Tasting the Thunder

by Gary Paulsen

He knew he wouldn't learn much staying on the farm. Being a runaway meant excitement and knowledge. Then, after one terrifying night with the carnival people, he wondered whether growing up so fast and knowing so much, was the best way to keep ahead. This is a story about a boy's steps to manhood.

Genres: Young Adult, Classics

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Gary James Paulsen was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness. He was the author of more than 200 books and wrote more than 200 magazine articles and short stories, and several plays, all primarily for teenagers. He won the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1997 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens.

Reviews

[Josiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can't be certain what you're going to get from Gary Paulsen in the 1970s and into the '80s, his pre-prime as an author. His ideas were good, but they didn't reach full potential in all his early books, before he started dogsledding and gained new perspective on the natural world and man's place in it. Like many of his other early offerings, Tiltawhirl John (released 1977) borrows significantly from Gary Paulsen's own adolescent experiences and refuses to sugarcoat the horrors of life for teen readers. When you choose to leave home and venture into a big, brutal world, you're playing the odds that you'll fall in with a decent crowd who won't cheat you, hurt you, or kill you if doing so benefits them. Evil is a necrotizing disease that spreads like plague, and if you're unfortunate enough to settle in with friends or employers who've developed the infection, you could be in for a lot of suffering. You may find independence, validation, fulfillment, and the satisfaction of acceptance and love by leaving the home you've known since childhood to try your luck elsewhere, but the flip side can be bloody and vicious, and could slice oozing wounds in your heart that never heal properly. Tiltawhirl John explores both outcomes of a kid entering the real world, and its gritty authenticism and honest voice set the gold standard for Gary Paulsen's early novels, suggesting the profound wisdom and visceral power of later works such as Hatchet, The Rifle, and Paintings from the Cave: Three Novellas. In the aftermath of what went down with Tiltawhirl John and the other carnies, our narrator and main character clearly doesn't know what to make of it. Years of reflecting on the horrifying mess his road trip suddenly degenerated into haven't afforded him a transcendent understanding of the trauma; time has only reinforced the reality that terrible things happen and it's fruitless to look for deeper reasons why. You just have to accept the scars that mar your body and spirit and move on from the incident that caused them, your thoughts about it still a mass of confusion and doubt that won't be resolved during this lifetime. But you can think about it; you can talk about and mull over what went down and avoid tasting the thunder ever again if the flavor is too potent for you. And you can always, always wonder why.

"I'm not sure it's good to be smarter, because sometimes it's like getting hit with a hammer because it feels good when you stop. That whole business of getting smarter is like the hammer, and it comes to me now and then that it might be better just to stay dumb and not get hit with the hammer."

—Tiltawhirl John, P. 10

On the brink of age sixteen, the main character in our story runs away from home. His aunt and uncle have a sweet eighty acres of farmland to give him so he can settle down after high school and earn an old-fashioned wage the rest of his life, but to him this future feels like voluntary jail. At fifteen, he's never going to have a better opportunity to tour the country and court more romantic lifestyle options, so he packs a bag and thumbs a ride as far as hitchhiking can take him. Making a pile of cash fast is priority number one after he finds a landing space an adequate distance from home, but our protagonist has no idea what he's signed on for when he agrees to hoe beet fields for Karl Elsner, a man of imposing stature with the laugh and demeanor of Santa Claus but the heart of a demon from Hell. The physically agonizing, mind-numbing work thinning miles of beet crop is bad, but Elsner is a sadistic slavedriver bent on maximum profit for minimal expense. Within weeks our fifteen-year-old lead character realizes he's as trapped on Elsner's plantation as the illegal Mexican immigrants laboring beside him, worked to the bone for no monetary compensation. Elsner's intentions are revealed to be increasingly darker the longer we tarry on his farm: there are hideous beatings that put workers on the cusp of the afterlife, and lecherous advances the underprivileged are powerless to rebuff. The inferno of Elsner's hell blazes hotter until our main character can tolerate it no more, and in one rage-driven moment commits an act that can't be rescinded. He goes from captivity in beet country to wandering the open roads dazed, haunted, and in physical tatters from the torments of Elsner's farm. His psyche is shredded, invisible blood seeping from his mind, but the extent of the scarring will only be fully realized over time.

