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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in News of the World, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fatherhood and Masculinity
American Multiculturalism and Racial Violence
News and Storytelling
Childhood and Innocence
War and Reconstruction
Summary
Analysis
Leaving Johanna with the stove, Captain Kidd walks into town and arranges to rent the Masonic Lodge for the night and walks around placing advertisements for his reading. He runs into Simon, a fiddler he knows from his travelers. Ascertaining that Simon isn’t playing a concert tonight, Captain Kidd explains his situation and asks if Simon will watch over Johanna while he’s away. Simon and the woman he’s courting, Doris, can keep the girl company and makes sure she doesn’t run off. Simon agrees and mentions that he once saw a man returned from captivity who no longer spoke a word of English. Captain Kidd agrees that “it is chilling, how their minds change so completely.”
By leaving Johanna alone, Captain Kidd shows his trust in her—something that will eventually endear him to the young girl. By describing Johanna’s transformation as “chilling,” Captain Kidd seems to see it as a bad thing. However, he’ll ultimately come to appreciate Johanna’s mixed cultural identity and strive to allow her to preserve it.
Themes
Simon finds Doris and along with Captain Kidd they return to the wagon, where Johanna has prepared corn bread and bacon. Doris greets the young girl brightly and presents her with a china doll, which Johanna examines solemnly before addressing it in Kiowa. Doris, an Irish immigrant, remarks that Johanna is like an elf in that she is “twice captured, carried away on the flood of the world.” No matter what clothing she wears, she’ll always be as strange as she is now. Doris has experience with traumatized children because, during the Irish Potato Famine, so many that she knew endured the deaths of their whole families.
Even though the three adults inhabit the same society, Doris’s immigrant background—and her interpretation of Johanna’s character through her own cultural identity—show the various cultures that influence the creation of American society. In the novel’s view, “American” identity is not superior to but fundamentally informed by the cultures of immigrants, enslaved, and indigenous people.
Themes
Captain Kidd remarks pragmatically that he can’t do anything about Johanna’s situation. He thumbs through his newspapers, picking out articles for the reading; after all, he has to make a living. Doris remarks that the newspapers say “nothing about this” or “about the poor at all.” Instead, “only God sees them.”
Doris questions Captain Kidd about Johanna’s family. Impetuously, she offers to take charge of Johanna herself. Simon looks at her in alarm, remarking that they’re engaged to be married and are already expecting a child. Captain Kidd suspects that Doris wants Johanna not as a child to raise but as an extra hand around the house. He politely declines the offer.
Throughout the novel, even well-intentioned people will see Johanna as a means to fulfill their own desires—in this case, to help care for a growing family—rather than as a child with her own needs and concerns.
Themes
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