67 pages • 2 hours read
Rodman PhilbrickThe Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Search for Safety and Freedom
Homer’s story is a quest for freedom, not only for his brother and escaped enslaved people but for himself. During his adventure, Homer must many times wriggle out of imprisonment before he can continue his journey.
Homer’s young years are spent under the thumb of his cruel uncle Squinton. Homer and his brother Harold slave away for Squint, receive little food, enjoy no comforts, and get locked away at night. When Harold is kidnapped and sent to war, Homer wants nothing more than to free him. First, though, he must escape from the root cellar in which he has been locked, then steal a horse and run away from Squint’s control.
Homer promptly gets kidnapped by bounty hunters Stink and Smelt, who force him to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the Underground Railroad runaways. During this process, Homer meets Mr. Brewster and Samuel Reed of the Underground Railroad and sees runaway enslaved people escaping to freedom. This reminds Homer of his own predicaments, and he sympathizes with the escapees and wants to help them. Homer saves Samuel’s life, and Samuel returns the favor, as he and Mr. Brewster help Homer free himself from the bounty hunters. Homer’s efforts also help the runaways attain their own freedom.
Returning to his search for Harold, Homer again is imprisoned, this time briefly, in a pig crate. Professor Fleabottom rescues Homer and offers him work as an actor, and Homer’s nightly performances as the Amazing Pig Boy reenact both his pig-crate confinement and his servile life in Squint’s barn. In the process, Homer works through his anger over these cruelties and achieves a stronger sense of himself as someone who stands up to injustice.
Professor Fleabottom and his Carnival players are arrested for supporting the Confederacy; Homer escapes in a balloon but falls into the hands of Southern soldiers who jail him. Escaping yet again, Homer finds his brother confined to a Union army prison wagon under a charge of mutiny. Later, Homer accidentally shoots Harold, wounding his brother but thereby freeing him from the army into which he was forced.
Homer is a child, small and relatively powerless, and many adults are happy to confine or enslave him if it suits their purposes. In that respect, the world treats him callously, and Homer finds that trust must be earned, and that his own safety and freedom depend on his wits. In freeing Harold, Homer also liberates himself. He discovers that freedom begins in the heart: He must choose to be free, take charge of it, and find the help he needs to protect it. In return, he helps others find freedom for themselves.
Truth and Lies
Homer loves to exaggerate his life. He especially likes to tell tall tales to adults when he first meets them, by way of trying to prove to them that he’s a worthy person. In fact, Homer feels distinctly unworthy, having lived for years in a barn as the prisoner of his wicked uncle Squint. He tries to wipe all that away with outrageous boasts that he hopes will erase any perception of unworthiness. Of course, nobody believes him, but his entertaining exaggerations charm his listeners, and they decide they like him despite the boasting. Homer thinks he's fooling them, so he keeps on with it, not realizing that he's already a good and charming person who doesn't need to exaggerate his worth.
Homer’s ability to lie becomes useful when he must save the runaway enslaved people from capture. He misleads Stink and Smelt about the location of the escapees’ hiding place, which gives Samuel Reed and Mr. Brewster time to launch a counter-attack that defeats the bounty hunters and protects the runaways. Mrs. Bean says to Homer, “Never thought a boy could be good and a liar, too. But you are” (71).
When he performs in the Carnival as the Amazing Pig Boy, Homer does so with the wild pretense of a born actor. Ironically, he always tells the truth when authority figures question him. Perhaps he is influenced by Mr. Brewster, who taught him that honesty is the proper way to deal with the world. If it doesn't really matter, though, Homer persists in pretending, especially to outsiders.
Homer also must deal with the lies of others. Smelt lies to him when he promises not to kill Homer if he helps Smelt locate the enslaved runaways. Kate and Frank Nibbly lie to him when they profess interest in Mr. Willow. Professor Fleabottom lies when he claims his inquiries into the locations of Union troops are made merely to help Homer find his brother. Homer learns a great deal about the difference between untruths that can hurt him and those that do not, and he learns a great deal about how to distinguish between harmless fibs and dangerous lies.
Professor Fleabottom’s life as a carnival entertainer is meant to hide the dark truth that he’s a Confederate spy. The lie doesn't put Homer in danger until it’s exposed and he must escape. Fleabottom never intends to hurt the boy, and in fact he becomes a father figure to Homer, but the secret complicates their relationship, and Homer learns that people can be good and bad at the same time.
Homer begins to adapt his lies to the situation. Mr. Willow visits him at Gettysburg and confesses that, lured by the Nibblys, he betrayed Homer. Now in the army as penance, Mr. Willow worries about the terrible day of battle that lies ahead for him. Homer, who has seen the horrors of battle, reassures him that it won’t be so bad: “That’s a lie, but I owed him one, and hopeful lies don’t count as bad” (189).
Purpose and Duty
Homer feels a great and important calling to save his beloved brother, Harold, from the grip of an army Harold is too young to join: “I have to run away from Pine Swamp, Maine, and Squinton Leach and his wretched farm, and find my brother and save him from the war, before it’s too late” (16). During his quest, Homer encounters many adults who are engaged in their own pursuits, not all of them moral or legitimate.
Stink and Smelt search for runaway enslaved people, not to help them but to return them to bondage. Their goal isn’t the betterment of others but money for themselves. Jebediah Brewster and Samuel Reed share a quest to free those same enslaved people; they’ll spend money and energy to do so; to them, it’s a duty and a calling they must answer.
Webster Willow aspires to be a clergyman, but his real goal, at first hidden from himself and others, is to be a respectable member of high society. Kate and Frank Nibbly, who search for wealthy people they can cheat, discover Mr. Willow and offer him his heart’s fondest desire, to be a ranking preacher on Park Avenue in New York. Lured by that fantasy, Willow lets the Nibblys take charge of his cash, and they steal it and abandon him. One man’s selfishness runs up against another’s greed; only one party can win.
The outcome costs Homer as well. Forcibly separated from the clergyman, Homer meets Professor Fleabottom, who offers to help Homer find his brother if Homer will help him with his medicine show. Fleabottom’s purposes are many, and they interlock in morally complex ways: He wants to make money with his circus; he wants to help Homer; he wants to spy for the South, and helping Homer gives him cover to do that; he wants to avoid capture, which would ruin all the other plans.
Fleabottom isn’t an evil person—he feels duty-bound to help his homeland—but he’s a member of the enemy during wartime. Though Homer doesn’t much care who wins the war as long as he can save his brother, had he known at the outset Fleabottom’s true purpose, he’d have run from him. As it is, Homer’s part in Fleabottom’s plans helps Homer get closer to his own goal of finding Harold.
Finally, a purpose shared by opposing societies, the winning of the American Civil War, stands in Homer’s way. Its pivotal struggle, the Battle of Gettysburg, becomes a roadblock that Homer must get around. He does so, remarkably, by galloping directly through it on a beeline to his brother. He then stands with Harold in battle, trying to protect his brother so he can bring him home safely.
Homer’s quest sometimes harmonizes and sometimes collides with the purposes of those he meets. Homer’s simple goal leads to huge complexities, but he finds that his single-minded devotion to saving Harold has a way of clearing all obstacles.
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