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Narrative Loss And The Melancholic Reader Of Johnny Tremain

Decent Essays

In Eric Tribunella’s essay “Narrative Loss and the Melancholic Reader of Johnny Tremain”, the concept of failure is one of Tribunella’s main focal points throughout the essay about Esther Forbes’ Johnny Tremain. Tribunella argues that these failures are present because the novel lacks climax throughout the essay’s entirety and without this climax there is no sense of closure in the most climatic events. One particular failure that Tribunella mentions in his essay is the failure of love triangles in the novel. Tribunella argues that there are three love triangles in Johnny Tremain but none of these are fulfilled with a “bang”. Instead each one of these love triangles slowly fizzles out throughout the novel. The love triangles that are found in Forbes’ Johnny Tremain are not those that represent an epic romance but instead they represent those of a childhood crush. These representations can be found in each one of the love triangles that Tribunella argues that is present in the novel. Tribunella states that one of the love triangles in the novel is between Johnny, Cilla, and Tweedie. One would believe that this love triangle would create a great conflict in the series due to the fact that Tweedie is imposing on what was theoretically Johnny’s territory. Johnny was the original “golden boy” in the Lapham household and due to one accident his pedestal was taken away from him. Tweedie, a man who was not even around, swoops in to save the Lapham family and takes Johnny’s

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