The Light in the Forest | Characters & Character Analysis

The Light in the Forest Characters

True Son/ John Butler

At the age of four, John Butler is taken from his white family by Delaware Indians during an attack on his family's farm. The Indian Cuyloga, whose own son had died of an illness, adopts him and renames him True Son. For the next eleven years, True Son lives as a member of the Lenni Lenape tribe. When he learns that he must return to his white family after all this time, he resists, saying that he will never live among his enemy. Throughout the novel he makes several escape attempts and never seems to give up the determination to remain a member of his tribe.

True Son's struggle in this story has a number of facets. He fights to reconcile his Indian and white selves until the very last page, resisting the growing knowledge that all whites are not evil just as all Indians are not fully virtuous. He...
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