after accusing him of stealing the cup, but he also refuses to acknowledge that Johnny might be a legitimate family member. Indeed, Merchant Lyte suggests that as Johnny has no proof that his middle name is Lyte, he’s likely making the story up to swindle the Lytes out of money and valuables. Ultimately, the novel implies that Johnny’s dealings with his upper-class family members doesn’t give him a sense of belonging within his family—rather, it only cements his relationships with other members of the artisan class. This is because, the novel suggests, Johnny discovers that wealth and status are no guarantees that the Lytes will behave justly or treat people well. Indeed, though the court ultimately rules in Johnny’s favor in the theft case, Merchant Lyte later goes on to steal Johnny’s cup from him anyway. Additionally, Johnny resents the way that Miss Lavinia Lyte, upon meeting beautiful young Isannah Lapham, essentially takes the child for herself, turns her into little more than a beautiful doll, and teaches her to look down on the working-class people she once called friends. And while Johnny certainly develops friends in the upper classes, such as John Hancock and even the British officers, who do for the most part behave morally, Johnny nevertheless feels way more at home with the overwhelmingly moral and supportive artisans he was raised around, such as Uncle Lorne and Paul Revere. Johnny ultimately discovers that while a person’s class might mean they consistently have enough to eat, it’s no indicator of character or morality.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Moral Integrity and Class ThemeTracker
Moral Integrity and Class Quotes in Johnny Tremain
Rab was obviously a Whig. ‘I can stomach some of the Tories,’ he went on, ‘men like Governor Hutchinson. They honestly think we’re better off to take anything from the British Parliament—let them break us down, stamp in our faces, take all we’ve got by taxes, and never protest. […] But I can’t stand men like Lyte, who care nothing for anything except themselves and their own fortune. Playing both ends against the middle.’
For the first time he learned to think before he spoke. He counted ten that day he delivered a paper at Sam Adams’s big shabby house on Purchase Street and the black girl flung dishwater out of the kitchen door without looking, and soaked him. If he had not counted ten, he would have told her what he thought of her, black folk in general, and thrown in a few cutting remarks about her master—the most powerful man in Boston. But counting ten had its rewards. […] ever after when Johnny came to Sam Adams’s house, he was invited in and the great leader of the gathering rebellion would talk with him […] [Adams] also began to employ him and Goblin to do express riding for the Boston Committee of Correspondence. All this because Johnny had counted ten. Rab was right. There was no point in going off ‘half-cocked.’
Of all these things and people Cilla knew nothing, nor could he tell her, yet he tried to show interest in what she had to tell him. Once he would have been very interested. Now he felt like a hypocrite, and because he was uncomfortable he blamed it in some way on Cilla.
‘Uncle Lorne is upset. He says the printers will not be able to go on with the newspapers. He won’t be able to collect subscriptions, or get any advertising. He won’t be able to buy paper nor ink.’
‘He’s sending the Webb twins home?’
‘Yes. Back to Chelmsford. But he and I can manage. The Observer is to be half-size. He won’t give up. He’ll keep on printing, printing and printing about our wrongs—and our rights—until he drops dead at his press—or gets hanged.’
Even Mrs. Lapham now did not seem so bad. Poor woman, how she had struggled and worked for that good, plentiful food, the clean shirts her boys had worn, the scrubbed floors, polished brass! No, she had never been the ogress he had thought her a year ago. There never had been a single day when she had not been the first up in the morning. He, like a child, had thought this was because she liked to get up. Now he realized that there must have been many a day when she was as anxious to lie abed as Dove himself.
Johnny liked the old woman all the better that in the end she had been unable to see a considerate master, whom she had served for thirty years, a young woman whom she had taken care of since she was a baby, humiliated, tossed about, torn by a mob. Sam Adams might respect her the less for this weakness. Johnny respected her more.
‘It’s no good to me. We’ve… moved on to other things.’
‘But it isn’t stealing to take back what Mr. Lyte stole from you.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘What?’
‘No. I’m better off without it. I want nothing of them. Neither their blood nor their silver… I’ll carry that hamper for you, Cil. Mr. Lyte can have the old cup.
‘But your mother?’
‘She didn’t like it either.’
‘…For men and women and children all over the world,’ he said. ‘You were right, you tall, dark boy, for even as we shoot down the British soldiers we are fighting for rights such as they will be enjoying a hundred years from now.
‘…There shall be no more tyranny. A handful of men cannot seize power over thousands. A man shall choose who it is shall rule over him.
‘…The peasants of France, the serfs of Russia. Hardly more than animals now. But because we fight, they shall see freedom like a new sun rising in the west. Those natural rights God has given to every man, no matter how humble…’
Johnny knew he longed to own [Goblin] himself. He could, any moment, by merely saying ‘commandeer.’ And Johnny knew he never would say it.
From that day he and Johnny spent hours together jumping or exercising horses. Johnny almost worshiped him for his skill and almost loved him, because, ever and anon, he looked so much like Rab; but still it was only where horses were concerned they were equals. Indoors he was rigidly a British officer and a ‘gentleman’ and Johnny an inferior. This shifting about puzzled Johnny. It did not seem to puzzle the British officer at all.
He took one of [the smocks] from his sea chest in the attic. It was a fine light blue. He had never noticed before how beautiful was the stitching, and it hurt him to think he had been too proud to wear them, for now he was old enough to appreciate the love that had gone into their making. How little his mother had known of the working world to make smocks for a boy who she knew was to become a silversmith! She hadn’t known anything, really, of day labor, the life of apprentices. She had been frail, cast off, sick, and yet she had fought up to the very end for something. That something was himself, and he felt humbled and ashamed.
The first two boats were filled with privates. They had been packed in, and now were being tossed ashore, like so much cordwood. Most of them were pathetically good and patient, but he saw an officer strike a man who was screaming.
Johnny’s hands clenched. ‘It is just as James Otis said,’ he thought. ‘We are fighting, partly, for just that. Because a man is a private is no reason he should be treated like cordwood.’
