The Great Brain
Chronicled by the first-person voice of the author cast in the role of the sensible, generally obedient John (J.D.), youngest of three brothers, the stories center around the relatively well-to-do Fitzgerald family. The father (Papa), John D. Fitzgerald, is an Irish Catholic originally from the Eastern United States who headed west to seek his fortune as a newspaper writer and publisher. (It's not quite clear why the youngest son carries the "Junior" title, normally reserved for the eldest son.) As the owner of the town's only newspaper and printing press, Papa is one of Adenville's leading citizens, and one of the very few with a college education--a very impressive achievement in an era when any education beyond the sixth grade was a great privilege, a subject touched upon repeatedly. The mother, Tina, while remaining anchored in the traditional role of a late-Victorian housewife and mother, is nonetheless a sensible, assertive, intelligent woman. Although the subject isn't dwelt upon at length, it's fairly clear that the blond Tina, of Swedish origin, had converted. (The author himself had an Irish Catholic father and a Mormon mother of Scandinavian origin.)
The older son, Sweyn, is a more peripheral figure, who eventually departs for Pennsylvania to live with relatives so that he can attend high school.
Spoiler Warning: Plot Details Follow
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2 A Bygone Era 3 Family Values, Up to a Point |
Swindler and Quondam Humanitarian
The hero--or, perhaps, antihero--of the books, naturally, is the Great Brain himself, Tom D. Fitzgerald. (All the Fitzgerald men have the middle name of Dennis.) Tom, the middle brother, has two qualities, which, when taken together, make him a menace to society: his great brain and his "money-loving heart." Tom is smart enough to handle school, sports and household chores with dispatch, leaving him with plenty of time to concoct various clever pranks, swindles and moneymaking schemes. Some examples:
- Tom purchases various items that kids would want, such as a slingshot, a penknife, a baseball, and so on. He pins them to a "Wheel of Fortune" at which each kid will "place" a nickel. When one of the kids wins, Tom hands him 25 cents or so, saying, "Well, you must realize I can't keep five baseballs on hand, so just go down to the store and buy one." Naturally, the kids keep betting and lose all their money.
- After reading about boomerangs in the encyclopedia, Tom whittles his own and tells the other kids that he has devised a special formula to enable wood to be magnetized. Of course, they all think he's gone "plumb loco," at which point he offers them a bet: He will rub the stick with a magnet and throw it while holding an iron bar in the other hand. When the boomerang returns, Tom cleans up. Then he "accidentally" throws it into a vat of water and claims that the water has ruined the magnetization. After the befuddled kids leave, Tom chops up the boomerang, just to be safe.
- Tom builds fake dinosaur feet and mounts them on boards. He then stomps around near the mouth of a cave, leaving fake dinosaur tracks. Papa and some other people discover them, sending the town into a wild panic--women and children are kept at home, and armed posses patrol the streets. Finally, Tom fesses up, and a flabbergasted Papa remarks, "I should have known--the prints weren't even deep enough to have been made by anything as heavy as a prehistoric animal!"
- When Mr. Standish, the severe, newly-appointed master of the one-room schoolhouse paddles Tom in front of everyone, the humiliated Tom vows revenge. Knowing that Mr. Standish, a bachelor, lives in a boarding house owned by a strict Mormon woman who tolerates neither smoking nor drinking, Tom arranges to plant evidence. He fishes a couple of empty whiskey bottles from behind one of the saloons, then gets several kids to take just a few ounces of liquor from their parents' supply (so that the difference will not be detected). He has the landlady's son place the liquor, a package of Sen-Sen (to cover the smell of liquor on one's breath), and cigars in the room. The schoolteacher is about to be dismissed, but, once again, in a fit of conscience Tom confesses. In a rather unrealistic happy ending, the schoolteacher shows gratitude by agreeing to cease using corporal punishment.
- When Papa takes the boys on a camping trip, he is disappointed to find crowds of people at "their" previously secluded spot. (Shades of things to come, when the population of the U.S. would quintuple and the National Parks would begin to experience massive crime, pollution and litter.) He decides to strike out into the unknown, like the pioneers, whose halcyon days have already since passed. Tom inexplicably lags behind a bit. Disaster strikes: one of their horses breaks a leg and must be shot, they run out of food and become hopelessly lost. J.D. begins to cry, and Papa bravely declares that they will have to be strong and build a log cabin. At this point, Tom calmly tells them not to worry, for Uncle Mark and a search party will arrive within a day or two: Tom had been carefully marking trees and piling rocks along the way. Papa, initially proud of his son, suddenly bursts into tears upon realizing that he will become a laughingstock when the townspeople learn that it was Tom, not Papa, who took such sensible precautions. So Tom and his brothers swear an oath of secrecy.
A Bygone Era
Without passing judgment, Fitzgerald gently reminds his readers of the enormous differences between past and present, leaving us to ponder them. The amounts of money at stake, for example, seem miniscule by today's standards, but the reader quickly adjusts and can soon take interest in enterprises involving fifty cents or a quarter. Without being glib or condescending to either his characters or his readers, Fitzgerald deftly explains difficult concepts: diabetes, the banking system in the days before the Federal Reserve, racism and intolerance (although blacks do not appear, the issue of nativism arises when some of the kids torment the son of a Greek immigrant), Mormonism and Catholicism, the small-town culture of long ago, the tortured history of Native Americans, and the second-class status of Jews (see below). The stories provide a compelling insight into a world that, for better or worse, we have long lost: a world without radio, television, computers, cell phones or the Internet (although the town did have trains and boasted local telephone service, as well municipal electricity, courtesy of a coal-fired plant outside of town); a life without automobiles, airplanes and the concomitant oil crisis; without Einsteinian physics or the atomic bomb, with no Communism, suicide bombers, ethnic cleansing, tanks, ballpoint pens, calculators, video games, street crime and deadbolted doors, the Pill and its corollary, premarital sex, legalized abortion, as well as open-heart surgery, penicillin, or even x-rays--the list is formidable. Income taxes, Social Security, and the draft are unknown; contact with any form of government beyond the local level is almost nonexistent.
The primary form of transportation is walking; cowboys and the better-off may have horses. The Fitzgeralds are lucky enough to own a team of horses and a buggy, along with a mustang that had originally been Sweyn's. Outhouses are not only the norm, they are a mark of social status: Mr. Whitlock, the banker, owns a "six-holer," complete with a venting system. When Papa orders a flush toilet (called a "water closet" from Sears Roebuck and has a cesspool built, everyone thinks he has lost his mind. Won't the house stink to high heaven? Once it's installed, the whole town insists upon a public viewing; initially indignant, Papa relents and turns it into a social event, with Mama serving cookies and lemonade. Everything is homemade, including preserves, baked goods and ice cream; without vacuum cleaners or synthetic wall-to-wall carpeting, Mama and Aunt Bertha take out the rugs every spring, and the boys have to beat the dust out with broom handles. Punctually served meals are the norm, as fast-food restaurants and microwaveable snacks lie far in the future: when the Greek immigrant opens up a diner and offers J.D. a slice of pie, the astonished narrator comments that he has never eaten in a restaurant. In the absence of television, after-dinner activities usually consist of reading or parlor games like dominoes or checkers, and bedtime comes at eight or nine o'clock. Kids had to generate their own fun, in the form of games, sports, camping, horseback riding, swimming, and so forth. Ironically, though discipline seemed strict by today's standards--most families routinely horsewhipped their children (the better-educated, more progressive Fitzgeralds being a notable exception with their use of the silent treatment)--in many ways kids actually enjoyed much more freedom. They could roam the countryside, ride their bikes everywhere, splash around in the swimming hole, even get into fights without all of the myriad rules, regulations, safety fears and constraints imposed today. Frivolous lawsuits were unheard of, as were ADD and Ritalin, street gangs, teen suicide and depression, inexplicable allergies to everything from peanuts to dogs, guns in school, the SAT's, competitive kindergartens with academic entrance requirements and waiting lists were beyond the reach of the greatest imaginative effort.
Yet by no means does Fitzgerald imply, however, that this era was unequivocally superior to our own. He does not shrink back from depicting its downside. Cures for diabetes and many other diseases are unknown. Most of the townspeople are poor and ill-educated; few have had the opportunity to travel, even to Salt Lake; culture, except for a poorly-received annual Chautauqua, is completely lacking. Despite the Mormons' abstinence, the town tolerates two saloons, and broke, drunken cowboys are common. Gunfighting and train robberies still crop up. The sexes remain absolutely separate--any boy who manifests interest in girls before the magic age of 16 is irrevocably deemed a sissy. Gender roles are rigidly defined; girls cannot wear pants or participate in male activities--working, horseback riding, swimming in the buff, hunting, baseball, football, and so forth. Like it or not, they must keep house, cook, sew and wash. Yet when a tomboy moves into town with her widowed father and cannot fit in, it is Tom who defies convention by befriending her and convincing her to learn how to read. He helps her strike a compromise between the gender roles--she agrees to wear dresses most of the time, but still wears jeans while horseback riding. Thanks to Tom, she can bridge the gaps between the strict gender boundaries as well as between frontier and town life. In a subtle way, therefore, Fitzgerald prefigures the social progress yet to come, for it is the town's most intelligent citizen, his brother, who dares to accept someone who fails to conform.
All the same, Tom is no saint. During the course of a summer, Tom alienates virtually all the other kids in town, prompting them to stage a mock trial presided over by the sixteen-year-old son of District Attorney Vickers. Tom is found guilty on all counts, and Harold Vickers orders him to make restitution, then imposes a suspended sentence: should Tom ever "backslide," he will be ostracized permanently. Though Tom appears to acquiesce, afterwards he simply kicks his imagination into higher gear, devising subtler swindles that nobody can quite put his finger on.
Family Values, Up to a Point
Catholicism is central to the family's life and identity, a recurring theme in a town where Catholics form a distinct minority (the breakdown is said to be 2000 Mormons, 400 or so Protestants, and only about 100 Catholics; all the non-Mormons or "Gentiles" attend a generalized community church, and the Fitzgeralds have to make do with the services of an itinerant priest. When Tom turns twelve, Papa ships him off to a Catholic boarding academy (seventh and eighth grades only, ten kids each) in Salt Lake. (Once again, Fitzgerald gently hints at larger social and political issues when he has Father Rodriguez, the head of the academy, inform Tom that the school's mission is to produce "American Catholics" with a strong sense of values and good citizenship. This alludes to both anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment, which were widespread in the 19th century.) Sweyn has already been there for a year and done well, but, not surprisingly, Tom chafes under the strict, pre-Vatican II discipline. Among other things, candy is banned, so Tom sets up a clandestine sales operation, vaulting over the wall to buy a stash, then selling it at black-market prices. He gets into other scrapes, and after a year, expresses a very strong desire not to return. Meanwhile, back in Adenville, J.D. attempts to fill Tom's shoes, but his "little brain" doens't have the knack for it. When the school year ends, Tom, playing upon his mother's sentimental wish to have the sons at home, induces Papa to get the ball rolling on a community venture to construct an academy for the seventh and eighth grades. As it turns out, the town has enough civically-minded people who contribute sufficient labor and materials to make it work, with the result that several of the kids now have new career opportunities open to them--for an eighth grade education is necessary to be a veterinarian or a pharmacist.
Although religion crops up frequently, Jews are conspicuously absent, except in one noteworthy episode. Papa convinces Abie, an aging traveling peddler, to open up a variety store. When Abie counters that people will not buy from him owing to religiious discrimination, Papa breezily dismisses the peddler's concerns, declaring such unenlightened attitudes a thing of the past. (Sound familiar?) After all, he says, "I am not a Mormon, but they give me all of their advertising and printing business." Papa, however, forgets one crucial factor: he had absolutely no competition. But due to the overwhelming competition of the Mormons' long-established Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) store, the Jewish merchant's business fails, causing him to starve to death, as he is too proud to ask for charity. Abie simply sequesters himself in the tiny sleeping quarters behind his store. Nobody notices until it's too late, and Papa astounds everyone by declaring that they all had blood on their hands, if indirectly--while they didn't wish any harm to the Jew among them, they didn't care about him either. Inn this instance, the traditional small-town virtues of caring for one's neighbor failed abjectly.
The Fitzgerald family members include:
- John Dennis Fitzgerald (J.D.) - the narrator and youngest of the three brothers
- Tom Dennis Fitzgerald (T.D.) - the middle brother and swindler extraordinaire
- Sweyn Fitzgerald - the eldest brother
- "Papa" Fitzgerald - patriarch of the family. Editor and publisher of the town paper, the "Adenville Weekly Advocate"
- "Mama" Fitzgerald - matriarch of the family and stern homemaker, of Scandinavian ancestry
- Aunt Bertha - not actually the brother's aunt but family nonetheless
- Uncle Mark - a federal Marshal
- Frankie - adopted into the Fitzgerald family after the loss of his own.
- Sammy Leeds, a bit of a bully, but basically not a bad guy
- Herbie, a fat kid whom Tom sets out to reform
- Danny Forester, the barber's son, whose left eye always seems half-shut
- Andy Anderson, the amputee (see above)
- Basil, the Greek boy
- Seth
- Marie Vinson, daughter of leading citizen Mrs. Vinson; Sweyn is sweet on Marie, much to John and Tom's chagrin
Titles in order of continuity include:
- The Great Brain
- More Adventures of the Great Brain
- Me and My Little Brain
- The Great Brain At The Academy
- The Great Brain Reforms
- The Return of the Great Brain
- The Great Brain Does It Again
- The Great Brain Is Back (Published from loose notes after the author's death)