Providence, fate, or sheer luck brings him into the company of three traveling carnies, who reluctantly give the shattered former beet farmer a ride to their next engagement in the Midwest. Tiltawhirl John (T-John) wasn't thrilled about picking up a muttering, wild-eyed kid on the street, but his girl Wanda wasn't having any of that. The kid needed a break: he was a runaway, recipient of least one gruesome beating, and in a state of shock. In the stupor of that first night he confesses everything to T-John, his twin brother Billy, and Wanda, but the carny folk don't turn him away. If he's interested in real work, not slavery masquerading as legit employment, T-John can offer him thirty-five dollars a week and bottomless carny food to help set up and operate the tiltawhirl and do other small jobs around the carnival. The kid found little hope and comfort in the chamber of horrors that was Elsner's beet farm, except for a Mexican teen named Maria who did her best to soothe his broken body after Elsner did his worst to him, singing softly with his head cradled in her lap, but he finds better here among the carnival folk. Wanda, too, sings gently while cooling his feverish brow that first night, willing the boy to convalesce and leave behind the nightmares that stalk him.

"And unless your mind is upside down, you don't want to go around sucking a vinegar rag all the time—now and then you like a lick of honey."

—Tiltawhirl John, P. 10

This is what he envisioned when he forsook his uncle's eighty acres to start a new life: a connection to forthright people, the opportunity to work hard for decent money so he could save up and have options for the future. T-John and his twin are good bosses who run their carny scams adroitly, and they invite their new teen employee into the tent. Billy's geek show is gratuitously gross, a fake savage man who bites the heads off live chickens to sate the morbid curiosity of carnival goers. Wanda takes it all off for leering men, but with hoses at the ready to cool heads too inflamed by lust for rational thought. The carnival is classic vice in multiple forms—even T-John cashes in by working the tiltawhirl's clutch to shake loose money and small goods from patrons' pockets to get stuck in the seat cushion for later retrieval by the carnies—but it's relatively innocuous vice, the romanticism of a traveling con show that locals dish out money for despite knowing they're getting conned. The carnival is a quirk of Americana, and the new kid is rapidly getting the hang of it.

Yep, he may have found his future, carny for life, the way he takes to the game. He learns the ins and outs of managing the tiltawhirl in a day or two, operating the clutch to drain riders of loose cash with expertise equal to T-John's. He's a grade A shill for Billy's geek show and Wanda's striptease parlor, posing as a gung-ho customer to convince others they don't want to miss the fun. The carnival rakes in money town after town, but the apt new employee isn't the only one with unspeakable dementors in his head. T-John just as surely is harassed by past evil, and it catches up with him when a man named Tucker strides through the carnival gates and takes things too far, violating a carny precept T-John can't let slide if he's to retain his curious brand of integrity. This showdown has been brewing a long time, two men who won't be satisfied without slicing the other to bloody ribbons. Both parties cannot survive the confrontation, a bloodbath like the kid won't witness again if he lives to be a hundred. There's a little something extra to being a carny, an unspoken oath that makes up a small part of the profession but could spoil it all for a kid who can't tolerate the taste of thunder. Farmers love rain and adventurers pursue thunder, and you have to choose one or the other to keep yourself from being ripped apart. What does it all mean in the end, anyway? Are we right or wrong for chasing down thunder, regardless of if we have the stomach for it? Is anything to be gained from the deaths of friends or enemies, from senseless brutality that alters our perspective on life whether we're hoeing beets or scamming townies at a carnival? I don't know, and neither does the kid. All he knows is that what happened, happened, but he can wish it never had.

"And doing what is good for you is always the worst thing. Even if it works out all right in the end, it is the worst thing when it first happens—just the way things that seem good for you can turn out bad, bad as dirt."

