Woods Runner

Samuel’s father, Olin, is not “present” for much of the narrative, but his abduction drives the plot forward. Olin is different from his son, primarily because his pursuits tend to the intellectual and literary rather than toward his son’s love of nature and drive to provide. From Annie’s father we learn that Olin’s life was spared because an officer in the raiding party found a chessboard in the Smith’s cabin and brought them along because he missed having someone to play chess with (81). Samuel explains that his parents “lived in the wilderness” but “were not part of it,” instead feeling more at home in their cabin with their books (94). Olin and Abigail’s reverence for books and dedication to teaching Samuel about the larger world definitely contribute to the humanity, intelligence, and insight that Samuel displays throughout the novel.

After the capture, Olin comes to represent the neglect and torture that the novel’s informational passages discuss. His imprisonment and near starvation serve to drive home the statistics and descriptions Paulsen includes between chapters. His slow recovery on their journey, too, helps highlight the scarcity of food and its actual and symbolic value within the novel. Also important is how Olin’s dependence on Samuel for safety and sustenance inverts the parent/child role and narratively solidifies Samuel’s coming-of-age. Though Olin rarely directly acts or is autonomous within the narrative, his presence and relationship with Samuel drives both the plot and Samuel’s character development forward. 

Similarly, Samuel’s mother’s role in the novel is more symbolic than active. Like Samuel’s father, his mother’s parenting and worldview establish the tension between civilization and the wilderness that drives Samuel’s perspective. Events in the novel do suggest that Samuel’s thoughts of his mother are somewhat more immediate and empathetic than those of his father, perhaps because women of the time were seen as more needing of protection than men. While he follows their tracks, for example, Samuel “felt his mother’s anguish terribly. She was small and thin, and very strong in her own way, but this brutal treatment, probably with a rope around her neck, might be too much for her” (41). After he’s wounded in the rebel’s attack on the redcoat encampment, Samuel dreams of his mother, “dressed all in buckskins” and again, “wrapped in a blanket with stringy black hair hanging down at the sides of her head” preparing a poultice to treat his injured head (57).

These brief glimpses of Abigail frame her as a caregiving figure in Samuel’s life. This carries through to their chance encounter in New York; Abigail reveals that she’s a working prisoner and that despite the little she’s given, she takes some of the “leftover and scrap food” (128) she’s allowed to Samuel’s father each night. She is also the first of Samuel’s parents to recognize the changes in him—first, she trusts and obeys him when he reveals the rescue plan to her, then she sides with him when he insists on rejoining the efforts of the rebels a few years later. Abigail, like Olin, rarely acts agentively, but she is emotionally present throughout the novel and influences the way Samuel perceives and interprets the world. 

Annie appears in the novel when Samuel is well on his journey to find his parents. Having left Coop’s group, Samuel is about to steal a chicken when Annie gives him permission to one who she says is mean. She is eight or nine years old and lives on a farm with both of her parents, Caleb and Ma, who have livestock and land and lay out a feast for Samuel’s dinner with them. Annie flees the house when the Hessians arrive and kill her mother and father; she runs off into the woods, barefoot and alone. Samuel finds her, and she clings to him, immediately claiming him as her new family. As a child, Annie is dependent on Samuel for food, safety, and guidance.

Paulsen has positioned Annie at the age that he says begins the end of “childhood” and the beginning of being a contributing member of the family. In doing this, he’s provided a counterpoint to Samuel’s self-sufficiency and leadership—remember that Samuel began going into the woods alone to hunt when he was not much older than Annie. The way Annie reacts emotionally to the death of her parents also provides a contrast to Samuel’s own perspective. Remember, too, that Samuel ran towards the danger while Annie ran away from it. Annie is courageous and tough in her own way, admirable and essential qualities for a child on the frontier, but her skills and reactions are far more childlike in comparison to Samuel’s. Annie allows us to see the difference between a brave child and what Samuel is—a young man on the cusp of adulthood. Annie’s straightforward condemnation of the Hessians’ brutality also provides another angle of approach to Samuel’s stricken disbelief at the destruction he’s seen.

Samuel and Annie meet Abner on their journey to New York. Initially, Abner appears as an ordinary merchant—an old man with dogs who carries miscellaneous goods and provides services like knife sharpening. He quickly steps up to protect Samuel and Annie from the approaching soldiers—claiming them as his grandchildren—but he does so without taking over Samuel’s leadership. Samuel discovers that Abner is far more than he appears; instead, he seems to be some kind of spy or informant. Paulsen’s informational passages tell of covert civilian informants who developed networks to pass information, supplies, and refugees (121).

Abner embodies this civilian intelligence, and he introduces the reader to the intelligence networks by bringing Matthew and Micah into the narrative. It is Abner’s contacts and strategy that pick up where Samuel’s determination cannot go. Abner is also the first to articulate Samuel’s new position in the world and within his family when he tells him, “They’re going to try to be your ma and pa, but for now you have to be the leader” (144). That Abner partners up with Samuel and speaks strategy with him—but not the adults—is a significant marker of Samuel’s passing over into manhood.

Also significant is Abner’s initial explanation of why he’s helping Samuel and Annie. He claims that at his age, one starts “adding and subtracting, measuring your life” and weighing your actions: “[Y]ou’ve done this many things wrong and this many things right. Like a ledger with lines down the middle” (107). Though he later mostly dismisses this explanation as “maybe a little too flowery to be real” (108), it still gives insight into the novel’s perspective on good and evil, right and wrong. Abner’s actions also invite consideration of how age can be a disguise—both he and Samuel may seem harmless to onlookers, but beneath their appearances they can be dangerously effective.