Journal 35: Red Apples and Iron Horse

Quote:
“‘Mother; I’m going East! I like big red apples, and I want to ride on the iron horse! Mother, say yes!’ I pleaded” (Bonnin 1112)

Summary:
In the story “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” by Gertrude Bonnin, here is where Bonnin is being lured by the missioners to come with them to study in the East, which is where white people had settled in America. Here the missioners are asking Bonnin’s mother if she wants Bonnin to go study with them. At this moment Bonnin desperately wants to go with them.

Response:

This is Bonnin falling in the missionary’s hands and being lured into going to this really beautiful and different land that is full of apples and where she can still be free and enjoy life. Analyzing the symbolism of the red apple, at the moment when Bonnin pleads to her mom to let her go with the missionaries, it is clear that Bonnin bit the apple, she fell into temptation and was finally caught into this delusion of a perfect and beautiful place where she was going to have fun and experience new things. Plus, the apple is the temptation, but is Bonnin who driven by curiosity, like any other kid, is not aware of reality, she just wants to try the apple, see the world and change.

Bonnin’s words sound so eager, but at the same time they are so innocent. She is just thinking about red apples, without considering her mother’s feelings, she is totally blind by this desire of going to the unknown, of seen this different world. Also, calling a train “the iron horse” shows that she doesn’t know anything about it but what she’s heard from other people. In other words, Bonnin was just a child, with the illusion of experimenting something new, different and delightful; but the truth was far off from what she was hoping for. I think Bonnin describes herself when she was little in such a way to show us how these white men, arrived for another land, saw and conquered her world, making a change that didn’t allow going back to the same old life she used to know.