In today's society and in
modern times, childhood is generally characterized by a bubbling curiosity, big
dreams, and deterministic goals. Many children seem to believe they have a
clear vision of the future, whether it be the dream job of an astronaut, or a
teacher. Contrastingly, the environment depicted by Jack London in the short
story, “The Apostate,” childhood is a dreary, cold experience as seen through
the eyes of Johnny, a child laborer who has been providing for his family since
he was seven years old. Everyday, Johnny wakes to a constant misery of
tasteless coffee and bread, and a sickness-filled factory he works in,
returning home with a salvaged energy with no chance of great relaxation. As
the main provider for his family, his mother depends on him to carry the burden
of providing a great future for his siblings. At childhood and adolescence,
many parents restrict their children’s freedom and independence for better
development and control. With Johnny’s desolate situations of lost hope and an
overbearing family, is the ultimate choice for him really sole freedom?
When
he was six, he was proclaimed the mother and the father to Will and the other
children, as their mother took on various jobs. Shortly afterwards, Johnny has
gone through several jobs and tasks such as winding bobbins, guiding streams of
cloth, and working in a glass factory at nine years old after acquiring
Measles. In his early stages of his childhood, he enjoyed work for he was still
in possession of dreams and illusions, as he watched the streaming cloth pass
by. Perhaps it is analogous to his future as his dreams slowly disappear the
more he works and watches the stream of cloth pass by. At eleven he states that
he has gone into full-blown manhood as he concludes, “No child works on the
night shift and remains a child.” As the superintendent and various people
admire and marvel at his efficiency to do these high-level factory jobs at high
speed, his tension increased and so did his susceptibility to more diseases.
The more his workload increased, the more his mind ran slower, resulting in no
longer dreaming at all. At sixteen, he states that he had grown too old and
tired to love. The factory work has drained him and is a factor that contributed
to his gloomy perspective and outlook in life.
Furthermore,
the relationship between Johnny and his family members are at the cusp of
falling apart. His mother seems to treat him unfairly, putting his younger
siblings in a higher priority, especially Will, the second oldest child. As
Johnny states, “I was younger’n than him when I started to work.” His mother
wants a better childhood for the younger childhood, using Johnny as the
leverage to make her ultimate goal happen. Johnny is the breadwinner and the father
figure of the family, and the mother is slowly taking advantage of him. His
mother seems to be an insensitive woman, as she hastily defends her actions by
saying that she has done no wrong and does not see the error of her ways. This
puts a rift between Johnny and the family, and through his mother’s
stubbornness and leeching ways, Johnny has become even more drained after his
work at the factory.
Implied
by the title, apostasy is the “abandonment of religious faith, vows, and
principles.” Johnny at the close of the story is lying in a train somewhere,
after bidding his mom goodbye. He has made the choice of the ultimate freedom
from disillusionment from work, and has lost his will to continue to uphold
everyone’s standards of him – his mother and the factory primarily. His
physical and mental conditions has slowly deteriorated and just at sixteen
years old, he has lost his sense of being and is delighted with the comfort
that gone are the days of brutal, repetitive machinery with a bunch of looms stuck
running in his mind. For him, sole freedom really is the key solution to his
desolate life, and that makes all the difference.
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