Childhood and Innocence Theme Analysis

In News of the World, Johanna, who was captured by the Kiowa tribe as a young child, must grapple with the challenges of reentering a home she barely remembers. Traumatized by repeated dislocations and totally immersed in Native American culture, Johanna often behaves with a maturity beyond her age yet is unable to navigate basic customs like wearing a dress or eating with silverware. Her inability to conform to social norms convinces many white Americans that she is fundamentally disturbed and unlike other children. Only Captain Kidd, by completely accepting Johanna’s differences, is able to perceive the light-heartedness, vulnerability, and innocence that links her to all other children. In his eyes, Johanna’s true loss of innocence (and, the novel suggests, that of all children) comes only when her new community compels her by force to adapt to their standards.

Johanna’s mixture of adult capability and childlike incomprehension differentiates her from most children in the Anglo-American society to which she must return. She’s extremely stoic, never resorting to tears or expressing fear even after the trauma of being separated from her Kiowa family and returned to a society that feels totally alien. In some ways she’s mature and alert: she can cook dinner over a camp stove or identify a hunting party’s approach by its footsteps. But she’s overwhelmed by noisy town streets and uninterested in learning to eat with a fork. More strikingly, Johanna’s capacity for violence disconcerts the adults around her. When the nefarious Almay and his men attack Captain Kidd, Johanna ingeniously topples a boulder onto Almay and kills him. While this action is necessary to save herself from slavery or death, Captain Kidd is startled by her ferocious war cries, which express her comfort with killing. A few days later, Johanna “surprises” her guardian with two chickens she has stolen from a local farmer and slaughtered; the Captain reflects ruefully that unlike other little girls, she thinks of all animals as food, not pets.

Because Johanna lacks both the helplessness and the sweetness that Anglo-Americans consider natural and desirable in children, most white people see her as fundamentally abnormal or disturbed; it’s only Captain Kidd who completely accepts her idiosyncrasies. For example, when Johanna decides to bathe naked in a river—a practice she’s observed for years with her Kiowa family—a young woman accuses her of impropriety and even immorality. Calling Johanna a “hussy” and accusing her of intentionally “parading her charms” before the town’s men, the woman projects onto Johanna a grown woman’s sexuality. She’s unable to interpret Johanna’s actions in the context of her turbulent and traumatic life. Rather, she sees her oddities an excuse to withhold the protection and care normally afforded to children. In contrast, Captain Kidd retains his dry, grandfatherly manner whether Johanna is spilling her food or murdering her enemies. For example, when Johanna tries to scalp Almay after killing him, Captain Kidd simply says, “my dear, it’s not done.” Rather than shaming her or expressing disgust, he accepts that she’s simply acting on the norms she’s learned in her tribe.

As a result, Captain Kidd witnesses the light-hearted and childlike behavior Johanna hides from others. While Johanna screams curses at the woman in the river, she plays clapping games with the Captain, imitates the horse’s whinny, and drives him crazy by repeating newly learned English words over and over. Where others are frightened by Johanna’s preternaturally calm demeanor, Captain Kidd perceives and allays her fear at entering into an unknown world. Because Captain Kidd overlooks her inability to conform to Anglo-American norms, Johanna is able to relax and act like a child around him, showing that she does possess the same innocence as any other child.

Johanna only truly loses her innocence when she’s forced to adapt to norms of a community she doesn’t understand or like. Captain Kidd returns Johanna to her aunt and uncle, Wilhelm and Anna; but Johanna’s relatives express no familial affection for her, and are appalled by her inability to act like an Anglo-American girl. The first words Anna addresses to her niece are a sharp admonition to get off the floor, where she is squatting like a Kiowa. Throughout their journey, Johanna has obeyed Captain Kidd like a parent and expressed little curiosity about their destination. Now, she begs him in broken English to take her away, losing her childlike trust and experiencing adult anxiety about the future. After leaving Johanna behind with her relatives, Captain Kidd is overwhelmed with regret and returns to the farm days later to offer to adopt her. When he arrives, he finds Johanna in the fields staggering under the weight of heavy buckets, her hands scarred from whipping. Johanna has probably endured more arduous work among the Kiowa, but while those experiences gave her strength, she looks helpless and broken now. Her changed demeanor shows that it’s not hardship itself but rather the insistence she adopt a different set of norms that causes her to lose her childhood innocence.

Fortunately, Captain Kidd rescues Johanna from her abusive relatives. But even though she lives a comfortable life, as she enters adolescence Johanna seems depressed and constrained by the norms of white American society. Her discomfort with social niceties points out the arbitrary nature of all social norms; even when observed among a loving family, they are inherently arbitrary. Moreover, her unhappiness—which continues until she marries a cattle herder and returns to a wandering lifestyle—suggests that the end of childhood comes only when one finally accepts these arbitrary norms as meaningful aspects of one’s life.