—Tiltawhirl John, P. 115

It's hard to get your mind right when you've been through an ordeal like the kid in this book survives at Karl Elsner's beet farm. The horror is jarring, though it manifests gradually, and stains every area of your life so everything about you is sullied by it. A brave heart yellows, trembling in the fetidness of its own fear. You jump at little, inconsequential sounds that wouldn't raise anyone's alarm unless they've lived under threat of torture. You shy away from friends and harmless strangers, sure they'll eventually do you wrong, intentionally or otherwise. You can't trust anyone to treat you well, so you fear without discrimination. The kid deals with this anxiety after exiting Elsner's plantation, no longer reacting normally to people because deep down he detects danger from everyone. It's Billy, T-John's brother, who attempts to set him straight. Awful things happen, he says, and that's the way it is. There's no point analyzing them to death or dwelling on the whys, or how things could have been different if you'd made alternate choices with pre-knowledge of the consequences lying in wait to nab you. The kid gets Billy's message: "Yeah. It's done, and there isn't anything I can do about it. Right?" "That's the ticket", Billy responds. "That hand is dealt, and you lost. It's tough, but it happens. Throw it in and take a new deal—smooth out a little. You're walking freaked out all the time." It doesn't come naturally to everyone, particularly those predisposed to lingering anxiety, but you have to let it go. Instead of obsessing over what might have occurred if you'd drawn a better hand, admit the cards were against you and fold, painful as the loss is. Get a fresh set of cards and hope for better, and don't dwell on the previous hand. That's a sure way to screw up your chances of hitting a lucky streak this time around. Don't let past misfortune taint your reservoir of future luck, or you're rigging the game against yourself. It's not easy for the kid to regard the trauma at Elsner's farm so cavalierly, but he recognizes that it's essential if he's to experience proper emotional development. "I was still a little weird in the back of my mind, kind of like there were corners that were still dark, and I knew it was the beet farm that was doing it—no, not the farm so much as Elsner and how he'd been. I wanted to forget it, and yet I didn't want to forget it, all at the same time, if you know what I mean. Maybe that's what they mean by growing up. I wanted to remember enough of Elsner and the beet farm so it would never happen to me again, but I wanted to forget enough so the pain would go away." Billy and our young beet farmer each speak and think a lot of truth, and it's suffused throughout Tiltawhirl John for the reader who desires to learn and benefit from it. This book is a wonderful teacher of the messy realities of life, a common praise of Gary Paulsen's writing.

The narrator thinks back on the experiences of his sixteenth summer, now years behind him, and incredible as it seems with personalities as large as Karl Elsner, T-John, Wanda, Billy, and Tucker, they're all only distant echoes in his past, characters in a life that could have been but never really was. "(L)ike my uncle always says, done is done. Maybe he's right, but I doubt it, because to say done is done is like saying you're supposed to forget all about what happened. It's one of those things that're awfully easy to say and very hard to do, and it's especially hard when what you're trying to forget is Tiltawhirl John and Wanda and Billy the geek and the beet farm... Maybe done is done. But I doubt it." Come on, we know this when we've lived a life of events and people who intensely shaped us and our worldview: it's impossible to forget them because they're part of who we are. We see things through the prism of how our parents treated us and whether we felt loved growing up, the friends we had since early childhood, the lessons emphasized by our teachers, our artistic influences, the whens and whys of deepest heartache and rejection as well as our euphoric joys. There's no forgetting those formative people and incidents. What's done is never over; the past infiltrates every aspect of our conscious and unconscious, and that's not necessarily a bad thing even when it evokes memories we wish weren't part of our lives. We live with the consequences not only of our yesterdays, but the yesterdays of friends, family, and even total strangers whose actions affect us one way or another. That conflict plays out daily in our hearts and minds, a miniature drama to help us figure out why our life has gone the way it has and what we think about that. Would we excise the T-Johns from our life peremptorily if we knew how sour things would ultimately turn? That's for each of us to decide on our own. Somewhere, Billy's advice and that of our narrator in his older years intersects and harmonizes, but there are a lot of interlocking parts to the mechanism, and I sure can't explain it to you. Read Tiltawhirl John and then think it over yourself, for I can't imagine a thoughtful reader not being molded by this novel.

Not every Gary Paulsen book astounds me, but Tiltawhirl John does the trick. The depth of this brief novel (one hundred twenty-seven pages in the edition I read) is nearly incomprehensible. It's a book one could read dozens of times and never tire of because of the myriad philosophical challenges it raises. I'm reminded anew why I harbor such passion for Gary Paulsen's writing, and I'm grateful for the reminder. Tiltawhirl John will alternately affirm and call into question ideas you hold about life, and that's what I expect from a quality teen novel. Without hesitation, I recommend this book and its incomparable creator.

