The Great Brain

Background

Although John D. Fitzgerald was born in Price, Utah, several references in the stories suggest Adenville is located in Utah's "Dixie" in the southwestern corner of the state. A small village called Adenville briefly existed near Cedar City, about which little is known.

The publisher's note in The Great Brain Is Back, published after the death of the author, recounts the story of the series' origin. Fitzgerald had written two novels for adults, Papa Married a Mormon and Mama's Boarding House, published in 1955 and 1958 and set in Adenville, Utah, at the end of the 19th century. A third book was requested by the editor, E. L. Doctorow, but he changed jobs before the manuscript was completed. Fitzgerald submitted the new novel, which focused on the children of Adenville, to Doctorow at The Dial Press but by then family stories were out of favor with adult readers. The new editor for children's books offered to publish the novel if it were cut in half and eliminated some passages aimed at adults. The result was The Great Brain.

Series titles

Titles in order of chronological continuity are

The Great Brain (1967)

More Adventures of the Great Brain (1969)

Me and My Little Brain (1971)

The Great Brain at the Academy (1972)

The Great Brain Reforms (1973)

The Return of the Great Brain (1974)

The Great Brain Does It Again (1976)

The Great Brain Is Back (published in 1995 from loose notes after the author's death)

Main characters

Fitzgerald family

The Fitzgerald family members include:

John Dennis "J.D." Fitzgerald: The narrator of the series, and youngest of the three brothers.

Thomas Dennis "Tom"/"T.D." Fitzgerald Jr.: The mischievous middle brother and swindler extraordinaire. His nickname is "The Great Brain", and his escapades form the basis for the series. Throughout the series, Tom demonstrates that he possesses incredible charisma, great intelligence, and a money-loving heart, but at times, he also demonstrates great humanity and generosity.

Sweyn Dennis "S.D." Fitzgerald: The eldest brother; who is more skilled than J.D. at catching Tom in the act. He and Tom attend Catholic boarding school together. After graduating from that, Sweyn departs for Pennsylvania to live with relatives, where he attends a high school that was also his father's alma mater. He and Tom are two years apart, but Tom was allowed to skip the fifth grade. As a result, Sweyn and Tom attend the Catholic Academy together.

Frankie Pennyworth: An unconscious boy rescued by Uncle Mark after a rock slide kills his brother and parents. When he first arrives, he has a mental block stemming from this trauma, in which he lashes out violently at the Fitzgeralds. John reflects that his name should be "Frankenstein Dollarworth", because, he says, Frankie is "a monster and a dollar's worth of trouble", and a battle of wills ensues when John is promised a large sum of money to try to cure Frankie's mental block, but only if Frankie does not need to be taken to a doctor in Salt Lake City. Frankie eventually becomes much better behaved and is adopted into the Fitzgerald family.

Thomas Dennis Fitzgerald Sr. ("Papa" or "Fitz"): Patriarch of the family. Owner, editor, and publisher of the town paper, the Adenville Weekly Advocate. He is an Irish Catholic originally from the eastern United States who headed west to seek his fortune as a newspaper writer and publisher. He is one of Adenville's leading citizens, and highly respected amongst the residents as he is the only citizen of Adenville to hold a university diploma.

Tena "Mamma" Fitzgerald: The matriarch of the family and homemaker, of Danish-Scandinavian ancestry. Her father was named Sweyn, which she named her first son in his honor.

Other characters

Andy Anderson, a boy who loses his lower left leg to a tetanus infection after stepping on a rusty nail in an abandoned barn. Later he falls into severe depression over this and even considers suicide, until Tom convinces Andy he can still do chores and play.

Parley Benson, son of a bounty hunter and the envy of most of the other boys. He possesses his own coonskin cap, a Bowie knife, and his own repeating air rifle. Tom wins Parley's air rifle in a bet about whether Tom can magnetize wood. After reading about boomerangs in an encyclopedia and seeing an illustration of one in a dictionary, Tom fashions a boomerang from a stick, and after throwing it, holds up a magnet to make it appear the magnet is bringing it back. Losing his air rifle earns Parley the "worst whipping of his life" from his father. Another story has Tom betting who is braver by having both boys break curfew and meet at the entrance to the forbidden Skeleton Cave.

Dotty Blake, also known as "Britches Dotty", a "tomboy" whom Tom teaches to read and write, and who is given dresses and taught to act like a conventional girl by Tom's mother. Dotty beats up Sammy Leeds when he teases her.

Danny Forester, son of the town's barber. Danny's left eye always seems half-shut, except when he gets excited. Tom swindles Danny out of a quality baseball glove by betting on hypnotism, which earns Danny a whipping from his father.

Abie Glassman, a Jewish itinerant salesman who winds up settling in Adenville and opening a variety store. His business is shunned by the local community due to prejudicial notions that he is a miser hoarding gold, whereas Abie himself refuses to seek charitable aid from others due to his personal pride. Unable to support himself, he eventually dies of starvation.

