An Analysis Of Conrad Richter's 'True Son In The Light In The Forest'

A father influences who his child becomes through his words and actions. In The Light In The Forest, author Conrad Richter pens the story of True Son, a white boy captured by Indians at age four and raised in the culture for eleven years. Throughout the novel, True Son identified three contrasting fathers, who each affected him differently.

To begin, True Son’s Indian father, Cuyloga, taught True Son to tolerate pain. At one point the novel states, “In winter he would sit in the icy river until his Indian father smoking on the bank said he could come out. It made him strong against any hardship that would come to him, his father said” (Richter, 1). Cuyloga taught True Son to condone pain and tolerate strenuous obstacles. Once True Son was captured from the whites, Cuyloga “took out his white blood and put Indian blood in it’s place” (Richter, 1). True Son believed he became a native and a full blood Indian.
Harry endorsed True Son to labor in the fields and help hoe corn (Richter, 74). True Son refused at first, but Harry told him “We look at things differently here” (Richter, 74). True Son went on to hoe the corn, which taught him that the work of the “squaws” or women, was the work of men in the white culture. When Half Arrow and True Son were departing, they came across two boats that belonged to a white man. Half Arrow proposed taking a boat, True Son replied, “I see the two boats. But, they belong to the trader,” (Richter, 92). True Son adopted some of the white morals, such as stealing is wrong; in the Indian culture they take back what was