The Light in the ForestThe Light in the Forest by Conrad Richter is a story of a white boy raised by an Indian tribe during the 1700's. The boy, kidnaped and adopted at a young age, was brought up as True Son. When True Son, now fifteen, is forced back to his white family by a treaty, he has already developed a hatred toward them. True Son's search for identity will lead to his defiance of his new family and end tragically with abandonment from his Indian father. This novel is based upon the aspect of Romanticism in order to show the conflicts between the Indians and the inferior white society during this time period. Romanticism is a concept used by authors which ". . . emphasizes the beauty, strangeness, and mystery of nature . . . [with an] emphasis upon an organic connection between imagination and the natural world."
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map of the distribution of human races by Thomas H...
The Light in the ForestThe novel expresses Romanticism through the relationship of the superior Native Americans to the white societies in nature. The Indians in Ricter's book, The Light in the Forest, are superior by the use of the setting of the story, the incidents taking place, and characterization.
The characterization is from two different perspectives, one from the Indians and one from the whites, and each wants something different for True Son. There are two vastly different lives that True Son lives in which he is forced to switch from one life to the other; therefore, "As True Son, John Butler (like his adopted Indian brothers) lives as free as the open air. But returned to his white parents he experiences the constraints of civilization . . ." True Son shouldn't face these constraints, but the selfish nature of the whites put him in this position, which only makes True Son...