Chad Hanna

The story of Chad Hanna is a tale of growing for one young man. Chad Hanna is a young man of about 20 years of age, and sets out in the world to escape trouble at home. He joins a circus troupe that travels across New York as a simple layman, but ends up becoming the ringmaster. He is surrounded by a plethora of different personalities in both the men and women that he encounters through his travels. He is also faced with challenges in both his personal life and as ringmaster of the circus troupe that must be decided upon.

Chad is portrayed as a young man of no consequence in the village of Canastota, and only a stable boy at The Yellow Bud Tavern where he lives. Chad has worked many jobs after being taken away from the orphanage in Troy by a farmer near Mechanicsville. He ran from that job because he was more of an "indented servant", a driver on the Erie Canal for multiple captains and then as a stable lad for The Yellow Bud Inn. The people in the town do not think of Chad as being very smart or having any important responsibilities. As we read the novel though we find out that Chad spends his time listening to the people around him and traveling through town using their backyards. He knows the goings on in the village because people do not take notice of his listening or travel through the village. These actions of his are noticed by the evil men of the town, and he is recruited by them. Chad is innately good though, and uses the knowledge brought to his attention for a different purpose entirely.

The men that try to recruit Chad are both of a dark nature in spirit and are described as such. The first sighting of Al Heeney is of him nosing around sneakily in the barn that Chad works at and he is described as, "he looked like a snipe-nosed, undersized bird dog hitting the scent of a quail on a fence" (Edmonds, 14). Chad knows that Heeney is not a good man to cross, but is also able to verbally fence with him and come out the victor, making Heeney seem a fool. Heeney wants Chad to get him information that he hears around town, and tells him to deliver it to Cisco Trid. Cisco Trid is the other dark figure in the town and is described as, being a loner and a man not to cross. Elias Proops even warns Chad telling him, "Don't go mixing with Cisco or Al. You got the nigger away; if you had the sense of a pig's whistle, you'd let it go at that" (Edmonds, 80). Despite warnings Chad still chooses to betray Cisco and give him mildly false information.

The opposite of these two would be the people that Chad has been living around in Canastota who are deemed as good. Elias Proops is the first character in the entire novel to speak, and is often the man of sage advice. Elias is portrayed as the old man who sits on the porch observing the passing of time in Canastota and its people. He sits on the porch of The Yellow Bud Inn, strategically placed in the village so that is sits on the banks of the Erie Canal. Elias gives us the sense of having been around and seen all that there is to see and experience in the world. He talks about his pension from the war, having seen a circus in Albany, and enjoys reading a serial novel that comes in the woman's magazine each month. He speaks in metaphors like when he describes Chad, "Vegetables has got mushrooms, animals have got rabbits, birds have got eggs, humans have people like Chad, there. One minute you don't know there is such a thing, and the next minute they've got born, Lord knows how" (Edmonds, 9). We should be seeing him as the person that you would go to for advice in the town when you need help.

The Gray family is also a representative of the good citizens that live in Canastota. They are willing to risk themselves to help others and protect their beliefs. Reverend Gray is secretly an abolitionist who is helping the escaped slaves get to Canada. He knows of people in the neighboring towns that will help Henry Prince, runaway slave, to escape to Canada. We know that he does not approve of Chad because he forbids his son Bobby from seeing him. The proof of this is seen when Bobby comes to the barn, "Bobby Gray came in barefoot, carrying his shoes in his hand. He took the bucket of water and washed his feet and put on the shoesÐ'... Last time Mama smelled the manure" (Edmonds, 21). Even though Reverend Gray does not necessarily like Chad he enlists him to help with the moving of the slave Henry Prince. The opinion of Reverend Gray seems to have changed towards Chad after he agrees to help with hiding Henry from Heeney and Trid. Gray eventually gets caught being an abolitionist and helper of the slaves, and he is made to leave his parish behind.

Another good person that Chad encounters in Canastota and travels with throughout the novel is Mr. Bisbee. He is the promoter for Huguenine's circus, and travels from town to town to hang up the posters advertising to the people. He seems very much like a good person, but also has the characteristics of being very slick and smooth in his interactions. He is able to convince Mott, the owner of the inn, to let him stay for free in exchange for posting the large poster in his bar. He works around Mott appealing to his greedy nature, "Because if I take this big one to another tavern where they've got more sense, all the people will want to go there to look at itÐ'... Why, Mr. Mott, after the circus has gone, people will still want to come into your bar and look at the poster so they can remember the circus better" (Edmonds, 7). He is being honest in a sense that people will want to look at the poster, but is using it so that he does not have to pay for his room and board. He is looking out for the good of the circus, and actually ends up buying in as a partner with Huguenine at the end of the novel. He even seems to be the saving grace of the circus in the end when he travels and brings back the elephant to be the main part of the show.

The large area of growth for Chad is in his dealings with the women that he encounters in the novel. He runs into a large variety of different women who represent different characterizations. The first woman that Chad truly shows an interest in is Lady Lillian, and even before he has really seen her. He also shows his interest with Mrs. Hitchcock, Edith Gray, Caroline Trid, and Albany Yates. Albany Yates actually ends up being Lady Lillian. His initial interest is caught by the poster tacked up in the bar, we realize this by the way Edmonds describes Chad looking at it, "Chad went over to the end of the bar and had another good look at the picture of Lady Lillian on her academy horse, and he realized that the picture didn't show what she looked like at allÐ'...He began to feel curious about her, not as something merely to look at, but as to what kind of person she was; and as he