[Nancy Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is off my Young Adult shelf. I am reading through my Gary Paulsen library. I am a senior reader but have collected Paulsen books for years. It is time to read them and pass them on to a Little Free Library.

[Julie Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

" . . . doing what is good for you is always the worst thing. Even if it works out all right in the end . . . "

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the lesser Paulsen books. It doesn't have the critical reception many of his others do, and I think that's because this book didn't really speak to anyone out there. The main character is almost faceless in this thing.

I like the idea of a kid so sick of working on the farm that he runs off and becomes a carnie, but this book shows us a kid who finds that manual labor at the farm and scams at the carnival are equally boring. The problem is the book doesn't go from one extreme to another, like from boring to exciting, instead it goes from dullsville to the dullsville traveling show. John has managed to leave the gravitational pull of the land, only to find himself nearly as isolated as before now that he is a member of a small group of outsiders who have little connection to the rubes they meet at the towns the carnival travels to. If the subtle objective of this book was to suggest to kids that they will be no better off by running away, mission accomplished.

There is one scene in which one of the female carnies is known for selling her virtue. Nothing is graphic, but it does deserve a mention for concerned parents.

Prosewise, Paulsen gives straightforward descriptions with none of that fancy talk those modern writers use, so there's nothing special here. I hate the fact that I am pooh-poohing a basically decent book because it isn't !EXTREME! enough, like all the new stuff is, but there it is.

Overall, a not particularly exciting read, probably best reserved for youths 13 and up. In fact, I'd go so far as to recommend that this book NOT be read by reluctant readers, because it is so dull that it could be the one book that turns a potential reader off for good.

[Dom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of my book is Tiltawhirl john. The author is Gary Paulen.It was publication in 1990. Itdid not get literary awards. I like the book. Ilike that he has new friends. I didn't like how he got treated. I didn't like that he got beaten.

The setting of the book is at a farm. The good guy is Tiltawhirl John. He likes to work and get money. He dose not give up when work gets hard. They are like me because I like to work and get money. The supporting charaters are Maria and the Old man. The Old man and Tiltawhirl john got beaten by this man name Elsner.

The conflict (problem) the character face was getting beating. The bad guy is Elsner. Elsner is the farm owner and he beats the Old man And Tiltawhirl John. It started with Tiltawhirl John running away from home and finding the farm of beets. In the end Tiltawhirl John kills Elsner.

The author's message is do not run away from home,and do not let people take advanting of you. The text is when he ran away and went to a farm an did not now how it is like their.

I like about the book is when he made new friends. I did not like was when other people treated him like crap. My favorite is Tiltawhirl John. My least is elsner. My favorit part is whenhe went and got his money and hit Elsner in the face. I would ask the auther is why Tiltawhirl John had to be beaten.

Yes I would recommend this book. It is rily good book. I wold tell someone how like reading this book. I rating out of 5 stars is 4 ****.

[Luke Eggers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is a story about a boy who lives in a small town on the farm. His uncle wanted him to stay and work on the farm, but John knew that there was a world out there that he had too see. But, being on your own isn't easy and comes with consequences, he would soon find out. He had to learn how to stand up for himself and for what he believed in, no matter what the result may be. Paulsen put his own twist on a story about growing up and facing the world. I would recommend that young people between the ages of 10-18 read this book to give them a good idea of what to expect out in the real world.

[Sarah Kappelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't be fooled by it's slim appearance--Tiltawhirl John packs a punch. It's a great recommendation for a high school reader who reads below grade level but who wants to read about someone who is "fifteen and close as a hair to sixteen" and who "went off to seek...fame and fortune and find out about love and sex and death and what it's like not just to be a man but to kill a man."

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book really enjoyable and also interesting to read. I thought the characters were very relate able to real life and the plot was interesting. I thought that the book was a really good read and something different to what I would normally read. I would recommend this book to teens from 13-15 and i rate it a 7/10.

[Lea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing coming-of-age story. Quick and easy read, but I thought it was also an interesting social commentary about those who exist on the bottom and those who keep them there.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars