46 pages • 1 hour read
Jonny Appleseed
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Character Analysis
Jonny
Jonny is the first-person narrator and protagonist of the novel. Born Cree on a reserve in Peguis, at the novel’s opening, he has moved to Winnipeg to feel freer and more accepted as a queer Two-Spirit person. Jonny is, ironically, named after Johnny Appleseed (1774-1845), an American missionary and conservationist famous for planting apple trees around the country and trying to convert Indigenous people in America to Christianity. Jonny makes money by doing sex work via webcam shows over Snapchat, in which he caters to Indigenous fetishism for his clients.
The major and minor narrative arcs of the novel trace Jonny’s stream-of-consciousness point of view as he moves through the major decisions of his adult life: moving off the reservation to Winnipeg, figuring his life in Winnipeg, and coming back home to the reservation in Peguis for his stepfather Roger’s funeral. By the end of the novel, Jonny has realized that even though he initially moved away to escape it, the reservation is absolutely his home.
Throughout the novel, Jonny struggles with his relationship with Tias, his cis male childhood friend who is also his adult romantic/sexual interest. With Tias, Jonny explores his gay sexuality and the line between self-acceptance and self-alienation. Jonny further struggles with his identities as Indigenous and queer in the mainstream white gay community of Winnipeg and on the reservation, where there is a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude toward same-sex relationships. The novel is Jonny’s coming-of-age story.
Tias
Tias is Jonny's childhood friend. He is a foil for Jonny and a catalyst for many of Jonny’s moments of character growth. He and Jonny grow up on the reservation together in Peguis. As a young child, Tias and his sister are taken care of by his grandfather until Child Protective Services removes them both from his grandfather’s care. Though Tias is placed with an adoptive family that’s on the reservation, he does not know what happens to his sister, and they are never united. His guilt over what happens to her persists throughout his adult life.
As a child, Tias takes Jonny with him on family vacations to the campground at Hecla. The adventures they have there, including their first kiss, shape their lives and form the foundation for their ongoing relationship.
Tias is conflicted about his relationship with Jonny, and in this way acts as a counterpoint to Jonny. Jonny is openly queer, no matter it costs him while Tias hides his romantic and sexual relationship with Jonny. Tias is never out as a man who sleeps with other men. Despite having sex with Jonny multiple times, Tias insists that he is not gay. As a child, Tias is physically abused by his adoptive father anytime he expresses femininity. As an adult, he dates Jordan, a straight cis Indigenous girl and confesses to Jonny near the end of the novel that he is not sure what to do about getting Jordan pregnant. However, Tias resolves to begin to make something of himself and feels cautiously positively about the future ahead.
Jordan
Jordan is Tias’s cis female girlfriend. She is a foil for Jonny because her relationship with Tias is everything that Jonny’s relationship with Tias is not. Jordan, Jonny, and Tias form a love triangle, which is a primary source of tension in the novel. Jordan is from Bloodvein, which is known on the reservation and in Peguis as a particularly tough place to grow up, and she has a reputation as a tough girl. Passion and violence are part of Jordan’s character: she beats Jonny up for sexting with Tias.
Jordan is a mother, and her fear of failing her children links with larger themes in the novel about Failure at Parenthood. Jordan has a deep guilt about losing her daughter to Child Protective Services after a night of ingesting hallucinogens. Her pregnancy near the end of the book places her on another precipice: she does not know whether she and Tias can make it with this child and keep the child as their own.
Frances, aka Kokum
Frances is Jonny’s grandmother, whom he refers to as Kokum (the proper noun Grandmother) or his kokum (general term for grandmother) throughout the novel. Kokum is used as a proper noun and a lower-case noun. All the chapters in which Kokum appears are flashbacks: she died before the novel begins. However, Kokum is very present throughout the book as the major force in Jonny’s character development: he is the person he is because of Kokum. From her, he learns important lessons about what it means to be culturally Cree and to celebrate his Indigenous heritage.
Kokum loves Bee Hive brand light corn syrup, which is an image and smell that Jonny associates with her. She collects tiny glass figurines and loves having her house full of family. She is one of the first characters to embrace Jonny’s queer and Two-Spirit identities; she advocates for him to be able to be gender non-conforming on the reservation and with other Cree who try to enforce gender norms for Jonny. She is the one who tells Jonny about the term Two-Spirit, an Indigenous concept for someone who simultaneously embodies male and female gender identities. Jonny does not know that such a concept exists and knowing that there is an Indigenous queer identity gives him an alternative to struggling to belong in the mainstream white queer culture in Winnipeg.
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