Jonny Appleseed

Throughout the novel, Whitehead uses a nested narrative structure. He uses this craft technique within the book as a whole, but also within individual chapters. It allows him to follow the sudden shifts and broad trains of thought of the first-person narrator, Jonny. It also provides the opportunity to evoke an oral storytelling technique similar to the stories that Jonny hears growing up from family members. Just as the novel itself is not always straightforward or chronological, neither are his kokum’s stories. Through this literary device, Whitehead suggests a connection between personal identity and narrative forms.

Within individual chapters, Whitehead follows the stream of Jonny’s thoughts as they lead from one story to the next. However, he often returns to the original stories to ensure completion. For example, in Chapter 39, the plot begins with a childhood story about Jonny and Tias camping at Hecla. Jonny’s memory of sweating while camping—“our skin clung to our cotton t-shirts and sweat pooled in our pits and on the curvature of our spines” (188)—reminds him of how other kids used to make fun of him for sweating, which then reminds him of how, in Winnipeg, he often tells strangers he is from a French-speaking part of Canada.