Jimmy Gruber, a diabetic boy who dies in childhood, after his father steals Frankie's rocking horse (named 'Bullet') as a present before Jimmy dies. When Frankie realizes the gravity of diabetes, he allows the Grubers to keep his expensive swing horse.

Eddie Huddle, Frankie's best friend and son of the town blacksmith.

Religious demographics

Catholicism is central to the family's life and identity, a recurring theme in a town where Catholics are distinctly in the minority. The breakdown is said to be 2,000 Mormons, 500 or so Protestants, and only about 100 Catholics. All the non-Mormons or "Gentiles" attend a generalized community church, and the Fitzgeralds have to make do with the services of itinerant priests and of the local preacher, Reverend Holcomb, who preaches "strictly from the Bible" so he does not show favoritism to either Protestants or Catholics. It was said that once a year a Catholic priest would visit Adenville to hear confessions, baptize babies or do specifically Catholic rituals; other times a Protestant minister would do likewise, such as marry Protestants.

The Jewish population is almost nonexistent, consisting solely of an aging itinerant Jewish peddler named Abie Glassman who sets up a shop in Adenville with tragic results, as chronicled in the first book in the series, The Great Brain. Abie dies of starvation because his small shop cannot compete with the ZCMI store. Papa explains to the townspeople that it was because Abie was a Jew that no one recognized or helped him with his situation. With Abie's death, it can be inferred that the town no longer has any Jewish people living in it. It is also not known if Basil Kokovinis and his family are Greek Orthodox.

Education

Papa, who had migrated from the northeastern United States, is the only person in town with a college education. Although many adults in Adenville lack a formal education, they are respectful of those who do, and the narrator remarks that his father was considered the smartest man in town as he was the only resident of Adenville to hold a university diploma.

Papa also bemoans the fact that most boys in Adenville will be limited as careers and apprenticeships often have a prerequisite of an eighth grade education, which Adenville lacked in the beginning, and helped expand elementary education to solve this problem.

Adenville contains a one-room schoolhouse with a single teacher who teaches the first through sixth grades.

Parochial school: Papa sends Tom and Sweyn to a Catholic boarding academy in Salt Lake City that serves ten boys in the seventh grade and ten boys in the eighth grade. Much of this is discussed in The Great Brain at the Academy, where the Jesuit priests enforce strict discipline and have an academic curriculum more challenging than what Tom faced in Adenville.

Later, as part of Thomas' initiative to expand lower education, a junior high known as the Adenville Academy is commissioned. Tom attends eighth grade there.

In the series Sweyn attends high school in Boylestown, Pennsylvania, where Papa had earned his high school diploma. Sweyn lives with distant relatives of Papa's in Pennsylvania. One chapter touches upon the more stylish ways of the East, as shown by Sweyn's "dude" ways, as opposed to the West, which is slower to accept such ways due to being more concerned with settlement and hard work.

Historical context

Fitzgerald's books describe many issues regarding society and life in the context of the late 19th century, between 1896 and 1898 in the southwestern United States. Among the topics covered are the following:

Diabetes as a fatal disease (before the invention of artificial insulin)

The banking system in the days before the Federal Reserve

Mormonism, Catholicism and Protestantism

The relationship between American settlers and Native Americans

Transportation in the days before the Interstate Highway System. The citizens of Adenville often get where they want to go by walking or making use of horse and buckboard. Bicycling is uncommon as most citizens of Adenville are unable to afford this. For extra-long journeys, such as when Tom goes to boarding school in Salt Lake City or Sweyn goes to Pennsylvania for high school, the train is used.

Sewage and sanitation. Outhouses (referred to as "backhouses" in Utah at that time, due to the term "outhouse" being used in that region to refer to a storage shed, workshed, or other small out-building behind the main house) are not only the norm, they are a mark of social status, with the richest people having backhouses with ornate woodwork. When Papa orders a flush toilet (called a "water closet") from Sears Roebuck and has a cesspool built, the whole town at first thinks it is an unwise placement of a backhouse indoors, until they see it work and then become fascinated.

Child discipline. Most families gave their children "whippings". In The Great Brain Reforms, Parley Benson says that his pa gave him "the worst whipping" for letting Tom cheat him out of his repeating air rifle, as do Danny Forester says his father gave him the same treatment for losing his baseball glove to Tom in a bet, and Jimmie Peterson says his mother "gave him a horsewhipping" for losing his baseball to "that Fitzgerald kid". The better-educated, more progressive Fitzgeralds are a notable exception with their use of the silent treatment. This means that Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald will not talk to or acknowledge those who are punished. It often lasted from a range of one day to one week depending on the infraction, but could be longer. J.D. frequently describes the silent treatment as worse than a whipping because of the emotional impact of being ignored by his parents, and at times says that he wishes his parents would just give them a whipping and get it over with. One chapter dealt with Frankie being subject to the silent treatment and misconstruing it as being disinherited from the Fitzgeralds, causing him to run away from home. In later books as Tom and J.D. age, Papa admits the silent treatment is becoming outmoded, and now resorts to extra chores or revocation of allowances as punishments.