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Chapter 2: Johnny Nolan
Explanation and Analysis—Johnny Nolan:
Johnny Nolan, a poor and largely unsuccessful bootblack who hangs around Dick, serves as a foil to emphasize Dick's enterprising character and responsible decisions. Johnny first appears when Dick is eating breakfast in a cheap diner. Because Johnny doesn't have enough money to buy his own meal, Dick pays for it. The difference in their circumstances is no coincidence, Alger tells us: while Dick is "energetic and on the alert for business," Johnny is the opposite. As a result, Alger says, "Dick earned probably three times as much" as his friend. When Johnny complains that he can't find enough customers, Dick insists that the problem is his disposition, not their line of work:
“I don’t get near as much as you, Dick.”
“Well, you might if you tried. I keep my eyes open—that’s the way I get jobs. You’re lazy, that’s what’s the matter.”
Dick's generosity in buying Johnny's breakfast immediately highlights his innate good nature, and Johnny goes on to serve as a foil for the duration of the novel. Even as Johnny sees Dick move up in the world through hard work, thrift, and education, he makes no moves to follow his example. In fact, he's amazed to find out that Dick has learned to read and write letters, and he insists that he could never learn to do so himself. At the end of the novel, while Dick is starting a professional career, Johnny remains a poor boot-black, inheriting Dick's old customers.
Through this contrast in the boys' characters and trajectories, Alger argues that Dick's self-transformation is not a matter of luck or the result of meeting the right people, but rather the product of his own choices and effort. In the novel's telling, Dick succeeds because he is willing to put his innate good qualities to work. Johnny stagnates not because he lacks opportunity or education, but because he is "utterly lacking in that energy, ambition, and natural sharpness for which Dick was distinguished." As a foil, Johnny helps demonstrate that anyone can achieve Dick's journey to prosperity by embracing hard work and economy; those who fail, Alger suggests, do so because of their own behavior.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15: Dick Secures a Tutor
Explanation and Analysis—Henry Fosdick:
Henry Fosdick, Dick's closest friend among his fellow boot-blacks, serves as a foil to the novel's protagonist. While Johnny Nolan, also a foil, illuminates Dick's good qualities through his own flaws, Fosdick is just as hardworking and meritorious as Dick. They just have different strengths and skills.
Dick has been a homeless orphan for years and cultivated excellent street smarts. By contrast, Fosdick has only been a boot-black for a few months since his father's sudden death. Alger tells the reader early on that Fosdick hasn't taken well to life on the streets:
He was ill-fitted for the coarse companionship of the street-boys, and shrank from the rude jokes of his present associates.
Despite being hardworking and humble, Fosdick is too shy to get work and makes much less money than Dick. His inability to navigate the streets shows that Dick is good at getting customers and is also remarkably enterprising and clever—and thus ready to enter the professional business world.
On the other hand, Fosdick possesses skills that Dick doesn't—skills he needs to acquire before he can move upward in society. While Dick can barely read or write, Fosdick went to school for several years while his father was alive; at the age of 12, Alger says, he "knew as much as many boys of fourteen" and is "studious and ambitious to excel." Fosdick's achievements as a student remind the reader that Dick lacks even a rudimentary education, something that is easy to forget when he's cracking jokes or solving mysteries on the streets.
Dick and Fosdick have very different abilities. Only when they move in together and pool their skills—Fosdick teaching Dick to read and write, and Dick helping Fosdick find customers, advocate for himself, and make advantageous friends—can they succeed in moving up in the world.
By the end of the novel, Dick has learned to read and write, and Fosdick has become sufficiently street-smart to secure a position as an errand boy. At this point, the two boys are more alike than they are different. By acting as a foil to Dick, and by imparting some of his own skills to the novel's protagonist, Fosdick helps illuminate the combination of street smarts and conventional education that are necessary to achieve success in Alger's America.
Related Themes:
